You can be successful on paper and still feel unfulfilled in your leadership. Many high-capacity women leaders are thriving in environments that reward performance while quietly suppressing perspective, intuition, and authentic influence. 

Dr. Natalie Pickering is a psychologist, TEDx speaker, and executive coach who helps women in leadership move from autopilot to agency and from performing to becoming. She has worked with hundreds of leaders, teams, and organizations around the world committed to flourishing workplaces and leadership. 

Her new book, Leading Becomes You: A Real-World Framework for Leading from the Inside Out, guides leaders into the deeper, human work beneath strategy– helping them shed the stories that drain them, reclaim the values that anchor them, and inhabit leadership in a sustainable, soulful way that is unmistakably their own.   

In this conversation, she shares why many women leaders find themselves adapting to systems that can’t keep pace with their growth, and how reclaiming identity clarity can transform the way they lead.

What you will learn from this episode:

  • Why many women leaders feel stuck despite being highly capable and successful.
  • How organizational systems can contribute to burnout, disengagement, and self-silencing.
  • The role identity clarity plays in sustainable leadership and long-term fulfillment.

“Many women are carrying this unprocessed debris from their history, whether that’s toxic leadership, relational pressure, chronic stress.”

– Natalie Pickering

Topics Covered:

01:35 – Why high-capacity women leaders often outpace the emotional maturity of the systems around them

04:15 – How women gradually adapt to unsupportive workplaces without realizing it

05:12 – Reframing burnout: What organizations may be doing to create it

06:08 – Natalie’s definition of burnout and the three signs leaders should watch for

08:35 – The inspiration behind Leading Becomes You and Natalie’s research-driven framework

09:45 – Understanding the Identity Clarity and Connection Matrix

11:05 – The Four A’s: Awareness, Acceptance, Assimilation, and Authentic Activation

14:05 – The balance sheet leaders must use to separate personal challenges from organizational dysfunction

17:40 – What to examine when you feel stuck in your role or career

18:55 – The connection between values misalignment and leadership fulfillment

20:05 – Natalie’s Identity-First Leadership Assessment and how it helps leaders gain clarity bit.ly/IFLSelfAssessment   

21:00 – The hidden cost of leading without identity clarity—and why self-erosion matters

Key Takeaways:

“You can’t burn out if you weren’t on fire.” — Natalie Pickering

“I want every leader to have their own approach, their own identity, instead of borrowing someone else’s leadership story.” — Natalie Pickering

“The hidden cost of leading without identity clarity is self-erosion.” — Natalie Pickering

Ways to Connect with Natalie Pickering:

Ways to Connect with Sarah E. Brown:

 

Full Episode Transcript:

(AI helped us put this together, so if you see any weird grammar or missed words—just know we nailed it during the actual chat.)

Natalie Pickering

Many of the women I’m working with are high capacity, relationally intelligent leaders. 

They are operating in environments where performance is valued more than perspective. 

So they’re expected to deliver outcomes, but the systems they’re working in are not comfortable with their strength, their insight, this relational capacity. 

So their leadership presence is outpacing the emotional maturity of the system.

Sarah E. Brown

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the KTS Success Factor podcast for women, where we talk about challenges senior female leaders face in being happy and successful at work. 

I’m your host, Dr. Sarah E. Brown. 

My guest today is Natalie Pickering. She’s a TEDx speaker, organizational psychologist, and executive coach who helps leaders trade performance pressure for authentic influence. 

For more than two decades, she has partnered with executives, founders, and teams across healthcare, education, startups, and global organizations to navigate change, strengthen culture, and lead with courage. 

She is the founder of the Becoming Institute, a leadership development firm dedicated to helping organizations scale without losing soul. 

Her new book is Leading Becomes You, a real-world framework for leading from inside out. 

Welcome, Natalie. 

Natalie Pickering

Thank you so much. Good to be here. 

Sarah E. Brown

It’s great to have you. So I know you’re working with both genders, but when you’re working with female leaders or aspiring leaders, what is the biggest challenge you help them to address?

