The habits that made you successful early in your career can quietly sabotage you later — especially when you move into leadership.
In this episode of Overqualified and Unmuted, Cass and Sonia unpack The Great Unlearning: the moment when being indispensable, hyper-competent, and relentlessly reliable stops working — and starts causing burnout, team friction, and stalled growth.
We explore the invisible transition from individual contributor to people leader, why extreme focus and perfectionism can become liabilities, and how “doing it all yourself” often harms the very teams you’re trying to support. From delegation and trust to psychological safety and managing up, this conversation gets honest about what leadership actually demands — and what it asks you to let go of.
This episode is for high performers, managers, and emerging leaders who feel stuck between being excellent at their job and exhausted by it. If you’ve ever wondered why your old playbook stopped working, this is the episode that names it.
Key topics discussed:
- The shift from individual contributor to people manager
- Why high-performer habits can hold leaders back
- Delegation, trust, and letting go of control
- Perfectionism, burnout, and psychological safety
- What it really means to grow as a leader
Subscribe to Overqualified and Unmuted for candid conversations about career growth, leadership, burnout, and navigating work without losing yourself in the process.
Overqualified & Unmuted is produced by Just Loud Enough Media.
New episodes dropping Fridays.
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Hosted by Sonya Keeney & Cass White.
No corporate polish. Minimal narrative scaffolding. Maximum signal.
