Why “Fearless” Is the Wrong Goal for Women Leaders

Why “Fearless” Is the Wrong Goal for Women Leaders

The confidence gap that holds women back in leadership doesn't start in the workplace. It starts around age 14, and most organizations spend years trying to coach the symptom without ever naming where it began. That's the throughline Kim Bohr [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimbohr/], CEO of SparkEffect, and guest Jilyne Jarvis [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jilyne/] follow in this episode. The hesitation leaders see in capable women, the reluctance to take the role, raise the hand, or apply before meeting every requirement, traces back to a middle-school pattern that never got named. Jilyne diagnoses it from the inside: she was a ski racer who looked unshakable on the podium and had no idea what she was worth the moment she stepped off it. Jilyne is a seven-time NCAA All-American and retired U.S. Ski Team member. In 2014 she founded ZGiRLS to teach girls 11 to 14 the same mental tools elite athletes use to handle pressure and self-doubt, delivered by Olympic, collegiate, and professional women athletes who admit, out loud, that they feel fear too. WHAT YOU'LL DISCOVER ► Why confidence is a skill you build through action, not a trait you're born with ► Why "fearless" is the wrong goal, and what elite athletes do with fear that never goes away ► How the confidence decline at 11 to 14 resurfaces in women leaders as hesitation around risk, visibility, and self-advocacy ► Why ages 11 to 14 are the window when a young brain can grasp "I have thoughts, but I'm not my thoughts" ► The "yet" move parents and leaders can use to model a healthier relationship with fear ► Why a leader who admits "I'm working on this too" sets what's safe to say on a team ► What nearly walking away from her own organization taught Jilyne about the labels that quietly cap a career Jilyne Jarvis: "When I was standing on the top of a podium, I did. But when I wasn't, I had absolutely no idea what my value was in the world. All my self worth was wrapped up in achievement." Kim Bohr: "We're doing a lot of these things as women leaders and not even recognizing it." Courage to Advance explores how visionary leaders build the organizations they wish existed through trust, transparency, and the willingness to challenge what no longer works. Hosted by Kim Bohr, CEO of SparkEffect, the show brings senior HR and business leaders into honest conversation about leading people through real complexity. Subscribe wherever you listen: https://sparkeffect.com/sparkeffect-podcast-courage-to-advance/ [https://sparkeffect.com/sparkeffect-podcast-courage-to-advance/]

Trust Isn't a Box You Check. It's Built Daily.

Trust is the one thing every leader says they want more of, and the one most are quietly getting wrong. The instinct is to build it through competence or charisma: prove yourself, earn people's confidence, move on. Then the team goes quiet, the executive room gets political, and the organization stops believing what leadership says. Executive coach Andrea Butcher [https://www.linkedin.com/in/leaderdevelopmentcoach/?skipRedirect=true] has spent years inside executive and leadership teams watching this play out. The breakdowns she sees most often are not dramatic betrayals. They are unmet expectations, unspoken assumptions, and leaders too caught in the grind to notice the small moments where trust slips. Her reframe is direct: every communication, every email, every text, every Slack message is either building trust or eroding it. Andrea Butcher is the founder of Abundant Empowerment [https://www.linkedin.com/company/abundant-empowerment/] and host of the Being at Work [https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6hQGTPCovA7FXgfapbagGHIt74dZhaBs&si=eBEX_8XsPMlRbGrQ] podcast. Her work centers on the being of leadership rather than the doing, and on the difference between predictive trust and the vulnerability-based trust that actually builds connection. In this episode, Kim Bohr [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimbohr/] continues a conversation that began when she joined Andrea on Being at Work to discuss SparkEffect's organizational trust research, this time focusing on how trust gets built. What You'll Discover * The difference between predictive trust and vulnerability-based trust, and why the second one matters most * How a driven CEO built trust with his team through restraint rather than control * Why your strongest leadership trait can quietly become a liability * What labeling a difficult colleague costs you, and the question that rebuilds the relationship * Why dysfunction is a normal part of any team, and what separates teams that name it from teams that avoid it * The onboarding instinct that backfires, and the simple conversation that builds connection * Why circling back when something doesn't land is an active trust-building move From the Conversation Andrea Butcher: “Every communication, every email, every text, every slack, everything I put out there is either building or eroding.” Kim Bohr: “When I think back in my own career, I've grown the most" from the more challenging situations. That's where I tell people that sometimes when they're going through those situations... this is where you're growing the most.” Courage to Advance explores how visionary leaders are building the organizations they wish existed through trust, transparency, and the willingness to challenge what no longer works. Hosted by Kim Bohr, CEO of SparkEffect. New episodes drop every second, third, and fourth Tuesday of each month. Subscribe at https://sparkeffect.com/sparkeffect-podcast-courage-to-advance/ [https://sparkeffect.com/sparkeffect-podcast-courage-to-advance/].

