I build organizations that perform through change.

For more than two decades, I’ve led and advised executive teams at Twitter, Lincoln Center, GLG, Verizon Media, Bloomberg, Deutsche Bank, and McKinsey on how to align people, strategy, and systems so that transformation doesn’t just start —it sticks.

My work sits at the intersection of HR, organizational design, and leadership behavior. I help CEOs, CHROs, and functional leaders architect operating models that accelerate performance, strengthen culture, and enable scale without chaos.

Through Leadership Rewired, I’ve worked with growth-stage and enterprise organizations to translate strategy into action, rebuild leadership alignment, and embed accountability where it matters most—at the behavioral level.

Whether leading from within or advising from the outside, my focus stays the same: clarity over complexity, systems over silos, and people at the center of every decision.

Specialties: Organizational Design | HR Transformation | Talent Strategy | Leadership Alignment | Change Enablement | People Analytics | Culture & Engagement | Executive Coaching

Allison Allen, ACC

Leadership doesn’t fail because people don’t know what to do.
It fails because the hardest behaviors are rarely practiced.

Listening.
Curiosity.
Genuine interest in other people.

We treat these like instincts, but they’re skills.
And skills don’t show up under pressure unless they’ve been trained.

In this clip from Leadership Rewired, Ken Fogarty MSc, CPSL, CEO, Dale Carnegie of Nevada, names the uncomfortable truth behind most leadership breakdowns:

Common sense leadership isn’t common practice.

🚩 Especially when conversations are tense.
🚩 Especially when stakes are high.
🚩 Especially when authority would be easier than curiosity.

Leaders don’t rise to intention in hard moments.
They fall back on what they’ve practiced.

🎙️ Ask, Don’t Tell: How Great Leaders Get Better Results
Full episode below in comments.

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
♻️ Please repost if this resonates and follow for more leadership insights.

Transforming Organizations Through People, Culture & Systems | HR & Talent Executive | Advisor to CEOs, CHROs & Growth Leaders | Founder, Leadership Rewired | Ex-Twitter, Expedia, GLG, Verizon Media, McKinsey

A regulated leader is a high-performing leader.

Calm is capacity.
Calm is clarity.
Calm is strategy.

You’ve seen it.
The leader who walks into the crisis and the room exhales,
not because they have all the answers,
but because their nervous system isn’t adding to the chaos.

They don’t need perfect information.
They just need enough regulation to think clearly
while everyone else is spinning.

High performance isn’t speed or intelligence.
It’s psychological capacity under pressure.

Consider this...
→ 71% of leaders report increased stress.
→ Stress management practices reduce burnout by nearly 2x.
→ Leaders with emotional regulation skills outperform their peers in every measure that matters...
→ execution, influence, decision-making, and team effectiveness.

Yet most leaders still treat regulation as a “nice-to-have.”
Something for wellness newsletters.
Something useful when things are calm, 
then abandoned the moment pressure hits.

Here’s what they’re missing:
→ Regulation isn’t what you do when pressure is low.
→ It’s what gives you capacity when pressure is high.

The cost of unregulated leadership:
🚩 When leaders lose capacity under pressure:
→ Panic narrows thinking — the solution becomes obvious only in hindsight
→ Decisions soothe anxiety instead of advancing strategy
→ Teams waste energy managing your emotional spikes
→ Reactivity becomes the operating system others must work around

What regulated leadership creates:
✅ When leaders stay grounded:
→ Thinking expands, you see options panic would hide
→ Strategy drives decisions instead of emotion
→ People bring you information early because they trust your steadiness
→ Teams stay focused on execution, not emotional cleanup

The pattern high-performing leaders understand:
→ Pressure doesn’t disappear.
→ Complexity doesn’t calm down.
→ Uncertainty doesn’t resolve.

What changes is your capacity to stay regulated inside all of it.

✅ The leader who can sit in a boardroom full of anxiety and not absorb it?
→ That’s who the board trusts with the hardest calls.
✅ The leader who can hear bad news without spiraling?
→ That’s who teams bring problems to before they explode.
✅ The leader who can feel the discomfort of the decision and make it anyway?
→ That’s who actually transforms organizations.

