Last week I wrote about permission to experiment: about how you don’t need a plan, you need a small experiment. This week is the other half of that idea. Because if experimentation is the how, this is the why: so many of us keep reaching for a plan in the first place, when what the moment actually calls for is judgment.

Years ago after my first maternity leave, as I was getting ready to go back to work, I was determined to crack the code of being a working mother. I approached it the same way I’d approached my engineering classes: define the variables, gather the data, optimize the solution.

And naturally, I built a spreadsheet. It was a thing of beauty.

Provider-to-child ratios. Hours. Cost. Food. Curriculum. Distance from home. Extra services. I color-coded it. Of course I did.

I visited daycare after daycare, filled in the cells, added new columns when I learned of something I’d missed, and convinced myself that if I just collected enough information, the answer would become obvious. That certainty was out there somewhere, waiting for me to gather enough data to find it.

But when it came time to decide, the spreadsheet didn’t make the decision.

A gut feeling did.

It was the way she held my son. The warmth I felt walking through the room. The nurturing and care they poured into each child. The sense that they weren’t just caregivers. They genuinely loved the kids. None of that lived in a spreadsheet cell. All that data, and the thing that actually decided it wasn’t my spreadsheet at all.

Technologists love formulas

It took me years to realize the spreadsheet wasn’t the problem. It was the assumption underneath it: that if I gathered enough information and looked at it from every angle, there would be a right answer. I don’t think this is a personal quirk. I think it’s how a lot of us are built, especially those of us who work in tech.

We’re trained to solve problems: customer problems, efficiency problems, system problems. We’re taught that if you gather enough information, the right answer reveals itself. We trust logic. We trust repeatability. If you can isolate the variable and run the test again, you should get the same result.

And here’s the thing: those instincts aren’t wrong. They’re exactly what made us good at our jobs. They’re what got us promoted the first few times. So it makes sense that when we grow into higher leadership roles with much messier, more human problems, we bring the same toolkit with us. We ask: What are the exact steps? What’s the playbook? What’s the formula for influence? What should I do, specifically, to get promoted?

We want leadership and career growth to work the way debugging a system works. Find the broken piece, fix it, watch the whole thing run cleanly.

The rubric, and the illusion of a formula

I remember studying our promotion rubrics like they were an answer key. I decoded every bullet. I mapped my accomplishments to every competency. I built my own internal spreadsheet of have I demonstrated this, yes or no. I fully expected that if I checked every box, the promotion would follow.

Sometimes it did. Sometimes it didn’t. And when it didn’t, I assumed I missed something in the formula. I’d done the analysis. I’d followed the rubric.

I see this same pattern constantly now, in almost every client I coach through a promotion cycle. They bring me the rubric. They’ve highlighted it, annotated it, sometimes rewritten their entire self-assessment to mirror its language line by line. And it’s not that this work is wasted — it isn’t. But I watch smart, capable people treat the rubric like it’s the whole test, when it’s really just the visible part of the test.

Because underneath the rubric, other things are quietly deciding the outcome: trust. Influence. Timing. Relationships. What the organization needs right now. Whether the people in the room advocating for you actually believe in you, or just believe you’re competent. None of that shows up in a bullet point. None of it is something you can fully control, no matter how well you’ve decoded the document.

That’s usually the moment a client and I stop working the rubric and start working the relationships, the visibility, the timing. The parts that were never going to show up on the page.

Leadership is an art, not a science

Here’s the distinction I’ve landed on, and it’s one I wish someone had handed me years ago.

Science is repeatable. Predictable. If X, then Y. Reliably, across contexts, run it again and get the same result. Science rewards finding the right inputs.

Art is contextual. Relational. It changes depending on the room, the person, the moment. What worked in one moment can fall flat in the next. Art rewards judgment. Knowing when the “right” move is the one that doesn’t look right on paper.

Leadership isn’t an exact science. It’s more like writing. There are fundamentals underneath it. Grammar matters. Structure matters. There are techniques that make writing stronger and clearer.

But no formula can tell you exactly which story to tell, which words will resonate, or where to place the pause that changes the meaning of an entire sentence.

Two people can follow the same rules and create completely different pieces of writing. That’s not a flaw. That’s the art.

Leadership works the same way. The fundamentals matter. But the real work happens in the judgment, nuance, and choices that can’t be reduced to a checklist.

That’s the thing about leadership and many of the big decisions in our lives: they’re mostly art and nuance, dressed up as science.

The uncomfortable truth. And why it matters.

The things that matter most in our careers often can’t be fully spreadsheeted. You can gather data. You should gather data. But eventually you have to use judgment, trust your intuition, and make a decision with information that will never be complete.

Here’s the cost of not accepting that: I’ve watched people (myself included!) delay decisions for months waiting for certainty that was never going to arrive. I’ve watched talented leaders burn out trying to perfect a rubric instead of building the relationships that would have actually moved them forward. I’ve watched people conclude, “I must not be cut out for this,” and assume the formula worked for everyone else and failed only for them. When really, they were just using the wrong tool. You can’t debug your way into becoming a trusted leader. At some point, the spreadsheet has to be put down.

Beyond the spreadsheet

Maybe that’s why so many of us struggle with career transitions and leadership growth. We keep searching for a formula when we’re actually being asked to learn an art.

And maybe that’s why experimentation matters so much.

When there isn’t a formula, experimentation becomes how we learn. We try, we learn, we adjust, and over time we develop the judgment that no spreadsheet could ever give us.

Art requires practice. Art is subjective. It’s not clean or clear-cut. It requires experimentation, and trying things that might not work, and trusting yourself before you have certainty. It requires accepting “good enough” over perfect, which is exactly what I want to dig into next week.

The spreadsheet can inform the decision. It just can’t make it for you. At some point, you have to trust yourself enough to choose.

Data can narrow and refine the possibilities. Judgment ultimately chooses among them.

Some of the most important choices in our lives happen outside the spreadsheet entirely.

What’s something in your career or life that you tried to spreadsheet? And what actually ended up making the decision instead?

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When I first thought about starting Carving Her Path, I didn’t start. I had been coaching, noticing patterns, collecting leadership lessons for years, and people kept telling me I should share what I was seeing more broadly. And instead of starting, I sat with the idea. I wanted to know exactly what the newsletter was before I wrote the first word. I wanted clarity, a plan, and some assurance that it would actually be good. In other words, I wanted certainty before I started.

What finally got it going wasn’t a better plan. It was publishing the first post before I felt ready, and then doing it again the next week, and the week after that. Thirty-seven weeks later, most of what I know about doing this newsletter, I learned by writing it, not by planning it. And if I’m honest, that same feeling of “this isn’t quite ready” shows up most weeks, right before I hit publish. It hasn’t gone away. I’ve just gotten more willing to feel it and post anyway.

I don’t think this is unique to writing. I think it’s true of most things that matter: careers, leadership, relationships, businesses. They don’t reveal themselves from the sidelines. The next step isn’t a more perfect plan. It’s a small experiment.

Why we resist experimenting

There’s a version of this that sounds like high standards. We want to know the right answer before we commit to it. We want to avoid wasted effort. We want complete information before we move. It sounds responsible.

But underneath it is usually something simpler: we’re afraid of getting it wrong, and we’ve quietly decided that if we just think a little longer, or gather a little more information, or revise it one more time, we’ll arrive at a version of the decision that can’t fail.

We treat these moments as permanent decisions when most of them are really just opportunities to collect data.

We picture the finished result in perfect detail, but we don’t let ourselves imagine, or trust, the messy middle that has to happen to get there. And perfectionism, in particular, is very good at disguising itself as patience. It tells you you’re being careful. Really, it’s delaying the moment you’ll discover whether your assumptions were right.

The truth is we don’t need a more certain picture of the ending. We need more evidence. And evidence only comes from diving in and doing the thing.

Action creates clarity

Looking back at my own path, I honestly can’t think of a time I thought or planned my way into clarity. Whatever clarity I have now came from acting, adjusting, and acting again.

Thinking produces theories. Action produces data and insights.

This is part of why action is one of the best antidotes to anxiety I know. Anxiety feeds on uncertainty, and it will happily keep you circling the same unanswered question forever if you let it. Action interrupts that loop. It doesn’t hand you certainty, but it hands you information, and information is what anxiety actually wants. You can’t out-think your way to knowing how a program will land with people, whether a proposal will resonate, or whether you’re ready for something. You can only find out by taking action.

Calling it a pilot

Years ago, while I was still in my corporate leadership role, I launched a group coaching program for women leaders. We had an external partner lined up to run it, and when we opened it up for sign-ups, the response was overwhelming. We had far more interest than our partner had capacity to take on.

The obvious response would have been to build entry criteria and turn people away. Instead, I asked a different question: what if I just tried something?

I decided to have my team build and run a second, parallel version of the program, and I called it a “pilot.” I asked the women who’d signed up what topics they most wanted covered, then brought in senior executives to lead sessions on exactly those things. There was no polished, pre-tested curriculum behind it, just a real question, a fast build, and a group of people willing to be part of something still taking shape.

When the program wrapped, the pilot cohort’s feedback was rated even higher than the original. If I’d waited until I had a fully worked-out version of that program, it simply wouldn’t have existed. Calling it a pilot gave us permission to build while we were still figuring out what it needed to be.

That instinct came back a few years later, when I was designing a returnship program to bring women back into the workforce after a career break. Almost everything about it was new: a new external partner, a new job classification for returning employees, a new training and mentorship model, criteria for converting participants to full-time roles that didn’t exist yet anywhere in the company. I proposed to my leadership that we launch the first cohort as a pilot, which gave the whole team room to experiment and adjust as we went rather than pretending we already had it figured out. That program went on to run several successful cohorts.

Neither of these worked because I had a better plan than anyone else. They worked because “pilot” lowered the bar enough that we could actually start and learn along the way.

Experimentation has gotten cheaper

There’s another reason this matters right now: the cost of trying things has collapsed.

You can draft a business idea in an afternoon. Build a website in a weekend. Learn the basics of a new skill in days instead of months. AI and new tools have dramatically shortened the distance between an idea and a first attempt.

Which means the advantage increasingly goes to people who are willing to run more experiments.

The people waiting for certainty may find themselves being outpaced by people willing to try, learn, and iterate.

And in a world where the cost of trying things has never been lower, experimentation may be one of the most valuable skills we can build.

Experimenting in leadership

I see this same pattern constantly in my coaching work. One client was working on sharing her perspective more visibly with senior leadership — speaking up in meetings, offering her point of view before it was fully formed, putting her thinking out in the room instead of holding it until she’d built the complete analysis. What helped wasn’t a plan for becoming a more vocal leader. It was permission to experiment with it: try speaking up in this one meeting, see what happens, adjust for the next one.

An experiment carries a completely different emotional weight than a permanent change. “I’ll try this for two weeks and see” feels safe in a way that “I’m going to become a different kind of person” never does. An experiment is just curiosity, given somewhere to go.

The experiment waiting for you

Even as I finish writing this, there’s a part of me that wants another day with it. Another pass. A few more edits.

Maybe it would be better. Or maybe it’s simply time to learn what happens when I hit publish.

Because that’s the thing about experiments: eventually you have to run them.

So I’ll ask you the question I’m asking myself:

What’s the experiment you’ve been waiting for permission to try?

Send the email.

Raise your hand.

Share the idea.

Publish the post.

Have the conversation.

Apply for the role.

Start before you’re ready.

You don’t need certainty to move forward.

You need curiosity.

You need a willingness to learn.

And sometimes, all you need is permission to experiment.

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Keep carving your path.

-Tracy

Today is my 25th wedding anniversary.

Twenty-five years feels both incredibly long and surprisingly short.

People often ask what the biggest decisions of a career are.

Should I take the promotion?
Change companies?
Go back to school?
Start the business?

But one of the biggest career decisions I ever made never appeared on a resume.

The person you choose to build your life with will influence every career decision that follows.

They’ll shape the risks you’re willing to take.
The dreams you’ll believe are possible.
How you recover from failure.
Whether success feels lonely or shared.

As I reflect on twenty-five years of marriage and partnership, I want to share three leadership lessons.

Choose someone who expands your imagination

My husband is the ideas guy.

He’ll casually suggest something that initially sounds ridiculous.

Once I’ve gotten over my initial reaction of “that’s crazy!”, I’ve already researched three options, priced them out, and figured out how we’d actually do it. I’m the one who turns ideas into plans.

Sometimes his ideas need tempering. Like the time he suggested we do a full bathroom remodel (ourselves!) while I was on maternity leave with our third child.

Sometimes my practicality needs stretching. My instinct is often to list all the reasons something won’t work. He’s often the one reminding me to ask a different question: What if it could?

Together we’ve built a life neither of us would have created alone.

Looking back, I don’t think either of us was “right.” His optimism without my execution would have remained ideas. My execution without his imagination would have kept producing versions of what I already knew was possible.

Leadership isn’t about surrounding yourself with people who validate your thinking. It’s about surrounding yourself with people who stretch it.

Looking back, some of the biggest opportunities in my career started exactly the same way his ideas did. They felt just a little beyond what I thought was possible.

Choose someone who tells you the truth

The people who love you most shouldn’t only applaud you.

They should also be willing to tell you when you’re playing small...
making excuses...
avoiding something difficult...
or convincing yourself that “good enough” is enough.

When I was interviewing as I returned to the workforce, I found myself downplaying what I’d actually done. Shrinking my own experience before anyone else had the chance to. I asked my husband to run mock interviews with me. Partway through, he stopped me: “That’s not how you talk about what you built. Say it like you know what it’s worth.” He helped me see my experience from a place of strength, not a place of apology.