The Psychology Behind Why Your Team Won't Ask for Help

Most organizations say they care about employee wellbeing. But when your therapist's office hours don't fit the windows your employer leaves open, when you're the only person trained to run a Friday report so you can never actually take a Friday off, when the word "accommodation" makes you feel like a problem before the conversation even starts, the message your people receive is different from the one you think you're sending.  Sarah Harris [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahharrisspeaks/] is a licensed clinical social worker with more than two decades of clinical practice who still sees therapy clients every week. That experience is what drove her into workplace culture consulting. She kept watching her clients learn new coping skills in session and then walk back into workplaces that made those skills nearly impossible to use. Her book, The Culture Garden, gives leaders practical, script-ready tools they can read at their desk and use in their next conversation.  In this episode, Sarah joins Kim Bohr [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimbohr/] to explain the neuroscience of perceived threat in the workplace, why one word swap changes whether someone feels safe enough to ask for help, and how the smallest, free changes often produce the biggest gains in productivity and trust.    What You'll Discover:  * Why your wellbeing policy may be communicating the opposite of what you intend  * What happens in the brain when a perceived threat is triggered at work, and why your colleague hasn't heard the first four sentences of your question  * How replacing "accommodation" with "support" changes the entire nervous system response to the conversation  * The 20-minute message-checking rule that transformed an IT worker's ticket-clearing speed  * Why approaching with curiosity is accountability and compassion at the same time  * What two-way transparency looks like during disruption, and why naming what you don't know is as important as sharing what you do    Sarah Harris: "The implied message of accommodation is that you are somehow a burden, that this is somehow a drastic change, that you're a problem. And so folks don't want to ask for accommodation because of the stigma attached to the word."  Kim Bohr:  "That's the illusion of inclusion. It may be well intended, but the realities of how the world is working isn't being considered." Courage to Advance brings senior HR and business leaders into honest conversation about the work of leading people through real complexity. Hosted by Kim Bohr, CEO of SparkEffect. New episodes drop every second, third, and fourth Tuesday of each month. Subscribe at couragetoadvancepodcast.com. rPoG2nGNhym8y5OjgRjF

The 5 Culture Challenges Every CPO Is Still Struggling With

Most culture problems don't surprise anyone. That's the uncomfortable truth at the center of Scott McInnes's [https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottwmcinnes/] research - a study of Chief People Officers across Ireland that set out to identify what's actually blocking progress from the culture organizations have to the one they need. When Scott debriefed a group of respondents on his findings, the room didn't react with shock. They responded with wry smiles. Same stuff, different year. Scott founded Inspiring Change in Dublin in 2017 after 25 years working in internal  communications and organizational culture across Ireland, the UK, and Europe. His clients include Boots Ireland, the FAI, Enterprise Ireland, and the Police Service of Northern Ireland. He's also the host of the Building Better Cultures podcast, with more than 150 episodes on culture, leadership, and engagement. In this episode of Courage to Advance, Scott and host Kim Bohr [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimbohr/]compare what his Irish CPO research found with what SparkEffect's own US-based research is surfacing - and the overlap is striking. Geography changes very little. The five challenges Scott named are just as present in American organizations as in Irish ones. What You'll Discover: * Why the same five culture challenges keep showing up decade after decade * How senior leaders cast a "long shadow" through behavior, not announcements * Why middle managers are the real culture carriers, as "chief sense makers" * How reframing "difficult conversations" as developmental ones changes everything * Why return-to-office mandates won't fix disconnection * Why trust is an outcome of behavior, not a value you can declare Scott McInnes:  "I might not know your values. But I can see your behaviors." "Trust isn't a value. It's an outcome of us doing the things that we say we'll do." Kim Bohr:  "Most organizations know they have a culture problem long before they do anything about it. And the longer they wait, the more it costs them in talent, in performance, and in trust." "If we can reframe difficult conversations as developmental conversations or support conversations, it changes everything about how people show up."   Courage to Advance is hosted by Kim Bohr, CEO of SparkEffect, and explores how leaders are building the organizations they wish existed. New episodes drop every second, third, and fourth Tuesday of each month. Subscribe and listen at https://couragetoadvancepodcast.com [https://couragetoadvancepodcast.com]

The Bravest Thing a Leader Can Say Right Now Is “I Don’t Know”

Most leadership advice assumes everyone on your team is okay. What happens when they aren’t?  That gap between caring deeply and not knowing how to help is where most leaders live right now. Dr. Gretchen Schmelzer [https://www.linkedin.com/in/gretchen-schmelzer-92933a4/?skipRedirect=true] names what’s underneath it. Leaders aren’t undertrained on strategy. They’re undertrained on what to do when the people they lead are struggling. Many try to skip straight to healing without first stabilizing the team. Others mistake ongoing wear and tear for a one-time crisis and treat it as such.  Dr. Gretchen Schmelzer is a Harvard-trained psychologist, author of Journey Through Trauma, and co-founder of the Center for Trauma and Leadership. She has spent two decades helping organizations including the CDC, hospital systems, forest service firefighters, and Alaska Native communities lead through the kinds of seasons most leadership programs don’t prepare anyone for.  In this episode, Gretchen and Kim Bohr [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimbohr/]talk about the difference between trauma and moral injury, why community is the antidote leaders keep missing, what real vulnerability sounds like in a one-on-one, and why the survival strategies that get people promoted are often the same ones that hold them back as senior leaders.  What You’ll Discover:  * The three situations every leader faces and why misreading which one you’re in costs you the team  * Why mission-driven leaders are the most likely to burn out, and what they tend to get wrong about helping  * The distinction between psychological trauma and moral injury, and why moral injury can’t be healed alone  * What real vulnerability sounds like in a one-on-one when a leader genuinely doesn’t have the answer  * Why perfectionism, hyper-independence, and refusing to delegate become liabilities at senior levels  * How to help a team in survival mode build base camp before asking them to climb anything  * Why stress management isn’t a perk. It’s how leaders stay capable enough to lead.  Dr. Gretchen Schmelzer:  “Moral injury is not a psychological disorder. It is a wound of identity. It’s when I don’t get to behave in a way that’s congruent with my values and with who I believe myself to be.”  Kim Bohr: "In our research around the state of organizational trust, psychological safety is one of the most fragile domains we measured, especially during disruption." Courage to Advance brings senior HR and business leaders into honest conversation about the work of leading people through real complexity. Hosted by Kim Bohr, CEO of SparkEffect. Subscribe for new episodes weekly at couragetoadvancepodcast.com [https://couragetoadvancepodcast.com/].