The compound effect:
Your regulation becomes your team’s capacity.

When you stay steady, they think more clearly.
When you stay grounded, they stop managing your emotions.
When you model composure, they learn how to navigate pressure themselves.

This isn’t “soft skills.”
This is organizational performance architecture.

Calm isn’t the absence of pressure.
Calm is having access to your full strategic intelligence
when pressure is highest.

👉🏾 How would your leadership change if you had full access to your strategic capacity, even under pressure?

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
♻️ Please repost if this resonates and follow for more leadership insights.

If you can’t do everything next week, 
choose the thing that will move anything.

Sunday night.
The week ahead is already too full.
The priorities are competing.
The urgent is screaming.
The important is shrinking into the background.

So here’s the question that cuts through all of it:
❓ What’s the one thing you could do next week that would unstick something else?

Not the biggest thing.
Not the loudest thing.
Not the thing that makes you look productive.
The thing that creates movement.

Here’s what I mean:
→ The conversation you’ve been avoiding that’s blocking three other decisions
→ The email you need to send that would clarify direction for your whole team
→ The 30 minutes of thinking that would save you an hour every day
→ The boundary you’ve been delaying that would protect your capacity

You already know what it is.
You’ve been circling it all week.

For the week ahead, try this:
Before you dive into Monday’s chaos, identify your one unlocking move —
the single action that, if you did it, would make everything else easier or unnecessary.

Not your whole to-do list.
Not your full list of priorities.
Just your unlock.

Then protect it like your most important meeting.
Because it is.

The difference between leaders who create momentum and leaders who manage overwhelm?
→ They don’t try to do everything.
→ They do the thing that moves anything.

And here’s what compounds:
When you consistently identify and execute your weekly unlock... 
 ✅ You stop drowning in tactics.
 ✅ You start seeing the levers that actually matter.
 ✅ You build the muscle of strategic action, not just strategic thinking.

Next week doesn’t have to be perfect.
It just has to move.

Your Sunday Practice:
What’s one thing you could do next week that would unstick something else?
→ Write it down.
→ Block time for it on Monday.
→ Do it before anything that feels more urgent.
 ✅ That’s your week.

👉🏾 What’s your unlock for this week, the one move that would create momentum for everything else?

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
♻️ Please repost if this resonates and follow for more leadership insights.

Sometimes I wonder if we’ve got leadership backwards.

We chase development like it’s a fix,
more training, 
better frameworks, 
sharper models. 

As if clarity only comes once everything is perfectly defined.

But real leadership doesn’t happen in the polished moments.

It happens in the messy ones. 
The uncertain ones. 
The days when you’re not sure if you’re doing it right.

Building resilient cultures during change isn’t about avoiding chaos.

It’s about staying present inside it. 
Letting disruption teach you instead of rushing to control it.

I’ll be honest, there are moments when leadership feels like translating strategy into action without a clear map. 

When you’re making calls with imperfect information
and trusting your judgment more than your certainty.

And maybe that’s the work.

Leaders who are willing... 
To ask questions. 
To stumble a little. 

To admit they don’t have all the answers, but stay engaged anyway.

So if you’re feeling a bit lost today, you’re not behind.

You’re in it.

And sometimes, that’s exactly where growth happens.

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
♻️ Please repost if this resonates and follow for more leadership insights.

We’re entering a world where everyone is certain, and many are wrong.

AI tells us the “truth.”
Data reinforces our beliefs.
Opinions are louder than ever.

And that’s exactly why the most important leadership skill of the future isn’t intelligence.

It’s humility.

In this clip, Ken Fogarty MSc, CPSL, CEO of Dale Carnegie of Nevada, names a principle leaders rarely practice:

If you’re wrong, admit it — quickly and emphatically.

Imagine how different teams, organizations, and cultures would feel if leaders were willing to say:

 “I was wrong.”
 “Here’s what I missed.”
 “I’m changing my mind.”

That’s not weakness.
That’s credibility.