It’s hard hearing that kind of feedback. Being called out always is. But when you know it comes from a place of caring, and from someone who believes in you, it stops feeling like criticism. It starts feeling like someone refusing to let you settle for less than what’s true.

It takes real trust for someone to risk telling you something you don’t want to hear. That kind of honesty is a gift.

Looking back, every meaningful career leap I’ve made started with someone refusing to let me settle for a smaller version of myself.

Choose someone who makes you shine

The best relationships don’t ask you to become someone else.

They create the space for you to become more fully yourself.

Who are you the most yourself with? When you like yourself the most, who are you with?

Once I was on the phone with my husband – long before we were married, or even dating. My roommate and best friend at the time overheard my side of the conversation. After I hung up, she asked who I was talking to. I vividly remember what she shared. She said I sounded different. Happy. Alive. Like the most me version of me.

I didn’t even see it myself. She saw it first. I’ve never forgotten that conversation.

That sense of aliveness matters more than we acknowledge in our careers. The best leaders I’ve known, the best teams I’ve been part of, share something with the best relationships: they don’t require you to shrink or perform or become a more palatable version of yourself. They create the conditions where you actually show up more fully. Where you just naturally shine.

Pay attention to who draws that version of you out. In your life. In your work. In the relationships you build. And in the rooms you choose to stay in, or have the courage to leave.

The environments where I’ve done my best work have felt remarkably similar to the best relationships. They weren’t the places where I tried the hardest to fit in. They were places where I could show up fully as myself.

Who You Become

Looking back over twenty-five years, I’m not most grateful for the vacations or the milestones.

I’m most grateful that I had someone beside me while I became several different versions of myself.

Engineer.
Tech Leader.
Stay-at-home mom.
Nonprofit founder.
Executive.
Coach.
Entrepreneur.
Writer.

None of those women existed when we got married. The right partner doesn’t keep you the same. They encourage you to evolve and give you space to find that next chapter and version of yourself.

Whether your partner is a spouse, a friend, a mentor, a sibling, or someone else entirely...

Pay attention to the people who shape who you become.

Do they make your world smaller? Or bigger?

Do they make you quieter? Or braver?

Do they make you feel like you need to become someone different… Or more fully yourself?

The people closest to us don’t just influence what we do. They shape who we become.

We often talk about carving our own path.

And we should.

But here’s something twenty-five years has taught me:

Sometimes the most important paths aren’t carved alone. They’re carved alongside someone who reminds you, again and again, that you’re capable of more than you can currently see in yourself.

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Over the past several weeks, I’ve written about five words:

Power.
Purpose.
Focus.
Time.
Wealth.

Five different conversations. Five different entry points. One underlying theme: agency.

The ability to shape your career and life instead of reacting to it. The ability to make choices aligned with who you are and what matters to you.

But lately I’ve found myself asking: Now what?

Because awareness is powerful. But awareness alone doesn’t change a career or a life.

Awareness Isn’t Enough

A few months ago, I was working with a coaching client about a decision she had been wrestling with for months. We were at the point where she wasn’t confused. She had clarity. She could articulate exactly what she wanted.

She knew what was draining her energy. She knew what she would tell a friend in the same situation. She knew the tradeoffs. She knew the risks. She even knew the first step.

And yet. Week after week, nothing changed. Not because she lacked clarity. Not because she lacked capability. Because knowing and doing are not the same thing.

I see this all the time. And if I’m honest, I’ve seen it in myself too.

We tell ourselves we need a little more information. A little more certainty. A little more preparation. One more conversation. One more book. One more sign that we’re making the right choice.

We convince ourselves that just a little more clarity will finally make action feel obvious. Safe. Easy.

But that’s rarely how it works.

Awareness is the foundation. It’s not the finish line.

Agency Requires Choice

One thing I’ve noticed is that we often think the path looks like this:

Agency → Action

But I think there’s a step in the middle that we often overlook.

Agency → Choice → Action

And that middle step matters. Because most of us aren’t actually stuck on action. We’re stuck on deciding.

Action is what people see. Choice is what changes everything. Choice is the moment we stop gathering information and start taking responsibility for what comes next. It’s the moment we stop asking for permission and start deciding what we’re going to do.

We often think we’re waiting for courage. More often, we’re avoiding a choice. Because every choice closes the door on other possibilities. Every choice creates uncertainty. Every choice carries the possibility that we might be wrong.

Agency isn’t an achievement we unlock after enough preparation. It’s a practice. A decision. A willingness to choose a direction and begin moving before certainty arrives.

Movement Creates Clarity

Once we’ve made a choice, action becomes possible. But action comes with something many of us spend a lot of energy trying to avoid: uncertainty.

We want guarantees. Proof. Data. Evidence that our effort will pay off. Evidence that the path ahead is the right one.

Life doesn’t usually offer that. Most meaningful progress doesn’t happen in a straight line.

We imagine it looking something like this: Decide. Act. Arrive.

But when I look back on the biggest decisions in my own life, and the stories I hear from coaching clients, the reality looks very different.

There are detours. Course corrections. Unexpected opportunities. False starts. Moments of doubt. And yet, somehow, when viewed from a distance, a through line begins to emerge.

Not because the path was perfectly planned.

Because movement created clarity. Not the other way around.

What I’ve come to believe is that the leaders who move forward aren’t the ones who finally found certainty. They’re the ones who got comfortable with not having it. They stopped waiting for a guarantee and started treating action as information. A small step. A low-stakes test. A willingness to be wrong in order to learn.

That’s experimentation.

Looking Ahead

Over the next few weeks, I want to explore the idea of experimentation.

What it looks like. What gets in the way. Why so many of us treat life decisions like permanent commitments instead of opportunities to learn. And how to start smaller than we think we need to.

For now, I’ll leave you with a question:

Where are you right now?

Still waiting for certainty, or ready to choose?

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The path forward may not be completely clear.

But maybe clarity isn’t what comes first.

Maybe movement is.

As always - keep carving your path.

I have a confession to make.

When I chose these five words, I wasn’t thinking about a theme. I just knew they were words that made people (including myself) a little uncomfortable.

Looking back now, I can see they were all pointing toward the same thing.

This series wasn’t really about power. Or purpose. Or focus, time, or wealth.

I mean, it was. Each of those words deserved its own post, its own examination, its own honest reckoning. But looking back at all five now, I can see what I was actually circling the whole time.

Agency.

The quiet, radical act of deciding that your path is worth carving. And then carving it on your own terms.

Here’s what I mean.

When I wrote about power, I wasn’t writing about dominance or authority or getting a seat at the table. I was writing about what power actually is: capacity. The ability to make things better, starting with your own life.

When I wrote about purpose, I wasn’t writing about finding your calling or following your passion. I was writing about purpose as a direction, not a destination. Not a calling you either have or don’t, but something you choose, deliberately, again and again.

When I wrote about focus, I wasn’t writing about productivity hacks or doing more with less. I was writing about clarity. Getting honest about where you’re actually looking, and whether it’s where you meant to be.

When I wrote about time, I wasn’t writing about better scheduling or optimization. I was writing about what it costs to live in a state of constant fragmentation. And what it looks like to stop playing defense with your time and start playing offense.

And when I wrote about wealth, I wasn’t writing about net worth. I was writing about a decision to create more choices for your future self. To believe she’s worth investing in. To believe you are worth it, and that no one else is going to make that call for you.

Five words. Five different entry points. One truth underneath all of them:

Have you decided that your life is worth shaping intentionally?

Have you decided that you are worth carving a path for?

This is the thing about navigating a career, a life, and the quiet pressure to be everything to everyone at once. The obstacles rarely announce themselves as obstacles. They show up dressed as virtues.

Selflessness. Humility. Flexibility. Being a team player. Not making it about money.

And so we shrink our power down to something others find comfortable. We swap our purpose for whatever is most useful to the people around us. We scatter our focus because someone always needs something. We give away our time because saying no feels selfish. We keep money and wealth at arm’s length because ambition isn’t always an attractive quality on women.

Each of these five words is a place where that conditioning shows up and tries to talk you out of your own life.

Power tells you not to take up too much space.

Purpose tells you your own dreams can wait.

Focus tells you there’s no time to think about what actually matters.

Time tells you everyone else’s priorities come first.

Wealth tells you wanting more choices is selfish.

Each one is also a doorway back in.

If you’ve been reading since the beginning of this series: thank you. I hope one of these words found you where you were and offered something useful. Perhaps a reframe, a permission slip, a moment of recognition.

If you’re just arriving: the full series is here, and I’d suggest reading in order. Not because the posts don’t stand alone, but because there’s a through-line that builds. Power leads to purpose. Purpose sharpens focus. Focus clarifies how you spend your time. And when you play offense with your time, wealth stops feeling like something that happens to other people.

It all starts with a decision, though.

That you are worth this.

That your path is worth carving.

And that’s exactly the point. No one else can carve it for you. Which means it’s entirely, beautifully yours.

It’s been yours all along.

Which of the five words hit closest to home for you? I’d love to know. Reply or leave a comment below.

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I’ll be honest. This is the post that I sat with the longest. The other four words felt important. This one made me feel exposed.

So let me dive into that vulnerability with a story I haven’t shared before.

A few years into my career as an engineer, I thought I was being responsible with money. After years of being a student, I landed a good job. I was earning a paycheck I dreamed of. I was paying my bills. And slowly, quietly, money was accumulating in my checking account. I called it saving. I felt proud of it.

I wasn’t saving. I was parking.

When my now-husband and I started talking finances as we approached our wedding, he discovered that cushion sitting in my checking account, untouched, uninvested, quietly losing ground to inflation. His reaction was somewhere between astonished and concerned. But he didn’t leave it there. He sat down with me and showed me the math. What that money would have been worth if I’d invested it, even conservatively. He walked me through the 401k I wasn’t fully using, the employee stock plan I’d barely looked at, the student loans I could have been aggressively paying down.

I felt embarrassed. A little ashamed. Not because I’d done something reckless. I hadn’t. I’d worked hard for every dollar. Paid my own way through most of college. Prided myself on being responsible.

But I’d been so focused on not losing money that I’d never learned what it could become.

Underneath the embarrassment was something quieter: fear. Fear of getting it wrong. Fear of making a move I didn’t fully understand and losing what I’d worked so hard to build. So I’d done nothing. Which felt safe. But safe isn’t the same as smart.

Looking back, what strikes me is that I never really learned any of this. I knew the value of money. I knew how to earn money. I knew how to save money. But I didn’t know anything about wealth. It felt like a word that belonged to someone else’s life.

More Than Money

Notice I said I didn’t know about wealth, not money. Because they’re not the same thing, and that distinction is part of what this post is about. Most of us learned about money. How to earn it. How not to waste it. How to be responsible with it. What most of us never were exposed to or learned was how to build wealth. Not the yacht in the Caymans wealth. The I’m safe and secure kind of wealth. And there’s a reason for that.

For many women, money is a word we learn to manage but never fully claim. We track the budget, pay the bills, make sure the household runs. But building wealth, thinking strategically about what money could become, asking for more of it, investing it, that’s where something quietly stops us.

It starts early. Most of us absorbed messages, rarely spoken out loud, that made money complicated. Wanting more money felt greedy. Talking about it felt crass. Asking for it for ourselves — in a salary negotiation, a client proposal, a performance review — felt aggressive. Too much. So we learned to be grateful for what we were offered. To take the job, accept the number, undercharge the client, and tell ourselves it was fine.

I felt this firsthand when I returned to the workforce after several years away. In the interviews when the inevitable salary question arose, I fumbled every time. Not because I didn’t know the market, but because I didn’t believe I had the standing to confidently assert it. I was so focused on my perceived lack of value that I couldn’t see my actual worth.

That’s the “good girl” conditioning. And the cost is real. Women still earn roughly 84 cents for every dollar men earn, a gap that widens significantly for women of color. But the gap isn’t only in what employers offer. It lives equally in what we accept, what we ask for, and what we never ask for at all.

I want to pause here for a moment, because I’m aware this topic lands differently depending on where you are right now. Some of you are in a season of building: stable ground, thinking about the future, ready to think bigger. Some of you are in a season of surviving: navigating a job loss, stretched by rising costs, wondering how to make it to next month. Both of you belong in this conversation. Because the conditioning that keeps women from claiming what they’ve earned doesn’t check your bank balance before it kicks in.

This isn’t a personality trait. It’s a pattern. And patterns can be interrupted.

What Wealth Actually Buys

So what does interrupting that pattern actually look like?

It starts with understanding what wealth actually buys.

We grow up associating wealth with things. The brand name handbag. The vacation house. The fancy car. The European vacation. The visible markers that signal arrival. But that’s not wealth. That’s richness. And they’re not the same thing.

Wealth is quieter and more invisible than that. Wealth is what you don’t spend. It’s the optionality you preserve. The door you keep open. The decision you get to make on your own terms, because you built something that gives you the freedom to choose.

Morgan Housel, in The Psychology of Money, puts it simply: the purpose of wealth isn’t consumption. It’s options.

Wealth is being able to leave a job that is slowly diminishing you, without panic, without desperation, without jumping to the first thing that comes along just because you need the income. Wealth is being able to say no to a client who doesn’t respect you, because you don’t need that particular yes. Wealth is being able to take a risk on yourself: a new role, a new venture, a new direction, without catastrophizing about what happens if it doesn’t work out immediately. Wealth is being able to recover from a mistake without it defining you.

This is what I mean when I say wealth buys optionality. Not luxury. Not status. Choice.

Wealth isn’t about having more than you need. It’s about having enough freedom to choose what happens next.

Building Wealth is a Decision

There’s a quote that stands out to me:

Being rich is having money. Being wealthy is having time. – Margaret Bonanno

My last post was focused on time. About how fragmentation steals it. About how protecting it is an act of intention. But here’s what I’ve come to understand since writing that post: time and wealth are more connected than most of us are taught. The decision to build wealth, is, at its core, a decision to own your time.