Natalie Pickering

I think the challenge is twofold. Many of the women I’m working with are high capacity, relationally intelligent leaders. They are operating in environments where performance is valued more than perspective. 

So they’re expected to deliver outcomes, but the systems they’re working in are not comfortable with their strength, their insight, this relational capacity. 

So their leadership presence is outpacing the emotional maturity of the system. 

That’s one angle. 

And then related to that, I think many women are carrying this unprocessed debris from their history, whether that’s toxic leadership, relational pressure, chronic stress. 

So they’ve got this unprocessed history that collides with that unsupportive system.

Sarah E. Brown

Okay, so this is Sarah’s words, but I want to make sure I understood the first point that you were making. Are you essentially saying that women are more emotionally mature than the organizations in which they’re working?

Natalie Pickering

Yes, and the research bears this out, right? 

When we look at what women in leadership bring to their position and how they are more equipped, depending on the situation and the context, this is what we see. 

And the system does not have the capacity to keep pace with them, basically.

Sarah E. Brown

Wow. 

All right. It begs the question, what do you do about that?

Natalie Pickering

It does. I mean, I think at some point, right, and a lot of this comes up in coaching, we do have to run the balance sheet, right? 

So there are strategies I think women can test drive to gauge, is this environment able to keep pace with me? I think there’s two questions. 

Does the environment have the capacity or the willingness to keep pace with me? Right. That would be kind of a mini decision making framework. 

And if not, I think we have to ask a different kind of question.

Sarah E. Brown

Like, then where do I go or do I or do I lower my expectations?

Natalie Pickering

Exactly. 

I mean, and that’s the rub. Right. If we’re talking about identity first leadership, does she get to be all of who she is as a leader in this environment.

Sarah E. Brown

Okay, and what do you see is the biggest mistake she makes before she starts working with you?

Natalie Pickering

Primarily that she’s waited too long to reach out. 

And I think that is a self-protective delay, right? It’s not a mistake, but the women I support are deeply capable.

So that capacity allows them to maintain for a very long time. It’s the frog in the kettle, right? 

And so what happens, they adapt to that unsupporting environment and they don’t realize how much they’ve adapted. 

Sarah E. Brown

And give me an example of how they would have adapted. 

Natalie Pickering

So they’re not speaking up in making decisions. Maybe they’ve lost, you know, their healthy assertiveness. They’re not challenging the status quo, right, because the system norms don’t permit them to do so. 

So there’s this gradual, subtle adaptation over time. And often they don’t even realize that that’s happened.

Sarah E. Brown

So it’s not unusual for leadership coaches to deal with the problem of women not speaking up, you know, and that’s typically characterized as a kind of a deficit or a flaw in the woman. 

And you’re kind of coming at this from, well, maybe it’s an adaptation to a dysfunctional organization. 

Did I get that right?

Natalie Pickering

Exactly. I mean, even when we look at burnout, right, and We have to ask the question about burnout. Right. 

And when I work as an internal organizational psychologist, I’ll get referrals. Will you please help this person with their burnout? Will you please coach this person with their burnout? 

I am asking the question, what are we doing? What are you doing as a system to burn this person out? Right. It’s high performers who are burning out. High performers carry 400 percent of the workload and you can’t burn out if you weren’t on fire.

Sarah E. Brown

Okay. 

And what do you, what do you use as your working definition of burnout?

Natalie Pickering

So I like Maslach’s. I mean, that’s the, you know, classic definition of burnout. 

So it’s a three pronged emotional exhaustion, right? I’m just, that’s typically what people present with. 

And then there’s the depersonalization, right? 

Like that disconnection from the work. And then the loss of efficacy, which is nothing I do makes a difference here.

Sarah E. Brown

And then first step for the woman who’s experiencing this again because of a dysfunctional environment that she has, appropriately or inappropriately, depending on your point of view, adapted to.What does she do?

Natalie Pickering

It’s step one. Actually, this is in the book, right? 