🎙️ Ask, Don’t Tell: How Great Leaders Get Better Results
Full episode below in comments.

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
♻️ Please repost if this resonates and follow for more leadership insights.

Exhaustion makes every leader reactive.
I watched it happen in real time once.

A client — brilliant strategist, 15 years building the company, universally respected.

She called me because “something felt off.”
〰️ Her leadership wasn’t landing. 
〰️ Her team felt distant. 
〰️ Her decisions felt heavier.

She kept talking about the transformation, the pressure, the board expectations, the market demands.

After an hour, I asked one question:
“When’s the last time you slept more than five hours?”

She went silent.
She couldn’t remember.

And in that moment, it was clear:
The issue wasn’t her capability.
It was her capacity.

She’d been operating on fumes for so long that depletion became her normal.
She forgot what it felt like to lead from a full tank.

Here’s what I’ve noticed after twenty years with leaders:
Exhaustion doesn’t show up with a dramatic collapse.

It shows up in a thousand micro-reactions:
→ The midnight email that creates problems you didn’t intend
→ The meeting where your tone lands sharper than you meant
→ The decision you rush because uncertainty feels unbearable
→ The strategic conversation you can’t think clearly through because your brain simply has nothing left to give

None of these moments feel connected.
You tell yourself it’s a bad day. 
A tough week. 
A heavy quarter.

🚩 But your team?
→ They see the pattern long before you do.
→ They start managing you instead of trusting you.
→ They adjust their behavior to your exhaustion.
→ They work around you instead of with you.
And exhaustion compounds.

👉🏾 Reactive leadership creates messes that generate more pressure.

What helped that client wasn’t more strategy.
It was one question:
“What would it take for you to lead from capacity instead of depletion?”
✅ She blocked three days.
→ No email.
→ No Slack.
→ No “quick check-ins.”
→ Just space.

When she came back, she said:
“I didn’t realize how reactive I’d become until I had enough rest to feel what regulated actually feels like.”

Her team noticed before she even told them.
Not because she changed her strategy —
but because she stopped leaking instability into the system.

If something feels off this weekend…
→ Maybe it’s not your strategy.
→ Maybe it’s not your team.
→ Maybe it’s not the transformation.
→ Maybe it’s your capacity calling for protection.

The work will still be there on Monday.
The pressure isn’t leaving.
The complexity isn’t easing.
But your ability to lead through all of it?
That depends on a nervous system that isn’t running on fumes.

Weekend Reflection:
What would change if you gave yourself permission to rest, not as a reward for finishing everything, but as the foundation that makes your leadership sustainable?

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
♻️ Please repost if this resonates and follow for more leadership insights.

Sunday night. You’re looking at the week ahead and it’s already overflowing,
 → back-to-back meetings,
→ strategic decisions, 
→ team dynamics, 
→ fires to put out, 
→ problems waiting for your brain.

All of it matters. None of it works if you show up depleted.

👉🏾 You can’t think strategically when your nervous system is running on fumes. 👉🏾 You can’t regulate your responses when you’re already overstretched. 👉🏾 You can’t hold the room when you can barely hold yourself.

The week doesn’t need your exhaustion. It needs your capacity.

For the week ahead, try this:
→ Identify the 10 minutes that protects everything else.

Not the 10 minutes you hope you’ll find. The 10 minutes you will actually protect even when the week goes sideways.

For some leaders, it’s 10 minutes before the day begins to ground themselves. For others, it’s 10 minutes between meetings to reset their nervous system. For some, it’s 10 minutes at day’s end to process before going home.

It doesn’t matter when. It matters that you protect it like your most critical meeting. Because it is.

Why 10 minutes matters:
Not because 10 minutes fixes everything, but because 10 minutes of protected space changes everything downstream.

→ It’s the pause that lets you respond instead of react. → The reset that keeps stress from compounding into impatience or reactivity. → The quiet moment that prevents your team from absorbing pressure you haven’t processed yet.

Ten minutes sounds small. But it’s a leadership leverage point, a tiny hinge that moves the entire week.