That’s the reframe. Wealth isn’t a number on a spreadsheet. It’s not a threshold you cross someday when you’ve finally made enough. It’s a decision you make, quietly, consistently, imperfectly, that your future self deserves to be taken care of.

And that decision, for many women, is harder than any spreadsheet.

I know because I lived the other version. For years I sat in our annual meetings with our financial planner, a brilliant woman who asked sharp questions and pushed us to think strategically, and I said almost nothing. I was half of our household income. I had every right to be in that conversation. But I showed up as an observer, not a participant. I let the decisions happen around me rather than with me.

It took time to change that. And honestly, it’s still a work in progress. To get educated. To ask the questions I was afraid sounded naive. To claim a seat at a table that was always mine to sit at.

That’s the deeper work of wealth. Not just building it. But believing you deserve to.

Because here’s what I’ve learned: the women who build wealth aren’t necessarily the ones who earn the most or start the earliest. They’re the ones who decide, at some point, in some season, that their future self is worth investing in. That she deserves options. That she deserves the freedom to choose.

Wealth, at its core, is an act of self-belief.

Resources Worth Your Time

Recently in a coaching conversation, a new grad asked me where to start with money. Not investing strategy, just where to begin. I gave her three voices I learn from and want to share with you:

Vivian Tu or YourRichBFF: I first heard her as a guest on The Pivot Podcast, then learned she has her own podcast and books (Rich AF and now Well Endowed). I was excited to hear her speak at Grace Hopper last year too! I love how she makes budgeting, building and creating wealth so understandable and accessible.

Tiffany Aliche or The Budgetnista: I first heard Tiffany speak at a conference and was impressed with her story (she’s a former teacher!) and her mission to increase financial education. She has a book Get Good with Money and has numerous resources.

Katie Gatti Tassi of Money with Katie: I came across Katie’s newsletter (she also has a great podcast) and love her take on budgeting, planning and building wealth. I appreciate how she states that women’s relationship with money is different. She also has a book Rich Girl Nation worth checking out.

What Path Are You Funding?

As you sit with this, I want to leave you with three questions. Pick the one that stings a little:

What would you ask for — in a negotiation, a proposal, a conversation you’ve been avoiding — if you genuinely believed you were worth it?

What would you save toward or invest in if you trusted that your future self deserved it?

What choice would you finally make (or what would you walk away from) if money weren’t the obstacle holding you back?

You’ve spent five weeks with me exploring Power, Purpose, Focus, Time, and now Wealth. Next week I’ll bring all five together. But this week, sit with whichever question just got under your skin.

That’s where your next move lives.

Keep carving your path.

—Tracy

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This is the fourth in a series of five posts, each focused on a single word. Words that cut to something real about how women move through their careers and lives. Last post: focus. This week: time. The word that determines what actually gets to matter.

There was an online sign-up sheet. That was all it took to volunteer in my daughter’s kindergarten classroom. Find the form, pick a slot, show up. Simple.

Except I hadn’t done it.

It wasn’t for lack of wanting. I was into a new job with more responsibility than I’d had before, managing a team while learning the role, while also tracking three kids across three different schools with three completely different schedules. Any given week included a performance, a doctor’s appointment, a permission slip I’d forgotten about, a dentist visit I’d rescheduled twice. My inbox didn’t stop at 5pm. Neither did my Slack. And 5pm is when the pace somehow accelerated with dinner, kids’ activities, homework, bedtime.

I wanted to go volunteer. I thought about it often. Pictured myself sitting in one of those small plastic chairs, helping a five-year-old sound out words, being there in the uncomplicated way kindergartners need you to be there. But somewhere between wanting and doing, the week would happen to me, and I’d arrive at Friday having given everything I had to everything except that.

One evening my daughter asked me again. She’d been patient, in the way that only children who love you can be, which is to say, not entirely patient, but forgiving. And then she said something that hit me hard.

She told me she knew how I could sign up. She’d figured it out. There was a form, she said. It was in my email.

My heart broke quietly, the way it does when something true arrives in a form you weren’t expecting.

She wasn’t telling me I didn’t care. She thought I just didn’t know how. She was trying to help me find my way to show up for her.

I knew how. That was never the problem. The problem was that my time had been shredded into pieces so small, so constantly interrupted and redirected, that I couldn’t seem to move from wanting to make it happen to actually doing it, even for the things that mattered most to me. I had a full life and no time that felt like mine to spend.

I didn’t have a time management problem. I had a fragmentation problem.

My daughter is in college now. But I still think about that evening. Because the fragmentation didn’t end as the kids grew up. It just evolved.

When Time Becomes Confetti

There’s a name for what I was experiencing. And chances are, you’re living some version of it too.

Brigid Schulte, in her book Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has the Time, coined the term time confetti, the idea that our time gets shredded into such small fragments that what remains are little bits of seconds and minutes, scattered and unusable. Not stolen in large chunks, but nibbled away continuously. A Slack notification here. A mental note to reschedule that appointment there. A context switch between a work problem and a school email and a text from a friend you’ve been meaning to reply to for three days.

The confetti metaphor is perfect because confetti looks festive and abundant. Until you try to do something with it. You can’t build anything out of confetti. You can’t rest in it. You can’t think deeply inside it.

And for women, the fragmentation runs deeper than the visible interruptions. There’s the layer underneath. The mental load of tracking everything, the cognitive hum that never fully quiets. The running list of who needs what, what’s almost out, what’s coming up, who hasn’t responded, what you said you’d follow up on. That layer is always running, even when nothing is visibly demanding your attention. It’s the background process that makes the foreground feel perpetually crowded.

Here’s what’s hard for me to understand: this is not a personal failure. Time confetti isn’t the result of poor planning or weak willpower or not having the right productivity system. It’s structural. Research backs this up. The fragmentation of time, particularly for women, is baked into the way we work, the way we’re expected to be available, and the way domestic and emotional labor is still disproportionately distributed.

And yet the solutions we’re handed are almost always personal. Get a better calendar system. Wake up earlier. Batch your tasks. Time block. We’ve been given efficiency as the answer, which is a band-aid on a structural wound. When we get more efficient, we don’t get more breathing room. We just get better at doing more things in the same fragmented way. We become efficient at the fragmentation itself.

It’s hard to do meaningful work, or live meaningfully, when your time is confetti.

Why Optimization Never Solves It

So what do we do when time feels like it’s never enough?

We optimize.

We download the app, redesign and color code the calendar, set the timer, batch the tasks. We treat time like a math problem: if we can just get more efficient, we can fit everything in. And for a moment, it works. The inbox hits zero. The to-do list gets shorter. For a moment, we feel gloriously on top of it all.

And then it fills back up.

This is what Oliver Burkeman calls the Efficiency Trap in his book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. When you get more efficient, you don’t get more breathing room. You get more. More emails because you’re responsive. More tasks because you’ve proven you can handle them. More expectations because you’ve signaled availability. Efficiency doesn’t create space. It creates capacity for more demand.

Burkeman’s deeper argument is more philosophical, and more unsettling. If you live to 80, you have roughly 4,000 weeks on this earth. That’s it. And the response most of us have to that finitude is to try harder to fit more in, as if the right system will finally let us outrun the limit. But the limit is the point. Trying to do it all isn’t just exhausting, it’s a losing proposition from the start. There will always be more than you can do. Always another email, another ask, another opportunity that sounds important.

The sooner we stop trying to play and win that game, the sooner we can play a different one.

Optimization isn’t the answer to fragmentation. It’s a faster way to fragment.

Time Is Where It Becomes Real

Here’s where it shifts.

If the first two sections felt a little unsettling, good. That discomfort is useful. It means you’re seeing the system and your relationship with time more clearly. And once you can see it, you can choose something different.

In this series, we’ve been building something together. We started with Power and what it means to claim it rather than shrink from it. We moved to Purpose: the direction that grounds your choices. Last week, Focus asked where you intentionally put your attention.

Time is where all of that becomes real.

Purpose without protected time is just intention. Focus without protected time is just aspiration. Time is where your values either show up in your life or they don’t.

Focus determines attention. Time determines direction.

So the question isn’t how to manage your time better. It’s how to lead with it.

Playing Defense vs. Playing Offense

I’ve written before about the difference between playing defense and playing offense in how you show up and lead. I want to bring that same lens here.

When you’re playing defense with your time, you’re reacting. Responding to whoever asked most recently, optimizing around others’ demands, squeezing yourself into the gaps that remain after everything else has claimed its share. You’re accommodating, adjusting, surviving. You reach the end of the day having been busy, genuinely, exhaustingly busy, and yet somehow the things that matter most to you never quite made it onto the field.

Playing offense looks different. It’s not about doing more. It’s about deciding first.

Burkeman offers a counterintuitive move that I find oddly liberating: deliberately choose what you will fail at. Not accidentally, not by default, but consciously. Decide in advance what won’t get your best attention, so that what does is a real choice rather than whatever was left over. This isn’t resignation. It’s clarity.

Playing offense with your time means:

Deciding before the world decides for you. Your time will get claimed one way or another. The only question is whether you’re the one doing the claiming.

Protecting proactively, not reactively. This isn’t about being unavailable or ungenerous. It’s about putting what matters on the calendar before the requests arrive, and treating that time with the same respect you’d give any other commitment.

Choosing JOMO over FOMO. Committing fully to one path means releasing others. That release isn’t loss, it’s intentional focus. The joy of missing out is the joy of actually being somewhere, fully, rather than everywhere halfway.

Making room for what matters, not just what’s urgent. Urgency is loud. Importance is quiet and patient. Playing offense means you don’t make those important things wait forever.

None of this is easy. The demands are real. The pulls are constant. But there’s a difference between a life that happens to you and a life you’re actively directing. And time is where that difference is made.

You don’t get more weeks. But you do get to choose what lives inside them.

What Gets Your Time

You will never have more time than you have right now. Not because of poor planning or the wrong tools, but because time is finite, and the world will always ask more of you than you have to give.

That’s not a reason for despair. It’s a reason for intention.

Reclaiming your time doesn’t start with better systems. It starts with believing that your attention, your energy, and your life are worth protecting. That what matters to you deserves a place on the calendar before the requests arrive. That you are allowed to play offense.

The confetti will keep coming. It always does. But you get to decide what you’re protecting.

So here’s your question for this week:

What part of your life deserves more than confetti? And what would one small offensive move look like: something you choose, protect, and don’t apologize for?

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It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours.

Keep carving your path.

This is the third in a series of five posts, each focused on a single word. Words that shape how women show up in their careers, their relationships, and their lives. Last week I wrote about purpose. This week: focus. The word that determines what gets your attention.

Years ago, I was in a women’s leadership program and I vividly remember an exercise we did. The facilitator passed out peacock feathers (full length 3-5 foot feathers) to each of us. She asked us to balance the feather on one finger. Being competitive, all of us dove in to see who could balance it first. And everyone struggled. We were diving around, catching the feather, trying to figure out how to do it, and then declaring that it wasn’t possible. Well, we all had instinctively focused on the point where the feather met our finger.

Then she asked us to change our point of focus, and lift our gaze to the “eye” of the feather (the beautiful, colorful part at the top). And instantly, we could balance it on our finger tip. Indeed it worked! We all were successfully (and much more peacefully) balancing this 4 foot feather on our fingertip.

The facilitator wasn’t teaching balance. She was teaching us the value of intentional focus. When you focus narrowly, on the immediate contact point, or on the urgent task, the fire in front of you, you lose the whole thing. When you shift your focus up and out, to the “eye” of the peacock feather, to the bigger picture, something counterintuitive happens: the whole thing stabilizes. The lesson was when you have the right focus, the broader, more expansive focus, and not the narrow, immediate or urgent focus, you are successfully able to achieve balance.

It was such a beautiful lesson to physically feel the difference in energy required to balance the feather. And something that stuck with me. Yet, I find myself wrestling with this in my everyday life. My focus and energy are drawn to the urgent issues, or demands and requests from others, leaving me feeling scattered.

Focus Is a Lens

I’ve thought about that peacock feather exercise many times over the years. Especially lately, as I’ve been contemplating this word: focus.

Not focus in the productivity sense. In the clarity sense.

Because when I started exploring the word itself, I was struck by how many of its definitions centered not on doing, but on seeing:

• to concentrate attention or effort

• to bring into clear visual definition

• a state permitting clear perception or understanding

That last one especially stayed with me. A state permitting clear perception. Not a technique. Not a discipline. A state. Something you arrive at, something you cultivate.

It reminded me of adjusting the focus on a camera lens. You turn it slightly one direction, then the other, fine-tuning until the image sharpens. Too narrow, and you lose perspective. Too broad, and nothing becomes clear.

The lens doesn’t force the image into focus, it creates the conditions for clarity to emerge.

Which brings me back to the feather. The facilitator wasn’t asking us to concentrate harder. She was asking us to adjust where we were looking. To find the right focal point. Not the urgent one, not the obvious one, but the one that let everything else settle.

Maybe that’s what focus really is. Not a productivity tool. A clarity practice.

Why Focus Feels So Hard

It’s easy to read about focus and walk away feeling like the problem is you. Like if you just downloaded the right app, batched your notifications, or woke up earlier, you’d finally be able to concentrate. The self-improvement industry has made a fortune on that premise.

But here’s what the research actually tells us.

Researcher Gloria Mark spent years studying how people work at UC Irvine and found that after a single interruption, it takes an average of 23 minutes to return to a task. Not 23 seconds. Twenty-three minutes. And most of us aren’t dealing with one interruption, we’re navigating a near-constant stream of them. (If this finding stops you in your tracks the way it did me, her book Attention Span is worth your time.)

