The better your work gets, the more people show up wanting a piece of it. Most of them mean well. Some of them don't, and the hard part is they can look exactly the same. This episode is about the opportunist. The person who studies how to look like your friend, says the perfect thing at the perfect moment, and positions themselves right next to your success the second there's something to gain. I get into how to tell the loyalist from the opportunist, why your decency is the exact thing they...
Jun 9
10 min
Most leaders don't hold back because they lack vision. They hold back because they've read the room and understood the consequences of going too far. In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim introduces one of the most underexplored and least discussed dynamics in organizational leadership — the tempered leader. The one who can see exactly what the organization needs. Who believes in the work deeply. Who has the capacity and the conviction to do something significant — and who operates every...
May 27
17 min
Most leaders don't avoid problem employees because they don't care. They avoid them because they don't know if they'll be supported when they do something about it. In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim gets honest about one of the hardest parts of leadership: dealing with the employee who is quietly destroying your team's culture while the organization looks the other way. She shares her worst leadership story, including what it felt like to return from maternity leave and walk directly...
May 20
14 min
The Sunday scary is real. And leaders get it too. In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim gets honest about her own Sunday scary. What it looks like, what it's actually pointing at, and why it has almost nothing to do with not liking the work. She breaks down the real math of the weekend, why Saturday is not actually a day off, and what it means when the dread shows up right on schedule at six o'clock Sunday evening. But this episode isn't just personal. It's a leadership accountability co...
May 18
12 min
We spend a lot of time talking about what leadership gets wrong. Today we are celebrating what it gets right. In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim flips the script and names the green flags. The real, observable signs that tell you without any doubt that you are in the presence of a leader who gets it. Not the theory. Not the framework. The actual things you can see and feel when great leadership is happening. From the leader who steps back and lets their person shine to the team that s...
May 15
9 min
Have you ever watched someone completely transform the moment power walked into the room? In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim opens with a scene from a church hallway that never left her, and unpacks what it revealed about one of the most quietly destructive dynamics in organizational life. Proximity to power. From DC events to Miranda Priestly, Kim traces how the instinct to perform for power shows up everywhere, and what happens to an organization when that performance becomes the cu...
May 14
12 min
Someone on your team used your own words against you. Not because you did something wrong. Because you did something human. In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim gets honest about one of the most painful and least discussed realities of leadership: character assassination from within. What it actually feels like. Why it happens. And why loneliness is almost always the door that gets left open. Kim introduces the Airbnb framework for thinking about access, what your team should and should...
May 4
9 min
In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim gets honest about what it actually feels like to shift culture in an organization that isn't ready for it. The resistance. The moments you question whether the change was even necessary. The unexpected things behind the wall that cost more and take longer than anyone planned for. Kim breaks down why most culture change efforts stall before they finish, the focus group trap that derails more strategies than people realize, and the three things that ac...
May 4
9 min
In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim gets honest about one of the least discussed realities of stepping into a leadership role, inheriting a team you didn't choose. The resistance. The uncertainty. The employees who had already made up their minds about you before you walked through the door. Kim breaks down why inherited team dynamics are harder than anyone prepares you for, what to do in those critical first weeks, and the honest truth about what happens when you do everything right a...
Apr 30
11 min
In this episode of Leadership After 5, Kim gets direct about people pleasing in leadership and why it doesn't stop with new managers. At the executive level it gets quieter, more sophisticated, and more dangerous. Kim explores the fine line between good leadership and approval seeking, the parenting analogy that reframes it all, and why the leaders who are remembered aren't always the ones who were liked, but the ones who were trusted.
Apr 29
9 min
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