🚩 Leaders who don’t protect capacity:
* Leak stress into every interaction
* Make reactive decisions they undo later
* Burn out teams trying to compensate for their depletion
* Lose clarity by Tuesday and momentum by Thursday

✅ Leaders who do protect capacity:
* Think more clearly
* Regulate better under pressure
* Make decisions from strategy, not stress
* Build environments where teams can do their best work

The difference isn’t working less. It’s protecting the space that makes the work sustainable.

Your Sunday practice:
What are the 10 minutes you will protect this week, the space that keeps you leading from capacity instead of depletion?

→ Write it down. → Block it on your calendar. → Protect it like a board meeting.

Because how you lead next week depends on it.

👉🏾 What’s your 10 minutes this week and when exactly will you protect it?

♻️ Repost to promote taking 10 minutes…
📌 Follow Allison for more leadership insight.

Consistency is a strategy. 
Intensity is a gamble.

The leader who works 80-hour weeks for six months and then burns out.
The team that launches three major initiatives at once, then abandons two.
The executive who’s “all in” until the pressure hits, then disappears.

This isn’t commitment.
It’s unsustainable theater.

Long-term leadership isn’t built on heroic sprints.
It’s built on small, compounding decisions most people never see.

Transformations rarely fail because the strategy was wrong.
They fail because leaders can’t sustain the consistency required.

These efforts are “punishing in their relentless need for consistency, consistency, consistency on the part of leadership.”

Yet intensity gets the applause.
Consistency gets ignored.

We glorify the late nights.
We praise the “whatever it takes” mentality.
We mistake exhaustion for dedication.

But the math doesn’t lie:
Intensity burns out.
Consistency compounds.

What intensity-driven leadership actually creates:
🚩 The intensity trap:
→ Unsustainable patterns that guarantee burnout
→ Teams that sprint, crash, and disengage
→ Results that spike briefly and then crater
→ Cultures built on crisis mode instead of capability

What consistency-driven leadership builds:
✅ The compounding effect:
→ Sustainable practices that grow over years
→ Teams that deliver reliably, not heroically
→ Trust rooted in predictable follow-through
→ Systems that outlive individual effort

The truth about long-term impact:
A leader who shows up at 80% for ten years
will outperform a leader who shows up at 120% for eighteen months
every single time.

Because leadership isn’t about how hard you push today.
It’s about whether your team can count on you to show up
tomorrow, next month, and five years from now.

The best leaders aren’t the weekend warriors trying to prove commitment.
They’re the ones... 
✅ Who build systems that don’t require heroics.
✅ Who create rhythms they can sustain.
✅ Who understand that presence beats performance theater.

Intensity is impressive.
Consistency is rare.

And in a world addicted to hustle culture,
the ability to show up steadily, not spectacularly,
becomes your competitive advantage.

Your team doesn’t need you to be extraordinary for a quarter.
They need you to be reliable for a decade.

That’s not less ambitious.
It’s just harder to Instagram.

👉🏾 Are you building leadership that compounds, or burning intensity you can’t sustain?

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
♻️ Please repost if this resonates and follow for more leadership insights.

You know what needs to happen.
The strategic move is obvious.
The direction is clear.
The data supports it.
Your experience confirms it.

So why isn’t it happening?

Because between knowing what to do
and actually doing it sits the hardest part of leadership:

Managing yourself.

Your strategy isn’t the problem.
The emotional discipline to execute it is.

Organizations spend millions on strategy, consultants, frameworks, offsites, planning cycles, alignment sessions.
But execution stalls for one simple reason:

Doing what the strategy requires feels emotionally uncomfortable.

Research shows emotional intelligence accounts for twice as much impact 
as IQ and technical skill in leadership effectiveness.

Yet most development dollars still go into strategic tools, 
not emotional discipline.

Most strategy failures aren’t strategy failures.
They’re self-management failures.