I know this feeling: trying to think through a strategic decision while simultaneously tracking three other things I promised I wouldn’t forget.

That’s not a personal discipline problem. That’s a systems problem.

And women carry what researchers call “cognitive labor”: the invisible, ongoing mental work of tracking schedules, anticipating needs, managing emotional dynamics, and holding the details that keep everything running for our families and our teams. It runs in the background, always. Long before we ever sit down to “focus,” our attention has already been claimed.

Then comes the double bind: we’re expected to be responsive, available, and attuned to others, and then questioned for lacking strategic clarity or vision. We’re asked to focus while the conditions for focus are being systematically eroded.

This isn’t a willpower problem. It’s not a productivity hack problem. The difficulty is real, and it is structural. Naming it that way, and seeing it clearly, is itself an act of focus.

Where Are You Actually Looking?

Think back to the peacock feather. When we were asked to balance it, we all did the same thing: we looked down. At the point of contact. At the immediate problem. And the feather wobbled, lurched, fell.

That’s narrow focus. It’s not a character flaw. It’s a natural response to pressure. When something feels urgent or unstable, we zoom in. We react. We try harder, focused on the thing right in front of us. But narrow focus has a way of becoming its own kind of trap. When we’re zoomed in on the immediate point of tension, we lose sight of the larger picture. Like a camera lens pulled too tight, it distorts as much as it clarifies.

Expansive focus is the shift the facilitator asked us to make. Lifting our gaze to the eye of the feather. And here’s what’s important: expansive focus is not the same as distraction. It’s not losing concentration or letting everything go blurry. It’s widening the frame enough to see what actually matters. Your purpose. Your values. The relationships and long-term direction that give the immediate work its meaning. When you’re oriented toward those things, something counterintuitive happens: the details don’t disappear, they just find their right place.

Strong leaders know when to zoom in and when to zoom out. The skill isn’t choosing one over the other permanently, it’s learning to move between them with intention.

But there’s something that makes this harder than it sounds, and it’s worth naming directly. We tend to think of focus as a matter of duration — how many uninterrupted hours we can log, how long we can sustain concentration. The productivity world sells it this way: Pomodoro blocks, deep work sessions, distraction-free mornings. And those things have their place.

What the feather taught me is something different. And I think it offers two reframes worth sharing.

Focus is a direction, not a duration. The feather taught me that where you aim your gaze matters more than how long you hold it. The question isn’t “how do I focus for longer?” It’s “what is my eye of the feather?” What is the thing that, when you orient toward it, lets everything else settle?

Reclaiming focus starts with honest awareness. Before we can find our eye of the feather, we have to answer a harder question first: where is your attention actually going right now? Not where you intend it to go. Where it actually lands, day after day. This is where the reclaiming starts. Not with a new system or a better schedule, but with clear-eyed noticing. What are you centering by default, without having chosen to? Once you can see that, you can begin to choose differently.

Choosing What Comes Into Focus

Maybe focus isn’t something we force. Maybe it’s something we cultivate, by adjusting the lens, lifting our gaze, and returning, again and again, to the thing that actually matters.

The peacock feather didn’t require more effort. It required a different approach. And I think that’s true for us too.

Focus is not a fixed state. It’s an ongoing recalibration. We zoom in when we need to. We zoom out when we’ve lost the thread. We notice when our attention has been claimed by something we didn’t consciously choose, and we gently redirect.

What we focus on shapes what we’re able to see. And over time, it shapes our lives.

So this week, before optimizing your schedule or attempting another focus strategy, try something simpler: notice. Where does your attention go first in the morning? What claims it before you’ve chosen to give it? And is there an eye of the feather – something you could orient toward that would let everything else settle?

What are you focusing on?

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Next week: Time. Because once you have clarity about where you’re looking, the next question becomes: Do you actually have the conditions to look there? Looking forward to exploring it with you. Until then, keep carving your path.

This is the second in a series of five posts, each focused on a single word. Words that shape how women show up in their careers, their relationships, and their lives. Last post I wrote about power. This week: purpose. The word that grounds everything else.

There we were. In our standard spot on the high school bleachers. The whistle blew. They lost. The game was over. And since it was the playoffs, it meant the season was over too. And more than that: it was our last one. Our third kid to play at this high school, a senior, had just finished her final game. My husband and I looked at each other, tears in our eyes, neither of us ready to leave. After a decade of showing up at this school for our kids, cheering, driving, managing logistics, volunteering, worrying, hoping, it was over.

Other parents offered their consolations. Now you’ll have your evenings back! Free weekends! They meant well. They were in the thick of it, juggling multiple kids, multiple schedules, counting down to the day the calendar would finally breathe again. I remembered that feeling. I’d been there. But somewhere along the way, without quite noticing, the packed schedule had stopped feeling like something to escape and started feeling like something else entirely: a source of meaning.

For many years, so much of my “why” had been woven into showing up for my kids. Not just logistically, but intentionally. Cheering them on. Role-modeling what a meaningful career looks like. Earning an income that made their opportunities possible. My purpose wasn’t abstract or lofty. It was concrete. It showed up every Tuesday and Saturday and in every college application essay read at the kitchen table.

And now, quietly, it was shifting.

Not disappearing. Shifting. And I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with that.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the word purpose lately. Not in the abstract, motivational-poster sense. In the real, lived, sometimes-elusive sense. The kind that’s easy to take for granted when life gives it to you clearly, and surprisingly disorienting when it starts to change shape.

Do you know those people who seem to emanate purpose? Who have one clear, driving cause that radiates through everything they do: the environmentalist, the advocate, the founder who knew from age twelve exactly what they were here to do? They talk about their purpose openly, effortlessly. It organizes their life.

That’s not me. It never has been.

What I’ve had instead are seasons of purpose. Times when my “why” was unmistakable: raising these three kids, certain chapters of my career, work that felt urgent and clear. And other times when purpose felt elusive, too big, or like it had been named by someone else and handed to me to carry. Times when I felt, if I’m honest, a little unmoored.

What I’ve come to understand, slowly, and still imperfectly, is that this isn’t a personal failing. It’s actually the more honest version of how purpose works. For most of us, and for women in particular, purpose isn’t a fixed destination we arrive at once and then simply live. It shifts. It evolves. It gets disrupted and rebuilt.

Sitting on those bleachers, not ready to leave, I wasn’t lost. I was at a threshold. And I’m learning that’s exactly where purpose asks you to pay attention.

Our Given Purpose

There’s a reason so many women have a complicated relationship with purpose. And it starts early.

From the time we’re young, we’re handed purpose in pre-packaged forms. Daughter. Student. Helper. Later: partner, mother, caregiver, team player, leader, the one who holds things together. These roles aren’t without meaning. Many of them bring genuine joy and satisfaction. Showing up for my kids, being present for my team, supporting people I care about: these things have mattered deeply to me. They still do.

High-achieving women often layer another version of this on top: purpose becomes tied to productivity, impact, title, output. If I’m not producing something measurable, am I even contributing? If I’m not advancing, am I falling behind? The metrics of professional success quietly take over the way we think about meaning. Clayton Christensen wrote about this in How Will You Measure Your Life? — that the same frameworks we use to drive results at work have a way of taking over the rest of our lives too, often without our noticing. His invitation was to consciously choose different metrics for the things that matter most. Easier said than done when you’ve been measuring yourself a certain way for twenty years.

And then there’s the double bind. Women who name an ambitious, self-directed purpose, who say “this is what I’m here to do, for myself, on my own terms”, can be perceived as selfish, single-minded, unfeminine. Women who don’t name it remain invisible, quietly in service to everyone else’s purpose. Neither option is particularly appealing.

So many of us end up shape-shifting. Adopting the purposes of the people and institutions around us. Doing meaningful work, genuinely, but work whose meaning was defined by someone else. And when those structures change, when the kids leave, when the role ends, when the organization shifts, we find ourselves at a threshold we didn’t see coming, without a clear sense of what our own north star actually is.

I’ve been at that threshold more than once. And each time, I’ve had to resist the urge to quickly fill the space with the next thing, the next role, the next version of being useful.

Purpose, I’m learning, doesn’t live out there waiting to be claimed. It lives in the asking. And the first question worth asking is: what do I actually want to be in service to?

There’s No Single Answer. There Are Seasons.

If purpose isn’t something we find once and hold forever, what is it exactly?

Here’s the framing that has helped me most: purpose operates on two levels simultaneously, and we need both.

There’s the macro purpose: your bigger why. Your values, your direction, the through-line of what matters to you across seasons of your life. In Start With Why, Simon Sinek argues that the most fulfilled people and organizations are those who lead from purpose rather than outcome, who know why they do what they do before they figure out how or what. It’s a powerful framework. But here’s what I’d add: your personal why isn’t a brand statement you craft once and set in stone. It’s a living thing. It breathes. It changes as you do.

And then there’s the micro purpose: how you show up each day. What you choose to care about in this conversation, this project, this ordinary Thursday. The small acts of attention and intention that, accumulated over time, actually are your purpose in practice.

We tend to fixate on the macro and neglect the micro. We wait to feel called toward something grand before we let ourselves feel purposeful. But Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, the Stanford professors behind Designing Your Life, offer something more useful: you can’t think your way to a meaningful life. You have to prototype your way there. Purpose isn’t revealed through enough introspection. It’s built through action, through small experiments, through paying attention to what energizes you and what doesn’t. You don’t find it. You make it.

This is the shift that changes everything: from purpose as a destination to purpose as a practice.

In my coaching work, there’s a question I come back to again and again, with clients and with myself: “What is this in service to?”

It sounds simple. It isn’t. When someone is stuck in a frustrating meeting, a draining project, a conflict that keeps circling, asking “what is this in service to?” does something quietly powerful. It lifts your focus from the immediate friction to the underlying meaning. It moves you from winning the argument to what outcome actually matters here. It reconnects you to the person on the other side, the customer whose problem you’re trying to solve, the team you’re trying to build.

But the deeper application is personal. Asking yourself “what is this season of my life in service to?” can be one of the most clarifying questions I know. It doesn’t require a perfect answer. It just asks you to look honestly at where your energy is going, and whether that’s where you’d consciously choose to put it.

For years, my answer was clear: my kids, my career, the intersection of the two. Now, as that season shifts, I’m sitting with the question again. Not with dread, instead with curiosity. Because the question itself is a compass. You don’t have to know the destination to start using it.

Joy Is a Signal, Not a Reward

What if joy isn’t the reward you get after you find your purpose? What if it’s actually the signal that points you toward it?

I’ve come to think that purpose and joy aren’t sequential: they’re reciprocal. The relationship runs in both directions, and it feeds itself:

You feel a flicker of joy

→ you follow it

→ it points toward purpose

You act from purpose

→ it generates joy

It’s an invitation to pay attention differently. To treat joy (real joy, not just pleasure or distraction) as data. As information about what matters to you, what you’re built for, where your energy is actually alive.

I started a practice a while back that I call Daily Delights. Each day, I try to capture one moment (often through a photo) that held some small, genuine beauty or meaning. A morning walk. A conversation that meant something to me. An experience shared with someone I love. It started as a simple habit. What it’s become is a kind of ongoing map of my own purpose, built in small increments. The things I keep returning to, keep noticing, keep wanting to hold onto, they tell me something. About what I value. About who I am when I’m not performing anything for anyone.

We often think we need to figure out our purpose in order to live more joyfully. I’d suggest the opposite: follow the joy carefully, and it will show you something true about your purpose. Let it be a signal, not just a side effect.

Purpose Isn’t Found. It’s Chosen. Again and Again.

You don’t need one perfect purpose.

You don’t need to have it all figured out before you’re allowed to feel purposeful. You don’t need to have arrived somewhere definitive, or to have answered the question in a way that would look good on a bio or a keynote slide.

You are not static. And neither is your purpose.

What I’m learning (slowly, in real time, on the other side of those bleachers) is that the most honest relationship with purpose isn’t one of discovery. It’s one of return. You return to the question. You return to what matters. You rebuild your answer as life changes the conditions.

Purpose isn’t a destination you arrive at once.

It’s a practice you keep choosing.

In big ways and small ones, across seasons, through transitions you didn’t see coming and thresholds you weren’t ready for.

When I sat in those bleachers not wanting to leave, I thought I was grieving the end of something. And maybe I was, honestly. But I’ve come to think I was also at the beginning of something. The next chapter of my own purpose, one I get to write intentionally.

That’s not a loss. That’s an invitation.

So here’s the question I’ll leave you with, the same one I ask my clients, and the same one I’m sitting with myself:

What is your life — your work, your energy, your next chapter — in service to right now?

You don’t have to have the answer. But it’s worth asking.

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Next week’s word: Focus. Because once you know what you’re in service to, the question becomes — where do you actually put your attention? Looking forward to exploring it with you. Until then, keep carving your path.

This is the first in a series of five posts, each focused on a single word. Words that shape how women show up in their careers, their relationships, and their lives. I’m starting with the one that makes a lot of us uncomfortable: power.

For a long time, I didn’t think of myself as someone who wanted power.

I wanted impact. Influence. Opportunity. The ability to make better decisions, create change, advocate for people, and help talented people grow.

But power? That word felt uncomfortable. Too sharp. Too political. Too self-serving. Too tied to images of dominance, ego, and people who wanted to win at someone else’s expense.

So like many women, I wanted many of the outcomes of power, without wanting to be associated with the word itself.

I don’t think I’m alone in that.

Women Often Don’t Reject Power. We Reject the Penalty.

Many women grow up receiving mixed messages about ambition, authority, and leadership.

Be capable, but not intimidating. Be confident, but not too confident. Lead, but stay likable. Speak up, but don’t take up too much space. Want success, but don’t look like you want it too much.