Step one is awareness. So and honestly, there’s so much relief when we have this conversation that it’s not exclusively a me issue or exclusively a you issue. Sure. 

Are there factors, right, that we can address individually around burnout? 

And we’re looking at the system. We’re looking at the climate. We’re looking at this environment that doesn’t have, again, the capacity or the willingness to support you effectively, to grow you effectively.

Sarah E. Brown

Mm-hmm. Okay. 

Well, since you brought up the book, I’d like to switch to it for a minute. What inspired you to write a book?

Natalie Pickering

So I wanted to give everyone in the leadership their own field guide. I did my own research. 

So I took the notes that my own coaching clients sent to me and I did a grounded theory theme, right? 

Here’s what they say their issues are. Then, I took my notes from all of those sessions. 

And what I discovered is that we were looking at identity clarity, and connection. That’s the framework for the book. 

So the first part is, where are you in that matrix? The second part of the book is, what do you do, right? How do you get from, I call it the petrified forest, the swamp, and the wasteland. How do you get from those toxic inner terrains back to the flourishing meadow? 

I want every leader to have their own approach, their own identity. 

So instead of reading all of the books that other leaders have written about what’s been successful for them, I want you to write your own.

Sarah E. Brown

Okay. 

And so you mentioned earlier that awareness is the first step. 

So that identity thing that you were talking about is the first step. 

Is that the awareness piece that you’re addressing? 

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Natalie Pickering

Yeah, so the matrix is on one axis, identity clarity, and then the other axis is connection. 

So if you have low identity clarity, low connection, you’re in the swamp.

If you have, if you’re locked in, we see this often with senior leaders, their identity is locked into the petrified forest, and then burnout lives in being hyper-connected to everyone else’s agenda. So there’s the terrains. 

To move from those terrains, it’s the four A’s, and the first A is awareness, then acceptance, then assimilation, then authentic activation. 

And I break down each of those steps with some self-assessment, reflection questions, those kinds of things.

Sarah E. Brown

Okay, so once you read the book, you know which quadrant you’re actually in.

Natalie Pickering

Exactly. So the first part is figuring out where you are, and that’s just to honestly normalize the experience, right? I think it can feel confusing. 

Sometimes leaders feel lonely in this experience, and just giving them a language and a framework. 

Then, second half of the book, what do we do with that?

Sarah E. Brown

Okay. And your experience as a coach and as a psychologist was critical for how you went about this because you actually went about analyzing your own data.

Natalie Pickering

Exactly. 

So I looked at my own research and I’m also clinically trained. 

So my clinical specialty is in post-traumatic stress disorder and moral injury. Then I pivoted into the organizational development space some years ago in an attempt to bring health to leadership because I was seeing in the organization where I worked what was bringing people to work with me in EAP. 

So I was an Employee Assistance Program. I built the program, ran the program, kept my own data there. And so it was very strategic. 

My, all of these workers who are keeping the lights on and feeling terrible, these are supervisor leader issues. 

How do I bring health upstream so that the whole system gains? 

Sarah E. Brown

So when you’re coaching a client, obviously you’re helping them with this awareness piece and what they need to do for their own health.

But how does that translate into what happens in terms of improving the environment in which they’re working?

Natalie Pickering

Right, so this is where we have to build the decision-making framework and maybe some of those non-negotiables, right? 

So there’s me, there’s you, the organization, and there’s us. 

So there is a section later in the book after they’ve walked through their four A’s where I list what are the organizational factors that contribute to petrified forest? What are the organizational factors that contribute to wasteland, swamp, etc.? So then the reader can hold this balance, so to speak. Is it me? Is it them? Is it us?

Sarah E. Brown

Okay. And then make an informed decision about what to do about it. Exactly. Exactly. So you also talk in your book about something called debris. What do you mean by that? Emotional and psychological debris.

Natalie Pickering

It comes in so many forms and I’m, this is informed from my clinical history, right? And seeing what the impact is on women, on leaders, if they haven’t metabolized, right, that debris, if they haven’t gotten honest about how it’s impacted them. 