What happens when emotional discipline is missing:
🚩 The avoidance pattern:
→ The conversation needs to happen 
      ↳conflict feels unbearable → delay
→ The decision needs to be made 
      ↳uncertainty feels dangerous → wait for more data
→ The accountability moment arrives 
      ↳disappointing someone feels costly → soften it
→ The boundary needs protecting 
      ↳saying no triggers fear → say yes

What emotional discipline enables:
✅ Courage-based execution:
→ Having the hard conversation even when your stomach tightens
→ Making the call with 70% clarity because waiting costs more
→ Holding people accountable even when the relationship strains
→ Saying no to protect what matters, not to avoid discomfort

This has nothing to do with intelligence.
And everything to do with your willingness to tolerate discomfort long enough to lead.

The leaders who break through aren’t the ones with better strategies.
✅ They’re the ones who’ve built the emotional discipline to execute strategy
when execution feels terrible.
✅ They can recognize the spike of anxiety and not let it veto the decision.
✅ They can feel the discomfort of the hard conversation and have it anyway.
✅ They can sit inside uncertainty without manufacturing false clarity to soothe themselves.

That’s not a strategy skill.
That’s self-management.
And it’s the difference between leaders who are smart
and leaders who are effective.

Your team doesn’t need another strategic framework.
They need you to manage yourself well enough to execute the one you already have.

👉🏾 What strategic move are you avoiding right now, not because you don’t know what to do, but because doing it feels too uncomfortable?

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
♻️ Please repost if this resonates and follow for more leadership insights.

I used to think leadership was about control.
 Making sure decisions were tight. Execution was clean. 
People stayed in line.

What I’ve learned is that control creates compliance, not commitment.

Real leadership is influence. It’s built through trust. 
Through consistency. 
Through creating space where people don’t have to perform to belong.

That kind of leadership asks something harder of you.
 It asks you… 
→ To admit when you don’t have all the answers. → To stay present instead of defensive. → To lead without gripping everything so tightly.

And yes, that can feel terrifying. Because influence requires letting go of control.

But here’s what surprised me: ✅ The less I tried to control outcomes, 
✅ The more people stepped up. ✅ The more honest the conversations became. ✅ The more movement actually happened.
Influence isn’t softer than control.
 It’s stronger, and more sustainable.

And maybe, especially right now, that’s the kind of leadership that actually moves things forward.

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
♻️ Please repost if this resonates and follow for more leadership insights.

graphical user interface, text, application

Your biggest competitive advantage isn’t speed, capital, or strategy.
It’s whether you can stay steady when pressure spikes.

Imagine this:
→ A competitor launches something disruptive. 
→ The board starts asking questions. The team gets anxious. Slack lights up. → Everyone wants a fast response.
→ Most leaders reach for activity, more meetings, faster decisions, louder communication.

But the leaders who outperform don’t move faster.
They move steadier.

That steadiness? Emotional endurance.

Strategy doesn’t fail in moments of disruption.
It fails when leaders lose the capacity to think clearly through disruption.

Here’s what I see over and over:
Two organizations face the same pressure.
Same data. Same market. Same urgency.

One spirals into reactive decisions and mixed signals.
The other holds the line, adapts intelligently, and compounds trust.
The difference isn’t intelligence.
It’s endurance.

🚩 What low endurance looks like:
→ Urgency replaces strategy
→ Anxiety drives decisions
→ Teams spend energy managing leadership stress
→ “Agility” becomes chaos

✅ What high endurance enables:
→ Clear thinking under pressure
→ Consistent decisions even when uncertainty rises
→ Teams that execute instead of brace
→ Strategy that survives contact with reality

Here’s the part most leaders miss:
Emotional endurance isn’t built during crises.
It’s built before them, in small, repeatable ways.

Not retreats. Not apps. Not slogans.
But things like:
→ Protecting a small, daily reset that keeps you regulated
→ Naming pressure early so it doesn’t leak into behavior
→ Designing your operating rhythm to reduce decision fatigue

That’s not self-care.
That’s leadership architecture.

Because when pressure hits, and it will,
your team doesn’t need you faster.
They need you steadier.

👉🏾 As you head into the weekend:
What would change if you treated emotional endurance as a strategic asset, 
not a personal nice-to-have?