It’s a narrow path. And the stakes for stepping off it are real.

Researchers call this the double bind or the competence-likability paradox. Catalyst’s foundational study on women in leadership identified three specific traps that show up again and again: women are perceived as either too soft or too tough, never just right; held to higher standards but rewarded less; and seen as competent or likable, but rarely both. The research has been replicated across industries, geographies, and decades. The dynamic it describes has not gone away.

One of the most striking illustrations comes from a Stanford study. A professor took a Harvard Business School case study of a real, successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur named Heidi Roizen and split his class in two. Half read her story under her real name. The other half read the identical profile (same accomplishments, same decisions, same results) but with one change: her name was Howard. Both groups rated Heidi and Howard as equally competent. Howard was well-liked. Heidi was seen as aggressive and not the kind of person you’d want to work for.

Same story. Different name.

Men pursuing power are described as driven, strategic, leadership material. Women pursuing the same power can be labeled difficult, aggressive, political, cold, or “too much.” So many women learn an understandable lesson: want influence quietly, want advancement carefully, want power, but call it something else.

We aren’t anti-power. We’re often anti-penalty.

What Leadership Taught Me About Power

When I stepped into senior leadership roles, I began to understand something I hadn’t fully appreciated earlier in my career: power is real whether you acknowledge it or not.

My words carried more weight than I realized. My attention signaled priorities. My sponsorship could help open doors, and my silence could be interpreted too. People watched where I spent time, what I praised, what I challenged, what I ignored. And sometimes I wasn’t paying nearly enough attention to the impact I was having, precisely because I’d never fully claimed the power I held.

That experience taught me something important: power ignored is still power. It’s just unmanaged.

And power used intentionally can create real good. It can empower people. It can elevate talent. It can challenge outdated norms. It can move resources where they’re needed most. It can make systems fairer, faster, healthier, stronger. That’s when I began to rethink the word itself.

Maybe Power Isn’t Dominance. Maybe It’s Capacity.

What if power isn’t about control? What if power is capacity? The capacity to influence outcomes, make decisions, create change, help others rise, and move ideas into action?

Seen this way, power becomes less about ego and more about responsibility. And that matters, especially for women who care deeply about making an impact. Because when thoughtful people avoid power, power doesn’t disappear. It just gets concentrated elsewhere.

Competence Alone Is Not Enough

Work hard. Be excellent. Deliver results. That advice matters. Competence is foundational. But it’s not sufficient on its own.

Organizations are not pure meritocracies. Performance matters, but so do visibility, relationships, reputation, influence, and access. Many women were taught to master the work. Fewer were taught to understand the system around it.

Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business who has spent decades studying organizational power, makes a point in his book Power: Why Some People Have It And Others Don’t, that stuck with me: stop looking backward at what you’ve already proven, and start positioning yourself for what comes next. He calls it feed-forward instead of feedback. Rather than building a case for why you deserve recognition based on your track record, focus your energy on demonstrating what you’re capable of doing from here. For women who’ve spent years accumulating credentials to justify their seat at the table, that’s a quiet but meaningful shift. The question moves from “have I earned this?” to “what am I signaling I’m ready for next?”

That’s not playing politics. It’s organizational awareness. Understanding how decisions actually get made, where influence actually lives, and how to position yourself to shape outcomes rather than just execute them.

How to Build Power Authentically

Power doesn’t begin with a title. Long before formal authority, you can build real influence, and that foundation matters whether or not a leadership role ever follows.

Credibility. Become known for solving meaningful problems well. This is the core, and it’s one most women already invest in deeply. The question is whether it’s visible enough to people who matter.

Relationships. Build trust across teams, levels, and functions, not just within your immediate world. Power flows through networks. The people who can advocate for you, sponsor you, and open doors for you often aren’t in your direct chain of management.

Visibility. Here’s a line I come back to often with my own clients: it’s not who you know. It’s not even what you know. It’s who knows what you know. Visibility isn’t self-promotion in the uncomfortable sense. It’s making sure your expertise and contributions are findable by the people who need them. That might mean sending a brief note when a project lands well, speaking up in the meetings where decisions actually happen, or asking to be in the room for a conversation that’s relevant to your work.

Strategic communication. Speak with clarity. Share your thinking early, before decisions are finalized. Influence is easier to exercise upstream than downstream.

Understanding the system. Know who makes decisions in your organization, where resources flow, and how priorities actually get set. Competence doesn’t automatically come with this knowledge, you have to learn it deliberately. Which functional areas or specific leaders hold the most organizational power? Who approves what? Who needs to be in your corner? This is worth understanding clearly.

Presence. Take your seat at the table. Not the chair at the edge of the room. The one at the table, where you belong. Don’t shrink yourself in rooms you’ve earned the right to be in.

None of this requires becoming someone you’re not. It requires becoming more strategic about how the genuine value you bring actually gets seen.

A Better Question

Instead of asking “Do I want power?”, try asking “What could I improve if I had more of it?”

What team or effort could you better impact? What ideas could you accelerate? What career path could you shape? What doors could you open? For yourself, and for others?

A Different Kind of Power

When I look back at my own discomfort with the word power, I think what I was really rejecting was a version of it I didn’t want to embody: power as dominance, as ego, as winning at someone else’s expense. That version is real, and it exists in the world. But it isn’t the only version.

Power at its best is not domination. It is the ability to make things better. To have a meaningful impact. And the world needs more women willing to claim that. Not quietly, not apologetically, but with the full weight of what they’re capable of.

Maybe power isn’t the problem. Maybe our belief of it is.

Question for you: Where in your life or career do you already have more power than you think?

Leave a comment

Next week’s word: Purpose. The word that grounds everything else. Looking forward to exploring it with you. Until then, keep carving your path.

A note before we begin: this is landing in your inbox on a Friday, a little later than my usual Wednesday. Fitting, maybe, for a post about giving yourself permission to pause.

There’s a trail I come back to again and again.

It starts quietly.
You’re surrounded by trees and brush, your view limited to what’s right in front of you. Step by step, you’re just… in it.

And then, about half a mile in, the trail turns.

You round the corner, and suddenly everything opens up.

Cliffs stretching wide into the distance.
The ocean, vast and steady below.
Sky that feels bigger than you remembered.

Every time, without fail, I stop.

Take a deep breath.
Look out.
Let it all settle.

And in that moment, something shifts.

What felt close… expands.
What felt heavy… lightens.
What felt all-consuming… finds its place in a much bigger picture.

That trail has been on my mind this week, as I’ve stepped back into the rhythm of work after some time away.

Coming back with fresh eyes is its own kind of reminder: how much we all need those moments of perspective.

Not just the big getaways, but the simple, intentional pauses that help us zoom out.

Because most of our lives (and our leadership) happen in that first part of the trail.

Close in.
Focused.
Moving quickly from one thing to the next.

And when we stay there too long, everything starts to feel equally urgent.
Every decision feels heavier.
Every challenge feels bigger than it is.

We lose perspective.

I know this from experience. And not just the good kind.

There have been times when I’ve pushed through when I should have stepped back. A decision I was circling for days, weighing me down, suddenly became clear on a run. A team conversation I was dreading that untangled itself after I stopped trying to solve it at my desk and just went for a walk.

Not because I worked harder.

But because I gave myself space to see differently.

Here’s what I’ve learned: you don’t have to wait for a vacation to zoom out.

Sometimes it looks like stepping away from your desk when you’re stuck, even when every instinct says to push through.

Going for a walk.
Taking a run.
Letting your mind breathe for a moment.

And then somewhere along the way, something clicks.

An idea surfaces.
A decision becomes clearer.
A problem that felt tangled… loosens.

Not because you worked harder.
But because you gave yourself space to see differently.

Zooming out isn’t a luxury. It’s a leadership skill.

And like any skill, it helps to know when to use it. Here are a few moments to watch for:

→ When everything feels equally important

If it all feels urgent, that’s your signal to step back. Perspective helps you see what actually matters. And what can wait.

→ When you’re stuck in a loop

Replaying the same thoughts, circling the same problem. This is where distance creates clarity. The answer rarely comes from thinking harder. It comes from thinking differently.

→ When you’re reacting instead of choosing

Zooming out gives you back your agency. It creates space between what’s happening and how you respond. And that space is where your best leadership lives.

For me, that trail is a reminder.

Perspective is always there.
Sometimes you just have to walk far enough to see it.

And sometimes, you don’t even have to go that far. Just far enough to step out of the noise and back into clarity.

This week, as I step back into the rhythm of work, I’m holding onto that feeling.

The pause.
The breath.
The bigger view.

Clarity isn’t something you power through your way into.

It’s something you create space to receive.

Where do you go, or what do you do to zoom out and regain perspective?

Leave a comment

Before I could think, I heard myself say: “I work for my husband. I stay home with the family.”

I still cringe writing that. I had recently left a great job and the corporate world entirely to be at home with my kids. A decision that was deliberate, intentional, and completely mine. And yet, when faced with that question, I didn’t lead with any of that. I didn’t say “I left my career to raise my family” or even “I’m taking a break.” I said I worked for my husband. Because without a title, a company, a role to point to, I genuinely didn’t know how to answer the question: who am I? I thought my worth had just plummeted. It hadn’t. But it would take me years to really understand that.

There’s an equation most of us have quietly internalized:

Your title + your company + your accomplishments = Your worth.

Especially in tech. Especially for high-achievers. And especially for women. We don’t just believe it. We build our careers around it. We strive for the title, the role, the seat at the table. And we put an outsized weight on being the leader, the expert, the one who holds things together. It works, until it doesn’t. Until the scaffolding falls away. That’s when identity gets tested. When you leave the role, the company reorganizes, the title disappears.

And the question lands hard: who am I without this?

The Equation We Inherited

Culturally we are conditioned to believe what we do is our identity and our worth. It shows up everywhere: your resume, your LinkedIn bio, the inevitable dinner party question “so what do you do?” functioning as shorthand for “so who are you?”

Over time, we start to believe that our value is driven by external validation – the title we carry, and how others perceive it when we drop it in a social setting. We’ve also been taught to value WHAT we produce over HOW we lead. Output over presence. Deliverables over impact. This is the equation that quietly ties our identity to something that was never really ours to own.

Transitions Crack It Open

Losing your job. A re-org or restructuring. Changing functions. Pivoting careers. Each of these moves asks you to leave a role or title behind, and feel the vacuum that follows. When the thing that anchored you disappears, you can feel genuinely unmoored. Not because you’ve lost anything real, but because you built your foundation on something that was always temporary.

James Clear captures this precisely in Atomic Habits: the most resilient identity isn’t built around what you’ve achieved, it’s built around who you are. “I’m someone who leads with curiosity” holds up across every role. “VP of Engineering at [Company]” has an expiration date.

You Take Yourself With You

Here’s the shift:

Who you are is not your title.

It’s what you bring into every role.

We’re used to defining ourselves by what we do — the role we hold, the title we carry, the responsibilities we own, the output we produce.

But who you are shows up differently.

It’s how you think.
How you lead.
How you show up in the moments that matter.
It’s what people experience in your presence, long after the meeting ends.

That’s the part that doesn’t disappear when the role does.

Who you are is portable. You take it with you wherever you go — into new roles, new situations, new chapters.

Your skills. Your values. Your unique ways of showing up.

The things people say about you when you leave a room, don’t live in a job title. They travel with you.

You might be the person who brings clarity to complexity, or creates calm when everything feels on fire.

The one who connects people across silos, or makes others feel genuinely seen.

None of that comes from your title. It comes from you.

A Few Questions Worth Sitting With

If you stripped away your title…

• What would still be true about you?

• What do people consistently come to you for?

• How do you impact a room, a team, a conversation?

You don’t lose who you are when your role or company changes.

You just change the container it was expressed in.

And when you understand that, really understand it, you stop chasing identity through titles…

and start leading from something much more grounded.

Leave a comment

This question of identity is the one I keep coming back to. In the coming weeks, I’ll be exploring a few words that shape how we show up in our careers all through this lens. But first, I’ll be taking a week off for vacation. Looking forward to diving back in with you in a couple of weeks.

Keep carving your path,
Tracy

But one of the most powerful gifts we can receive is wisdom from other women.

Books have shaped my leadership more than almost anything else. The right words, at the right moment, can change how we see ourselves, how we lead, and what we believe is possible.

If you’re looking for inspiration, resilience, and a fresh perspective, these are five voices worth spending time with.

Nataly Kogan

Why read her? Nataly Kogan redefines success by focusing on joy, resilience, and avoiding burnout.

I first heard Nataly speak at a women’s conference, and her message stuck with me years later. Unlike traditional leadership talks, hers focused on happiness and positivity as a leadership skill. It reshaped my mindset entirely. Her concept of “emotional fitness” helped me navigate leadership and organizational changes, as well as my big career pivots.

📖 Happier Now and The Awesome Human Project help leaders stop struggling and start leading with intention and energy.

I follow Nataly on LinkedIn & Instagram for her bite-sized wisdom, and her workbook, The Awesome Human Journal, is a great companion for reflection.

Perfect for you if: You’re feeling burned out, seeking more joy in your leadership, or navigating significant professional changes.

👉 Try this: Start a 5-minute daily gratitude practice (one of Nataly’s core teachings) to shift your leadership mindset.

Nataly proves that emotional well-being isn’t just a personal pursuit. It’s the foundation for leadership that inspires and elevates everyone around you.

Fran Hauser

Why read her? Fran Hauser proves that you can be kind, ambitious, and successful—all at the same time.

My team and I invited Fran to speak at Intuit for an International Women’s Day event, and her message resonated deeply with our female leaders. She challenges the outdated belief that being “nice” is a career weakness, showing that authenticity and impact go hand in hand. Fran’s approach to combining warmth with strength helped me recently coach a senior leader to embrace and leverage her collaborative style of leadership.

