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 and some people still don't come around.

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.

It’s a question most leaders never stop long enough to answer. And the longer you go without answering it the more the role starts to answer it for you.

In this episode of Leadership After 5, I’m getting honest about something I experienced firsthand: what happens when your identity and your leadership role become the same thing. The blind spots it creates. The connections it costs you.

The quiet question underneath it all: am I enough outside of this role?

This one is for the leader who has ever felt naked outside of work. Who has struggled to relate to people when the corporate conversation stops. Who has built so much of themselves around the title that they’ve forgotten who they are without it.

You are more than the role. Let’s talk about it.