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
♻️ Please repost if this resonates and follow for more leadership insights.

I used to think culture was something you could shape with policies and programs.
 Put the right structures in place, and culture would follow.

What I’ve learned is that culture refuses to be engineered.
👉🏾 It lives in the stories people tell themselves. 👉🏾 The unspoken rules no one writes down. 👉🏾 The way leaders show up when no one’s watching.

And here’s the thing most leaders miss: culture isn’t static. It’s alive. 
Constantly shifting. 
Trying to control it is like trying to hold water.

So maybe the work isn’t about tightening the grip. Maybe it’s about creating space
→ for the stories to be told, 
→ for the unspoken to surface, 
→ for people to feel safe enough to be honest.

Culture isn’t built in policies. It’s built in everyday moments, 
→ how decisions are made, 
→ how conflict is handled, 
→ how people are treated when things get uncomfortable.

I’m still learning this myself.
 But I do know that real change doesn’t come from cleaning up the mess.

It comes from getting comfortable enough to stay present inside it.

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
♻️ Please repost if this resonates and follow for more leadership insights.

You can’t out-strategize emotional dysregulation.

Your transformation plan is brilliant.
The roadmap is clear.
The communications are crisp.
The milestones are defined.
Then the first obstacle hits.

Suddenly:
💥 A late-night email reverses yesterday’s decision.
💥 An emergency meeting creates more questions than answers.
💥 Priorities shift, not from strategy, but from panic.

A system can’t work when the leader running it is reactive.
When anxiety makes decisions, strategy becomes optional.

70% of change initiatives fail.
Leaders blame strategy, resources, or timing.
But here’s the truth behind the failure rate:
The plan didn’t collapse; the leader did.

73% of employees report moderate to high stress during change.
Employees experiencing change-related stress perform 5% worse.
But the real cost isn’t the team’s stress, it’s how leaders respond to their own.

When leaders can’t regulate themselves under pressure, they create:
→ Chaos their teams must absorb
→ Confusion that erodes trust
→ Whiplash pivots that look like incompetence
→ A culture where everyone manages emotions instead of executing strategy

What reactive leadership looks like during change:
🚩 When leaders lose regulation:
→ Monday’s priority becomes Friday’s “why are we even doing this?”
→ Anxiety gets translated into false urgency
→ Every problem triggers a meeting → every meeting triggers three more problems
→ Strategic pivots happen weekly because uncertainty feels unbearable

👉🏾 Teams manage the leader’s emotions instead of the organization’s change

What regulated leadership enables:
✅ When leaders stay grounded:
→ Decisions hold steady even when pressure spikes
→ Anxiety exists, but doesn’t drive strategy
→ Problems get solved without organizational chaos
→ Uncertainty is acknowledged without forcing premature answers

👉🏾 Teams stay focused on execution, not emotional cleanup

What most leaders miss:
→ Emotional regulation isn’t about staying calm.
→ It’s about staying strategic when your nervous system wants to run.
→ It’s noticing the spike of panic and refusing to turn it into policy.

✅ The leader who can feel uncertainty and still hold the line?
→ That’s who teams trust through transformation.
→ The leader who needs to “do something” to soothe their discomfort?
→ That’s how change turns into theater, not progress.

Stress management practices reduce burnout by nearly 2x.

👉🏾 Leaders who build emotional discipline create the only environment where change can actually land.

And this is the real reason 70% of change efforts fail:
Not because the plan was wrong.
But because the leader couldn’t stay regulated long enough to execute it.

👉🏾 What change are you leading right now, and how are you managing your own stress so it doesn’t become your team’s strategy?

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
♻️ Please repost if this resonates and follow for more leadership insights.

Unexpressed stress becomes unintentional harm.
Leaders leak what they don’t address.

You think you’re hiding it.
You think the team can’t tell.
You think if you just “get through the meeting,” no one will notice.

They notice.
They always notice.

Unexpressed stress doesn’t disappear.
It seeps, into tone, decisions, silence, timing, and presence.

Teams absorb what leaders won’t acknowledge.