📖 The Myth of the Nice Girl and Embrace the Work, Love Your Career help leaders grow their influence without compromising who they are.

I follow Fran on LinkedIn, where she’s a champion for women in leadership, sharing career advice, book recommendations, and insights from her latest projects. She’s also a Substack writer herself, sharing actionable career growth tips and book recommendations.

Perfect for you if: You’re struggling to balance assertiveness with authenticity, looking to amplify your personal brand, or seeking strategies to advance without compromising your values.

👉 Try this: Practice one of Fran’s techniques for expressing disagreement kindly but firmly: “I see this differently, and here’s why...” in your next challenging meeting.

Her practical approach blends ambition with kindness, proving you don’t have to choose between being respected and being liked.

Shannon Huffman Polson

Why read her? Shannon Huffman Polson teaches grit, resilience, and courage—essential traits for leaders breaking barriers.

Shannon’s story is one of perseverance. As one of the U.S. Army’s first female Apache attack helicopter pilots and the youngest woman to summit Denali, she knows what it takes to lead in high-stakes, male-dominated environments. Her message on resilience resonated deeply with me when she led a Grit Factor workshop for our women’s and military ERG network. The experience was unforgettable.

📖 The Grit Factor: Courage, Resilience, and Leadership in the Most Male-Dominated Organization in the World shares lessons from her journey and practical strategies for building resilience in leadership.

I follow Shannon on LinkedIn, where she shares insights on grit, leadership, and navigating challenges with confidence. She also leads The Grit Institute, helping leaders develop the mindset to push through obstacles.

Perfect for you if: You’re facing tough career challenges, need to build team resilience during difficult times, or want to develop the mental toughness required for breakthrough leadership.

👉 Try this: The next time you face a setback, ask yourself: What’s the lesson here? How can this make me stronger? Reframing challenges builds grit over time.

Her extraordinary journey proves that true grit isn’t about never falling. It’s about rising every time life knocks you down.

April Rinne

Why read her? April Rinne helps leaders develop a Flux mindset to navigate constant change with confidence and agility.

I met April when she spoke at our women’s ERG event during my time as the global network leader. Her unique perspective on navigating change—informed by her global travels and corporate leadership—offered refreshing insights on thriving in uncertainty.

Her concept of the Flux Superpowers (embracing uncertainty and seeing what’s unseen) shifted how I approach leadership in fast-changing environments.

📖 Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change is an essential read for anyone struggling with uncertainty and looking to develop adaptability as a leadership skill.

I follow April on LinkedIn for her thought-provoking posts about global trends, leadership insights, and yes, her impressive headstand photos from around the world! Her perspective on change as opportunity rather than obstacle continues to influence how I coach leaders through transitions.

Perfect for you if: You’re navigating career transitions, leading through uncertainty, or seeking to build adaptability as a leadership strength.

👉 Try this: The next time you feel overwhelmed by uncertainty, ask yourself: What if this change is happening for me, not to me? Shifting your perspective can unlock new opportunities, growth, and innovation.

Follow her work for a global perspective on leadership that balances wisdom with practical application.

Tiffany Dufu

Why read her? Tiffany Dufu empowers women to let go of perfection, focus on what matters most, and lead with impact.

I first heard Tiffany speak at a women’s conference where she shared insights from Drop The Ball. Her message didn’t just resonate, it shook my worldview. As a mother of three with a demanding career, her framework for strategic delegation was a game changer, empowering me to prioritize and let go of time-consuming tasks. Instead of striving for unrealistic perfection, I learned to focus my energy where it truly counts. This same principle transformed how I coach female executives battling perfection and burnout.

📖 Drop The Ball: Achieve More by Doing Less is a must-read for ambitious women who feel stretched too thin and provides actionable strategies for focusing only on what truly matters.

I follow Tiffany on LinkedIn and appreciate her continued advocacy for women and girls. Her concept of “dropping the ball” extends beyond home life into critical workplace skills—teaching the art of strategic delegation, boundary-setting, and focus.

Perfect for you if: You’re struggling with perfectionism, feeling overwhelmed by competing demands, or looking for a smarter way to manage your time and energy.

👉 Try this: Identify one task or responsibility you can drop this week—something that doesn’t serve your highest priorities. Let it go and see what shifts.

Her revolutionary approach proves that achieving more often requires doing less by creating space for the leadership impact only you can deliver.

Pass It On

These five women gave me gifts I didn’t know I needed: a reframe, a permission slip, a reminder of what I’m capable of. Sharing their work with you feels like the most natural way to close out a month all about giving.

If one of these books resonates, pass it on. Recommend it to a colleague, gift it to a mentee, or share this post with a woman in your network who could use the reminder that she’s not alone on this path.

That’s Give to Gain in action. Wisdom received. Wisdom shared. Impact multiplied.

Which woman’s wisdom will you pass on this week? I’d love to hear in the comments.

Leave a comment

Keep carving your path,

Tracy

There’s a moment I’ve seen play out in countless teams.

A meeting starts and someone says:
“Can someone capture the notes or next steps?”

Even in a world of AI note-takers, someone still ends up owning the follow-ups.

There’s a pause.

And then, almost automatically, one of the women in the room says:

“I can do it.”

No one explicitly asked her.
No one assigned it.

But somehow the responsibility quietly lands there.

It doesn’t stop there.

It’s organizing the team celebration.
Planning the offsite.
Remembering the birthdays.
Checking in when someone is struggling.
Mentoring the new hires.
Smoothing over conflict.

These things matter. A lot.

They build culture.
They build trust.
They make teams work.

But over time, something subtle happens.

When women give too much in the workplace, we often end up in this role: The Workplace Mom.

The person who keeps everything running smoothly behind the scenes.

Helpful. Reliable. Appreciated.

But rarely recognized as leadership.

When Giving Turns Into Invisible Work

Many of us were raised – and socialized – to be generous contributors.

To help.
To support.
To make things better for the people around us.

Those instincts are often what make women exceptional leaders.

But in many workplaces, especially in tech organizations where output and visibility drive recognition, those same instincts can quietly shift into invisible labor.

You become:

• The one who mentors everyone

• The emotional sounding board for the team

• The person who smooths conflict

• The organizer of team celebrations

• The one who remembers to buy the gift and cut the cake

• The one who stays late helping everyone else

None of these things are bad.

In fact, they are often acts of real generosity.

But when they happen constantly — and without intention — something else shifts.

Your leadership becomes less visible.

Your contributions become expected.

And your energy gets spread across work that isn’t always recognized, valued, or aligned with where you want to grow.

You are contributing a lot.

But you may not be building the kind of leadership visibility that moves your career forward.

The Goal Isn’t to Stop Giving

If you recognized yourself in that list, you’re not doing something wrong. You’re doing something human.

The answer isn’t to stop giving.

Giving is powerful.

It builds relationships.
It strengthens teams.
It creates the kind of cultures where people thrive.

In fact, earlier this month I wrote about the gifts women can give each other – the kind that build careers, open doors, and change the trajectory of someone’s path.

Those gifts matter deeply.

But leadership generosity works best when it is intentional.

Not automatic.

Not invisible.

Not self-sacrificial.

The goal isn’t to give less.

The goal is to give strategically.

From Invisible Giving to Strategic Giving

Strategic giving means directing your generosity toward the places where it creates the most leadership impact.

It means asking:

Where does my contribution create real leverage?

Where does my energy build influence, capability, or opportunity — for myself and for others?

Sometimes the difference is subtle.

Sometimes it’s about trading the task for the leadership. And sometimes it’s about redesigning how the task gets done altogether.

Instead of automatically taking notes in the meeting, you might facilitate the discussion. Or facilitate a way in which note taking is shared across the team.

Instead of organizing the offsite logistics, you might lead the strategy conversation that happens there. Or lead a team that organizes the offsite, building shared accountability for a successful experience.

Instead of mentoring everyone who asks, you might invest deeply in mentoring a few rising leaders. Or identify and enlist other leaders to mentor alongside you, scaling the impact and giving them the empowering experience of mentorship too.

Instead of being the one who cuts the cake, be the one who presents the team’s results.

The generosity is still there.

But the leverage changes.

Your giving becomes connected to leadership impact. That’s how you move from being the Workplace Mom to showing up as a strategic leader.

Your Strategic Giving Filter

Before saying yes to something, it can help to pause and ask a few simple questions.

1. Is this visible?
Will the impact of this work be seen by decision-makers or leaders?

2. Is this valued?
Does this type of contribution actually matter in how leadership is evaluated in my organization?

3. Is this aligned with the leader I want to become?
Does saying yes move me toward the kind of leadership role I’m building?

4. Could someone else grow by doing this instead?
Am I stepping in because it’s easier for me to do it – or because it truly requires my leadership?

That last one can be especially revealing.

Many of us fall into what I sometimes call the “hero trap.”

We think we need to do it because:

“No one else will.” Or, “No one else will do it as well.”

But leadership isn’t about doing everything.

It’s about building capability around you.

Sometimes the most strategic move isn’t doing the task yourself, it’s giving someone else the opportunity to step into it.

Your Generosity Is a Gift

Your willingness to give is a strength.

It’s part of what makes women such powerful leaders.

But your leadership is a gift too.

And leadership grows when your energy is invested in the work that expands your impact – not just the work that keeps everything running smoothly.

The goal isn’t to stop supporting others.

It’s to make sure your generosity isn’t quietly pulling you out of the leadership roles you’re meant to play.

This month we’ve talked about the gifts we give each other, the gift of your own superpower, and now this: the way you give matters as much as that you give. That’s the full picture of leadership.

Give generously. But give strategically.

Because when your giving aligns with your leadership, the impact multiplies. For you, for your team, and for the women coming behind you who are watching what leadership looks like.

Where in your work right now are you giving automatically instead of intentionally? Share in the comments below.

Leave a comment

And if you’re ready to look at this more closely, I have a few complimentary Carve Your Path coaching sessions remaining this month. Sometimes it takes a thinking partner to see the pattern clearly. Reserve your spot here.

Until next time… keep carving your path.

— Tracy

Out in front was a little boy, maybe four or five years old, wearing a full superhero costume – cape and all. Not Halloween. Not a costume party. Just a Tuesday morning, and he was fully committed. Cape trailing behind him, chest out, chin up, strutting like he had somewhere important to be and everyone should know it. Like the sidewalk was his runway and the rest of the world was lucky to witness it.

And I just... stopped. Mid-thought, mid-worry list, mid-everything. And I thought, man… if I could take some of his superhero energy, even just a fraction of it, into my day – I’d have a great day slaying all those big work problems.

That little kid had something most adults leave behind somewhere along the way: complete ownership of his superpower. The truth is, we rarely walk into work feeling superhero energy or even fully embracing our unique strengths or superpowers.

What would it look like to walk into work with even a fraction of that energy?

The Gap: We Can’t Name Our Own Strengths

In a recent women’s leadership group I was facilitating, we were doing an activity where each person shared something about themselves. When the questions were “who do you admire and why?” or “what is a mistake or learning?” the group could easily answer it and share examples. However, when the question was “what is your superpower?” each of the women paused and seemed to struggle to answer it. In almost every case, they finally answered it with the preface “something I’ve heard people say about me is…”. The answers sounded something like this:

“Something I’ve heard people say about me is that I’m good at connecting people.”

“I guess people say I bring calm to chaotic situations.”

“Someone once told me I’m really good at seeing the big picture.”

They all seemed unable to, or uncomfortable naming their superpower strengths.

The pattern was striking:

Easy to name people we admire.
Easy to name mistakes we’ve made.

But when it came to naming our own strengths, the room went quiet.

The theme of external permission: the “something I’ve heard people say about me” signals that we need external permission or validation to claim it.

If we can’t name our superpower, how can we use it? And if we can’t use it, how can we give it to others?

Why This Is Especially Hard for Women

This hesitation isn’t accidental. Many women have been quietly trained not to claim their strengths directly.

Some of it is modesty. We’re socialized from a young age to deflect praise rather than receive it. Someone tells us we did something well and our instinct is to redirect: “oh, it was a team effort” or “I just got lucky with the timing.” We’ve been taught that claiming credit is unseemly, so we hand it away before we’ve even held it.

Then there’s imposter syndrome – that quiet voice that whispers “I’m not sure this really counts as a strength.” Even when the evidence is right in front of us. Even when others have named it for us repeatedly. We find a way to explain it away: I just got lucky. Anyone could do that. It’s not that big a deal.

And layered on top of that is the fear of being seen as arrogant. I’ve coached women who can rattle off their gaps and growth areas without missing a beat – but go completely quiet when asked what they’re genuinely great at. Not because they don’t know. But because claiming it out loud feels like too much.

Over time, this conditioning creates a strange paradox:

We work incredibly hard to develop our strengths…
but feel uncomfortable naming them.

You Can’t Give What You Don’t Claim

And that discomfort has a consequence. You can’t give away what you haven’t fully claimed.

This year’s IWD theme is “Give to Gain”. And in our hearts, most of us genuinely want to give. But how do you give your best when you haven’t named what your best actually is?

When you don’t know your superpower, you operate on default.
You respond to what’s needed. You fill gaps. You help where you can.

But that’s not the same as intentionally bringing your best strength into the room.

Your superpower isn’t just a personal asset.
It’s what you have to offer your team, your peers, and the women coming up behind you.

Naming it isn’t ego.
It’s stewardship.

How to Find and Name Your Superpower

If you’re not sure what your superpower is, here are a few places to start looking:

The compliment pattern: What do people repeatedly thank you for or come to you for?

This reframes the “something I’ve heard” instinct as a data source, not a crutch.