Maybe they haven’t been in a system where it’s safe, right, to ask those kinds of questions. 

And I would say moral injury is one of the biggest contributors to debris. That term became popularized in the pandemic. 

I actually learned it from combat veterans first, then healthcare workers. Now I use it in leadership. And it’s basically a betrayal. by the command system or by the leadership. 

So I’ve been betrayed by the system. I’ve been betrayed by the team. I’ve been betrayed by this leader. 

And that comes in so many flavors, right? 

Maybe someone is keeping you in your position and not supporting your growth because you’re incredible and they’re not sharing you with anyone. On and on and on. 

Many examples of this.

Sarah E. Brown

Okay, got it. 

So many of my clients… my clients come to me because they feel stuck. They feel stuck in their role and generally they don’t know what, they don’t have clarity on what would be the next right move for them or even what environment would be best for them. 

So when you’re working with a client and they feel stuck in their leadership or just stuck, period, where do you tell them to start?

Natalie Pickering

So it may be that we have to clear debris, right? Because the debris is keeping them stuck. 

So it may be a deeper level question. It may be that they’ve, if we’re talking about identity clarity, they’ve lost sight of that, right? We talked about this over-adaptation to the environment. Well, are your values still congruent? Right? That’s a key sort of element. 

Is there misalignment that has happened as you’ve grown as a leader that maybe you didn’t even recognize right now? 

So again, it’s holding that tension of the leader, who she is, what’s important to her, how she wants her influence to look and feel, right? I think there’s also a fulfillment question here, right? 

I think the leaders, just by their nature of serving, defer to their teams and defer to, you know, how they’re doing. 

Am I growing my people well? And they lose sight of their own fulfillment. 

And I think until they come to talk to us, they may not even realize how empty things are feeling. And I think sometimes that’s the stuckness. 

Sarah E. Brown

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. OK. We had emailed back and forth about this prior to this interview. We both like assessments and you have your own version of an assessment. 

You want to talk about that and what you’re offering listeners?

Natalie Pickering

Yeah, absolutely. 

So I’m building out a more comprehensive version of this. 

But yes, as a psychologist, you know, we have an assessment for everything. 

But it’s an identity first self-assessment reflection guide. 

So just a few questions on that matrix that I mentioned. 

So a few questions on identity clarity, a few questions on connection. Just to give an intro and a taste, right, for what that matrix looks like, is that part of their stuckness, to your point? 

And then there’s some reflection questions in there that they can use. I think it would be great as an end of the year kind of tool or a new year visioning kind of tool.

Sarah E. Brown

Okay, great. 

I will include the link in the show notes so that people can actually access this. 

So Natalie, what question did I not ask you that I should, that will help my audience understand what might be causing them to feel dissatisfaction in leadership right now or getting there?

Natalie Pickering

I think, so the question I would ask is, what’s the hidden cost of leading without identity clarity? 

And the answer is self-erosion, which may manifest as stuckness, right? In what you’re saying, lots of different ways that self-erosion shows up. 

And women can still succeed, sometimes brilliantly, but I think they lose access to their intuition, which is what gives them an advantage in leadership situations. I think they lose joy. I think they lose contentment. They talk about leadership feeling heavier, performative, decision making is harder. 

So I think identity clarity is actually preventive. 

I think that all leader development programs should have a foundation of identity first leadership before we’re building competencies. 

And ultimately it’s costing wholeness and flourishing to the leader.

Sarah E. Brown

Well, Natalie, thanks for being with me today. 

And for those of you listening, I commend Leading Becomes You, a real world framework for leading from the inside out.

And check out that assessment online. 

Thanks for listening to the KTS Success Factor podcast for women. If you like what you are hearing, please go to iTunes to subscribe, rate us and leave a review. And if you would like more information on how we can help women in your organization to thrive, then go to www.sarahebrown.com. You can sign up for our newsletter, read show notes and learn more about our podcast guests, read my blog, browse through the books, or contact us for a chat. Goodbye for now.

Sarah E. Brown
Sarah E. Brown