What I’m noticing:
→ 71% of leaders report increased stress.
→ Only 29% of employees trust their immediate managers.
→ Employees with supportive managers are 11x more likely to trust their leaders.

Leaders are drowning in unspoken stress.
Teams are losing trust without knowing why.

Because stress you refuse to name doesn’t stay contained, 
it leaks into leadership in ways you can’t control.

What unexpressed stress actually looks like:
🚩 How unaddressed stress harms teams:
→ Anxiety: confusion (teams assume they caused it)
→ Irritability: vigilance (people manage mood, not work)
→ Withdrawal: isolation (silence feels like punishment)
→ Perfectionism: paralysis (fear trickles down and freezes initiative)

What acknowledged stress creates:
✅ When leaders name what they’re carrying:
→ Transparency builds trust: “Here’s what I’m managing — not your performance.”
→ Humanity spreads: teams feel permission to show up honestly
→ Clarity returns: they stop interpreting tension as failure
→ Culture shifts: problems get named instead of navigated around

What actually helps:
Leaders don’t need to process stress publicly.
But they do need enough transparency to remove misinterpretation.

Statements like:
✅ “I’m managing a lot right now. If I seem distracted, that’s me, not your performance.”
✅ “I’m under more pressure than usual this week. I’ll do my best not to let it spill over.”
✅ “My bandwidth is tighter than normal. Here’s why, and here’s what you can expect.”

That’s not oversharing.
That’s leadership that understands the cost of silence.

Stress is personal.
Its impact is not.

The moment you lead people, your inner state becomes an outer experience.

When you won’t name what you’re carrying, your team carries it for you, without context, without support, and without knowing it’s not about them.

✅ Leaders who create psychological safety through transparency 
build trust that survives pressure.
🛑 Leaders who hide their stress create cultures where everyone performs invulnerability until something breaks.

👉🏾 What stress are you carrying that your team is absorbing, and what would change if you simply named it?

📌 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
♻️ Please repost if this resonates and follow for more leadership insights.

The ReWork Group

The ReWork Group is a modern talent strategy and recruiting consultancy built for a world that refuses to sit still. We partner with high-growth startups and forward-thinking enterprises to reimagine how they attract, assess, and retain top talent. From building sourcing engines to architecting employer brands, we help companies design systems that scale without losing soul.

Our approach blends deep recruiting expertise with business-first thinking. We don’t just fill seats—we help companies build the teams that build the business. Whether it’s implementing performance-based hiring, advising on workforce planning, or coaching hiring managers to actually be hiring managers, ReWork delivers strategic impact where it matters most: talent.

Managing Partner

McAfee

Actively sourcing and recruiting, I am building Machine Learning, Data Science, and Data Engineering teams at scale to protect families and make for a safer online experience.

At McAfee, I led full-cycle recruiting across a diverse range of roles in a fast-paced, agile environment. I developed and executed targeted sourcing strategies leveraging direct outreach, referrals, social media, and professional networks to engage top talent. I partnered closely with hiring managers and HR leaders, providing market insights, guiding candidate selection, and advising on compensation, career potential, and offer strategy.

I managed the end-to-end process—from initial sourcing through interviews, pre-close, and offer negotiation—while ensuring a world-class candidate experience and maintaining strong data integrity in our ATS. I tracked key recruiting metrics like time-to-fill and pipeline health, and consistently looked for ways to increase candidate flow through Boolean search, talent communities, and proactive outreach.

Above all, I served as a trusted partner to the business and a proud McAfee ambassador, aligning every hire to the mission and culture of the company.

Talent Acquisition Partner

Twitter

I'm leading a global team of sourcers that empowers Twitter's Engineering Leadership to make critical hiring decisions with ease, speed, and confidence. By engaging with passive and active talent, this Technical Sourcing team fuels the hiring process with interested, educated, and qualified candidates.

A few of my accomplishments include:

- Spearheading the global Machine Learning and Research talent strategy at Twitter, collaborating with leadership to establish a global hiring strategy, and serving as the primary contact for all Research and Machine Learning recruitment efforts.