The effortless excellence clue: What do you do that feels easy to you but seems hard for others?

The energy test: What tasks leave you energized rather than drained?

Ask directly: A script: reach out to 2–3 people and ask “When have you seen me at my best?”

Strengths Assessment: Complete a strengths assessment like DiSC or Strengths Finder with a leadership coach.

Owning Your Superhero Cape

That little boy I saw didn’t question whether he deserved the cape.

He didn’t wait for permission.
He didn’t ask if others agreed with his superhero status.

He just wore it.

Maybe leadership requires a little more of that energy.

Not arrogance.
Not ego.

Just the willingness to claim the strength you bring. And offer it freely to the people around you.

Your Turn

It’s genuinely hard to name your superpower publicly. I know. I’m with you on this. So I’ll go first.

Mine? I bring steadiness. In rooms where everything feels urgent and chaotic, I’m the person who slows down, listens, and helps others find clarity. It took me a long time to claim that — it didn’t feel flashy enough to matter. But I’ve watched it change the energy in a room more times than I can count.

Now it’s your turn.

What is your superpower? Not the thing you think you should say, but the strength people consistently experience from you. Share it in the comments.

Leave a comment

And if you’re still not sure, that’s a worthy place to start. Sometimes we need a thinking partner to help us see what we can’t see in ourselves. To work through the compliment patterns, the energy clues, the effortless excellence you’ve been quietly dismissing. That’s what coaching is for.

This year’s IWD theme is “Give to Gain”, and I’m taking that seriously. I’ve set aside a few complimentary Carve Your Path coaching sessions this month to give back to this community, and a handful of spots are still open.

If you’re ready to name what you bring, I’d love to be in that conversation with you.

Claim it. Then give it.

Share

Keep carving your path,

Tracy

In December, during the season of gift giving, I wrote about the gifts we can give ourselves — reflection, courage, investment in our own growth.

But leadership doesn’t stop with what we cultivate internally.

One of the most powerful things we can do is pass those gifts forward.

This year’s International Women’s Day theme is Give to Gain. When I first heard it, I thought: that’s exactly what women do for each other when we’re at our best.

In that spirit, I’ve been thinking about the gifts we can give other women — at work, in our communities, and in the everyday moments where leadership shows up.

These gifts don’t require money, titles, or formal authority. They are centered on simple actions. Things you can actually do to lift another woman up.

In a moment when progress for women feels uncertain, these acts of intentional generosity matter more than ever.

Gift #1: Amplification

Use your voice to elevate another woman’s ideas.

It happens in rooms everywhere. A woman speaks, the moment passes, and minutes later someone else says the same thing and gets the credit. If you’ve experienced it, you know exactly how it feels. If you’ve witnessed it, you know how easy it is to let the moment slip by.

Amplification is the antidote.

Simple phrases can make a difference:

• “I want to build on what Sarah just said…”

• “That idea came from Maya earlier — I think it’s worth exploring.”

These small moments of credit restore visibility and ensure women’s ideas don’t disappear in the noise. And sometimes this is harder than it sounds — not because we don’t want to lift someone else up, but because it requires consciously redirecting attention away from ourselves in a moment when we might also want to be recognized.

Sometimes the most powerful leadership act is simply making sure another woman’s voice is heard.

Gift #2: Opportunity

Recommend someone for a role, project, speaking opportunity, or introduction. Many capable women are sitting on the sidelines, unsure of how to break in. If you have the position, authority, or access – use it. Give another woman a seat at the table, make the warm intro, put her name forward for the project or opportunity.

I was helping organize our company’s strategy and presence at a large conference. One of our confirmed speakers for a highly visible session had to cancel at the last minute.

We had two options: remove the session from the program entirely, or find someone new to step in.

I immediately thought of a woman in our community who had deep expertise on the topic but hadn’t yet spoken on a stage like that.

When I reached out, she was both excited and terrified.

She ended up delivering an incredible talk.

Watching her stand on that stage — owning the moment — was a reminder of how powerful it can be when someone simply opens a door.

In another instance, I was organizing a high-visibility event featuring our CTO. I could have been the one on stage as the CTO’s interviewer and host. Instead, I invited a senior manager on my team to take that role. She was extraordinary, and it opened doors for her that I couldn’t have predicted.

You don’t always need to be the one in the spotlight. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is hand it to someone else.

Gift #3: Sponsorship

Sponsorship means intentionally making another woman visible. Publicly crediting her work, saying her name in the rooms that matter.

You’ve likely heard of mentorship. But sponsorship is different, and the distinction matters. Mentorship is what happens when she’s in the room with you. Sponsorship is what happens when she’s not — when you’re the one advocating for her, saying her name, and making sure her work is seen by the people who matter most.

One senior VP I worked with was exceptional at this. A brilliant, quietly competent leader on his team was developing breakthrough strategies and leading data analysis in genuinely innovative ways. He made it a point to always say her name, credit her work, and shine a light on her approach — in meetings, in leadership forums, in conversations she wasn’t part of. I watched her rise from near obscurity to increasing responsibility, high-visibility presenting opportunities, and eventually a promotion.

That’s what sponsorship looks like in practice.

And it doesn’t require a senior title or an in-person meeting. You can do it on LinkedIn, in a Slack channel, in the comments of a shared document. Anywhere her work shows up — make sure her name shows up with it.

Gift #4: Honest, Specific Encouragement

Tell someone what you see in them.

We often skip this because we assume she already knows. Or that someone else has told her. But here’s the truth: many women have been conditioned to downplay, or outright doubt, their own value. She may not see what you see. And until someone names it, she may never fully claim it.

Early in my career, a senior leader pulled me aside and described something specific she had noticed. She told me I had a rare ability to work seamlessly across teams — proactively communicating decisions, changes, and implications in ways that brought people along rather than leaving them behind. She described the impact: less confusion, faster responses, fewer missteps across the organization.

I remember thinking: that’s just what everyone does, isn’t it?

It wasn’t. It was a strength I hadn’t named or claimed as my own. Her words changed that. That cross-functional ability became something I consciously leaned into for the rest of my career. A thread I could trace through every role, every team, every challenge.

That’s the power of a specific compliment. Not “you’re amazing,” but “here’s exactly what I watched you do, and here’s why it matters.”

She may not know she’s doing it. Tell her.

Gift #5: Permission

Sometimes the most powerful gift we can give another woman is permission.

Permission to try something new.
Permission to speak up.
Permission to lead differently.

Often that permission doesn’t come from words.

It comes from watching another woman do something brave.

One reason I write openly about my own leadership journey — the uncertainty, the pivots, the messy middle — is because transparency can create possibility for someone else. When I reflect on my own path, I realize how powerful it was to hear the full story of another woman’s career. Not just the polished ending or the bio-worthy highlights, but the setbacks, the uncertainty, and the messy middle along the way. Hearing those stories gave me permission to try something new, to lean into uncertainty, to push myself to grow.

They modeled courage. And in doing so, they gave me permission to find my own.

Now, when women tell me that something I shared openly changed how they saw their own path, that’s when I understand the true impact of a single act of honesty.

You don’t have to have it all figured out. You just have to be willing to share where you are.

One Small Gift

In December, during the holiday season, I wrote about the gifts we can give ourselves — investing in our growth, honoring our own path, believing in where we’re headed.

The gifts we give ourselves build confidence.

The gifts we give other women build something bigger.

This month, consider one small gift you could give another woman. A word of recognition, an introduction, an opportunity, or simply the courage of your own example.

None of these gifts cost money. They require something more valuable: attention, intention, and a willingness to use your voice, your platform, and your story in service of someone else.

You may never know the ripple effect it creates.

That’s the thing about momentum. It compounds quietly, long after the moment has passed.

Which of these gifts do you most want to give? Or receive? I’d love to hear in the comments.

Leave a comment

A Small Gift for Women This Month

In the spirit of International Women’s Day and the theme Give to Gain, I’m offering a limited number of complimentary Carve Your Path Coaching Sessions this month — my gift to women who are ready to invest in themselves.

These are 45-minute, one-on-one sessions with me. Space to think through whatever leadership or career challenge is most alive for you right now. A transition, a decision, a moment of uncertainty, or simply a desire for more clarity on what’s next.

Spots are limited. If this resonates, sign up here.

📌 PS - One more gift you can give: If this post resonated with you, share it with a woman in your life who needs this reminder?

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Forward it to a colleague, restack it on Substack Notes, or share it on LinkedIn. Spreading the word means more women get these reminders when they need the most.

Thanks for reading Carving Her Path! This post is public, so feel free to share it.

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I had just stepped away from the corporate workforce, leaving a great role, and a career I had spent years building into bigger and bigger leadership opportunities.

It felt like career suicide. Like I had stripped away a part of my identity.

In my head (and heart), I had a dozen reasons why it made sense for me to step away and be home with my kids. I had a mental slide deck ready – a list of justifications to prove I hadn’t “failed” or “quit.” I felt the urge to give a five-minute presentation on my rationale and thinking behind the decision.

But honestly? The fear wasn’t really about them. It was about what I might believe about myself if they agreed with my worst thoughts. Their disapproval would have felt like evidence.

I hesitated because I realized something important: I was looking for their approval of my decision, rather than owning the decision itself.

In that moment of silence, I understood:

If I don’t provide the headline, they’re going to write it for me.

And their version will never be as accurate—or as powerful—as mine.

The Narrative Vacuum

In tech, and especially for women navigating their careers, we fear judgment around layoffs, pivots, restructuring, or stepping away/across/down for family or personal reasons.

We worry:

What will they think?

Will they think I couldn’t hack it?

Will they think I’m less committed?

When we leave a “gap” in our story or offer a defensive explanation, we create a Narrative Vacuum.

When you don’t define your story, people fill in the blanks.

And they rarely fill them in generously.

Human brains hate ambiguity. In the absence of a clear narrative, others will construct one. Often shaped by their own assumptions and biases.

This isn’t a confidence problem.

It’s conditioning.

Women in particular are often socialized to justify choices that diverge from expected paths. A leadership move that looks bold on a resume can still require explanation in conversation. Maternity leave length. Stepping back. Pivoting away from a prestigious title. These decisions carry a subtle cultural tax, one that trains us to pre-defend our choices before anyone even challenges them.

And yet – strength isn’t about having a perfect, linear resume.

Strength is about being the first to define your Why.

The Framework: Past → Choice → Direction

Stop explaining and start authoring. Over the years, I’ve coached dozens of women through layoffs, pivots, and career transitions. The most confident communicators use a simple structure to own their story:

Past → Choice → Direction

1. The Past: Briefly acknowledge where you were.

2. The Choice: State your transition as an intentional decision, not something that “happened” to you.

3. The Direction: Point toward where you are going.

The Power of Brevity

High achievers often suffer from Explanatory Debt. The feeling that we owe everyone a detailed justification for our decisions.

The truth? Explaining is often a form of seeking permission.

Brevity is how you demonstrate that. When you keep your narrative concise, you signal that the matter is settled. You aren’t looking for a second opinion; you are stating a fact. A short, confident sentence is much harder to pick apart than a long, rambling defense.

Ownership in Action

See how the energy changes when you trade “justification” for “ownership”:

The Layoff:

• Old way: “I was part of the cuts, so I’m just looking for something similar.”

• The Owned Way: “The recent restructuring gave me the perfect opportunity to explore xyz or pivot. I’m now focusing my search exclusively on [Specific Goal].”

The Career Gap or Maternity Leave:

• Old way: “I’ve been out for a while with the kids, so I’m trying to get back into it and catch up.”

• The Owned Way: “I intentionally stepped away to lead my family through a transition. I’m returning with a sharper focus on [Skill/Impact].”

The Pivot:

• Old way: “I’m trying to see if I can move from Engineering into Product Management.”

• The Owned Way: “My engineering background gave me a front-row seat to product development. I’m now bringing that insight and lens directly into product management.”

Carving Your Path

Owning your story doesn’t mean having a perfect explanation.

It means deciding what matters. And saying it with clarity.

Every transition I’ve made has required this shift:
from explaining… to owning.

That’s what Carving Her Path looks like in real life — not a perfect resume, but a story you are willing to stand behind.

Practice your Headline: What is a transition or choice you’ve been “explaining” lately? In the comments, rewrite it as a Power Statement: 1–2 sentences, zero justification, 100% ownership.

Leave a comment

I’m Tracy Stone, a leadership coach who helps women leaders navigate career challenges and own their next chapter with clarity and confidencel. If you’re ready to stop explaining and start authoring the next chapter, I’d love to connect.

Keep carving your story and your path.

Recently I’ve been watching the students I mentor ask for letters of recommendation for college programs and scholarships.

The email sits drafted longer than it should. They reread it three times before hitting send.

Would you be willing to write me a letter of recommendation?

They know it’s reasonable. They’ve worked hard. They’ve built the relationship. The teacher or mentor would likely say yes without hesitation.

And still.

Will they say yes? Do they feel I’m worthy? Is this an inconvenience? Am I asking for too much?

I coach them through it easily. Of course they’ll say yes. You’ve done the work. This is part of their role. People want to support students who show initiative.

And yet I know exactly how they feel.

A few years ago, I was going through a director-level promotion process and was told the approval wasn’t likely. Not because of my performance, but because I didn’t have enough visibility or support for the work I was leading. I had to go back to my manager and ask: What would need to be true for this to be approved? Then I had to reach out to senior leaders and ask for their advocacy. Ask for the opportunity to present my work to a broader audience. Ask people, directly, to go to bat for me.

I knew it was reasonable. I’d done the work. And still, the same questions creep in. The ones I so easily help others dismiss.

Am I imposing? Will this make me look less capable? Should I just figure this out myself?

It’s funny how clearly we can see courage in someone else… and how complicated it feels when it’s our turn.

The Pattern: Independence Gets Rewarded Early

Many of us were rewarded early for being independent. Engineering and tech cultures are built around problem-solving. You were hired for your ability to figure things out. The harder the problem, the more capable you looked when you solved it alone.

So competence becomes part of our identity. Being reliable, low-maintenance, the one who doesn’t need much — that’s the brand that gets you noticed, promoted, trusted with more.

And for many high-achieving women in these environments, there is an extra layer: belonging often means being capable without appearing to need much. Asking for help may confirm a doubt someone might already have.

The trap is subtle. The very traits that carried you forward — self-sufficiency, grit, the ability to figure it out — quietly become the things that make asking feel dangerous. Like exposing a gap. Like admitting the problem-solver can’t solve this one alone.

If I were truly good enough, shouldn’t I be able to figure this out myself?

Asking for Help Is a Leadership Skill

Here’s what I’ve come to see:

Independence builds competence.
Asking for help builds capacity.

Early in your career, the question is: Can I do this myself?

As you grow, the question shifts to: Who should I involve?

And at the leadership level: How do we do this better together?

Independence → Collaboration → Leverage.

Leaders don’t get ahead because they know everything.

They get ahead because they know who to involve.

Asking for help accelerates learning, increases visibility, invites sponsorship, and builds advocates.

Senior leaders ask for help constantly. They just call it collaboration.

High performers don’t wait until they’re overwhelmed to ask.

They ask early.
They ask clearly.
And they ask in a way that makes the other person feel valued — not burdened.

That’s not weakness.

That’s strategic maturity.

The Career-Changing Asks

We often think of asking for help as something small: “Can you sanity check this?”

But some of the most career-changing moments begin with a clear ask:

• “Would you be willing to advocate for me for this role?”

• “Is there an opportunity for me to present this work to the broader team?”

• “What would need to be true for me to be considered ready for X?”

• “I’d like to expand my scope. Where do you see opportunity?”

Those aren’t dramatic confessions of inadequacy.

They’re signals of ambition.

They’re invitations.

Those were my asks.

My promotion was approved.

Not because I suddenly became more capable, but because I became more visible and more supported.

The students asking for letters of recommendation are learning something powerful early:

You don’t get opportunities just because you’re capable. You get opportunities because you’re capable and you ask.

That’s true at every stage of your career.

Small asks build visibility. Visibility builds advocacy. Advocacy builds trust. And trust opens doors that capability alone never could.

The ask you make today (even a small one) is rarely just about what you need right now. It’s laying the groundwork for what comes next.

You Don’t Carve Alone

We talk a lot about carving our own path.

But no one carves alone.

Every meaningful step in your career has likely been shaped by someone who opened a door, gave perspective, offered feedback, or advocated on your behalf.

The next version of your path might not require more effort. It might require one clear, courageous ask.

So I’ll leave you with this: Where might asking for help make this easier right now?

Not because you can’t do it alone.

But because you don’t have to.

Keep carving your path, Tracy

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We love the moment of arrival. The visible success.

What we don’t see are the years before that moment. The small decisions. The quiet work. The failed attempts and redirections. The long stretch where effort feels high and results feel… invisible.

Success often looks like an iceberg. What’s visible above the waterline — the promotion, the new role, the polished ending — represents only a small fraction of what’s actually there.

Below the surface are the early mornings. The awkward networking conversations. The proposals that didn’t land. The skills being sharpened in rooms no one else noticed. The redirections that felt like setbacks at the time.

We celebrate the tip. We rarely talk about the base.

So it’s easy to believe success happens suddenly.

But most of the time, it doesn’t.

More often, success is simply compound interest on consistent action.

And what if we approached our careers and leadership growth the same way we approach investing — understanding that small, steady deposits create exponential returns over time?

The Power of Small Deposits

When we invest money, we don’t expect immediate results. We understand that growth happens gradually. We make regular contributions, trust the process, and allow time to do its work.

But in our careers, we often expect immediate payoff. We assume one big opportunity, one bold move, or one perfect decision will change everything.

In reality, leadership growth rarely comes from a single moment. It comes from hundreds of small ones.

A conversation where you speak up instead of staying quiet.
A skill you practice before you feel ready.
A relationship you invest in before you need something from it.
A moment where you choose to show up just slightly differently than before.

Individually, these moments feel small. Almost insignificant.

Over time, they compound.

James Clear writes in Atomic Habits about the idea of getting one percent better every day — that small improvements, repeated consistently, lead to remarkable change. Leadership works the same way. The goal isn’t dramatic transformation overnight. It’s consistent movement in the right direction.

The magic isn’t in intensity. It’s in consistency.

The Leadership Portfolio: Are You Over-Leveraged in Competence?

Another thing we understand intuitively about investing is diversification. We don’t put everything into one place and hope for the best.

Career and leadership growth work the same way.

There are multiple areas where your investments compound:

Skills and expertise: the capabilities you continue to build and refine
Relationships and network: the people you connect with and support over time
Visibility and voice: how you share your perspective and make your work seen
Self-awareness and knowledge: understanding how you lead, what energizes you, and where you grow best

Many high-performing professionals over-invest in one area — usually competence. We work hard, deliver results, and assume that will be enough.

I recently worked with a senior leader who embodied this imbalance. She was exceptional at her craft and deeply trusted by her team, but largely invisible outside of it. She didn’t need to become better at her job. She needed others to see the capabilities she already had.

We started with one small deposit: sharing her work more proactively and bringing other leaders along in what her team was building. Nothing dramatic changed overnight. But over time, visibility compounded. Leaders began seeking her out for more complex work, and opportunities followed. The skills were always there. The momentum came from making them visible consistently.

This is what happens when your portfolio is balanced. Relationships create opportunities to showcase skills. Visibility strengthens credibility. Self-knowledge helps you invest your energy more wisely.

These investments don’t just grow independently. They multiply each other.

The Messy Middle: When Effort Outpaces Results

The hardest part of compounding is that you don’t get immediate feedback.

Early returns feel invisible. Effort increases before results do. This is the messy middle — the part where it’s easy to wonder if anything is actually working.

It’s tempting to interpret this phase as failure or stagnation. But often, it’s simply the stage where momentum hasn’t caught up yet.

The long game isn’t about waiting. It’s about continuing to invest even when the returns aren’t obvious.

Over time, something shifts.

The conversation leads to another introduction.
The skill you’ve been practicing becomes second nature.
People start to associate your name with a certain strength or expertise.

What once required effort begins to feel easier.

That’s compounding at work.

I saw this firsthand when I was leading efforts at Intuit to increase representation of women in technical roles. For months — even years — the progress felt marginal. We introduced new programs, changed hiring practices, invested in development and sponsorship, and the needle barely moved.

Then something shifted. Multiple percentage increases started happening at once. Leaders began asking what the silver bullet was. There wasn’t one. It was all those strategies compounding together. Years of small, consistent changes finally gaining momentum. Over time, representation increased by more than six percentage points, something rarely seen in the industry. The results looked sudden from the outside. From the inside, it was years of steady deposits finally compounding.

Creating Your Momentum

Start by noticing what you’re already doing.

What small deposits are you making today that future-you will benefit from?
What conversations, habits, or practices are quietly building momentum?

Celebrate those first. Progress is often happening before we recognize it.

Then choose one area to invest in more intentionally. Not everything at once. Just one.

What is the smallest consistent action you could take? Fifteen minutes of learning each week. One intentional conversation each month. Sharing your thinking more regularly.

Small enough to sustain. Consistent enough to matter.

For me right now, it’s this newsletter. Some weeks I wonder if anyone’s reading. But I trust that these weekly deposits — sharing what I’m learning, what I’m observing — will compound in ways I can’t predict yet. That’s the commitment I’m making.

And when things don’t go as planned, resist the urge to see it as failure. In both investing and leadership, adjustments aren’t losses — they’re data. They help you decide where to invest next.

Getting the Flywheel Going

Over time, compounding stops feeling theoretical and starts feeling like momentum. Jim Collins describes this idea in his book Good to Great as the flywheel effect. At the beginning, it takes enormous effort to get it moving. Each push feels heavy. Progress feels slow.

But with every push, momentum builds.

Eventually, the wheel begins to turn on its own. The same effort produces greater movement. What once felt hard becomes self-sustaining.

This is what happens when your small deposits compound.

Your network starts introducing you to opportunities without you asking.
Your skills become visible and trusted.
Your confidence grows, making the next step easier than the last.

From the outside, it looks like sudden success.

From the inside, it’s years of steady motion finally becoming visible.

Trust the Compounding

Q1 is often when motivation is high but results still feel far away. If that’s where you are right now, it doesn’t mean you’re behind.

It may mean you’re exactly where compounding begins.

You don’t need a dramatic reset.
You don’t need a perfect plan.

You just need another small push on the flywheel.

The work you’re doing today may not be visible yet. That doesn’t mean it isn’t compounding.

This is something I remind myself of often — in my coaching practice, in my exercising, in writing this newsletter each week. Progress rarely feels dramatic while it’s happening.

But over time, the small deposits add up. The path becomes clearer. The flywheel starts to turn.

And that’s what Carving Her Path has always been about — not sudden breakthroughs, but steady movement toward the life and leadership you’re building, one small step at a time.

If this resonated with you, share it with someone navigating their own messy middle.

Keep pushing,
Tracy

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Here we are… we made it through January (whew!) and are into February. Those goals that felt exhilarating and new just a few weeks ago are starting to feel a lot like obligations. The New Year resolution adrenaline has worn off, and we’re left with a long list of tasks that feel more like a heavy backpack than a launchpad. It’s that familiar, heavy refrain:

“I have to prep for the exec review, I should manage this conflict, I need to get this done so I can make it to the soccer game.”

I have to…

I need to…

I’ve got to…

I must…

I should…

This language turns choice into obligation. It drains joy from things we once wanted. It frames leadership as burden instead of earned responsibility.

The Shift

Recently, I caught myself doing exactly this.

I was connecting with friends I hadn’t seen in a while, catching up on life during a particularly busy season. I found myself sharing exciting work opportunities and a bunch of events and travel coming up to support my kids. It was a lot… and it came out as sort of a laundry list of everything hitting at once.

My friend stopped me and said something like, “Ugh… do you really have to do all of that?”

I took a beat, caught myself, and said: “Yes. I get to do all of it.”

It was such a powerful moment to stop, reflect, and realize… wow, what an opportunity to have exciting work opportunities AND to be able to figure out ways to show up for my kids.

I realized that the “have to” or “should” mentality turns choice into obligation. It drains joy from the things we once aspired to. It frames leadership as a burden instead of an earned responsibility.

We often complain about the very things we once dreamed of and then worked so hard to achieve.

Two Things Can Be True at the Same Time

You can feel the weight of everything AND feel the excitement.
You can be exhausted AND grateful.
You can want a break AND recognize the privilege.

“I get to” mentality underscores agency and ownership. It’s empowering. When we say “I have to,” we are victims of our schedules. When we say “I get to,” we are the CEOs of our lives.

We’re choosing to lead from ownership instead of obligation.
We’re intentionally choosing the lens we lead from.
We’re remembering how we earned this seat.

Pressure is a Privilege

Tennis icon Billie Jean King has a famous quote: “Pressure is a privilege, and champions adjust.”

High-pressure situations—like those you “get to” experience as a leader—are opportunities you have earned. Someone (likely many people–including yourself!) believed in you enough to put you here. There was a time when you were on the sidelines watching others do exactly what you’re doing now, dreaming of your chance. Remember what it felt like to think, “Put me in, coach!”

You earned this seat. You earned the opportunity to lead, to give that big presentation, to drive that strategic effort.

The pressure you feel isn’t a burden, it’s proof of your influence. Pressure only exists where there’s opportunity for impact. If no one expected anything of you, there would be no pressure.

Champions don’t avoid the big moments, they show up for them. Not because they’re fearless, but because they recognize the opportunity. You’re in the big leagues now. Celebrate that. Own it.

The Strategy: How to Audit Your Language

To move from obligation to ownership, try this three step audit:

1. Catch it: Notice when you say “I should” or “I need to.”

(“I have to prep for the big exec review meeting.”)

2. Flip it: Literally say “I get to” out loud.

(”I get to present our team’s work to the executive team.”)

3. Trace it: Why do you “get to”?

(”I get to do this because I’ve built a team that trusts me to represent our work at the highest level.”)

The third step is crucial. It reconnects you to the reason you have the opportunity in the first place.

Where This Reframe Has Limits

“I Get To” isn’t an excuse to say yes to everything. It’s not a ticket to erase or blur your boundaries. It’s a tool to appreciate what you’ve chosen to keep on your plate.

If you can’t find a way to say “I get to” about a task, maybe that’s a sign it’s time to delegate or delete it. This reframe is most powerful for the work that matters to you but has started to feel like a drag. But if you try to reframe something and it still feels wrong? Listen to that. Not everything deserves to be a “get to”.

Finding Your “I Get To”

Were are you saying “I have to” this week?

What changes if you try “I get to” instead?

Your turn: What’s one thing on your list this week that feels like a “have to” but is actually a “get to”? I’d love to hear how you reframe it in the comments.

Leadership isn’t just about what we carry—it’s about how we carry it.

This year, I’m paying attention not just to my goals, but to the language I use as I move toward them. What will you pay attention to?

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Remember, you are the one holding the tools. Every time you reframe an obligation into an opportunity, you are making progress. Keep carving your path–honoring both the weight of the work and the privilege of the seat you’ve earned.

I’m Tracy, a leadership coach for women in tech who are navigating the balance between dedicated careers and full lives. Through Carving Her Path, I share frameworks, stories, and strategies for leading with intention—because your path doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s.

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