- Overhauled and implemented a new hiring process and interview framework, redesigning existing methodologies to tailor a system specifically suited for AI domain recruitment.

- Formulated an employer branding strategy that encompassed outreach and events (e.g., NeurIPS, NAACL, AML), enhancing the company's presence and attraction within the machine learning community.

- Identified and sourced target ML companies for potential acquisition and acquihire, coordinating with Legal, Engineering, Research, M&A teams to pinpoint suitable candidates for Twitter's strategic growth in the ML and Research sectors.

Global Technical Sourcing Manager, Talent Acquisition

Are you a software engineer looking to build and innovate? Do you see yourself stretching outside of your comfort zone?

If you are an engineer and you answered yes, let’s connect and schedule a time to chat!

Life's not about a job, it's about purpose. We believe real change starts with a conversation. At Twitter, your voice matters. Come as you are and together we'll do what’s right (not what’s easy) to serve the public conversation.

Senior Technical Recruiter

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

- Partner with hiring teams to build effective sourcing and assessment approaches with an ability to manage customer/partner expectations through a deep understanding of return on investment.
- Recruits passive candidates and gauge both technical skills and chemistry of candidates for fit, and understand candidate motivation
- Builds and maintains a network of potential candidates through proactive market research and ongoing relationship management;
- Conducts in-depth interviews with candidates and demonstrates the ability to anticipate hiring manager preferences through high offer-to-interview ratios (1 offer to every 4.38 on-site loops);
- Recommends and executes ideas and strategies that contribute to the long-range growth of diverse hiring strategies as a member of the DICE (Diversity Inclusion Champions for Equity) team, focused on implementing new recruiting processes and fine-tuning standard processes that fit within Amazon's mission to deliver raise BLNA/URM representation by 10% overall;
- Ability to proactively network and establish effective working relationships, continually seek new sourcing options and develop creative approaches to delivering candidates to the customer;
- Strong communication skills, organizational, and negotiation skills;
- Ability to execute recruiting strategy, including employer promotion in the marketplace, candidate management, diversity sourcing, and interview process management.

Senior Sourcing Recruiter

RentPath

- Owns the full candidate recruitment experience, directly responsible for the overall recruitment, on-boarding, administration, coordination and evaluation of the human resource function.
- Delivers 10+ qualified candidates each week to hiring managers with an 84% conversion from introduction to phone interview, 80% conversion from phone interview to onsite interviews.
- Develops sourcing models and plans to generate a talent pipeline.
- Works with managers to discern job requirements and then create job descriptions.
- Continually contributes to the knowledge base of the recruiting group by leading bi-weekly recruiting lunch and learns and sharing new information about industries and talent pools or profile types.

Our goal here at RentPath is to innovate the apartment rental industry through engaging user experience and exciting new technology. 

Our team of Engineers are forward-thinking, world class and not afraid of cutting-edge technology. They are building and scaling systems that drive our applications and continuously improve our engineering practices. 

From adopting new frameworks and languages like React and Elixir to implementing machine learning in voice search engines are just some examples of the innovative technology that we use.The RentPath Engineering Team is looking for new members who are excited at the prospect of working on our portfolio of brands. We are proud to innovate and create new consumer experiences backed by reliable, performant code. We are diverse in the technologies we use, ranging from Clojure, Elixir, Ruby, and JavaScript, and are investing heavily in React / Redux and the BFF pattern. We are in the process of completing our move to continuous deployment, we leverage micro-services, and invest heavily in creating components that are reusable and provide a framework for our portfolio of sites.

Apple

Check out the details for the two teams that I'm supporting here at Apple. If you have a strong Java background, we should be talking. If you have a strong NLP background, we should be talking.

What is the Apple Media Products Core Services team?

The AMP Core Services team provides APIs for our personalized and unpersonalized customer features to internal and external clients. Amongst other uses, these APIs are directly used on the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac and Windows by Apple applications such as the App Store, Apple Music, iTunes Store, Podcast, iTunes U, Videos, iBooks, Watch, Health, Maps. The nature of our work involves architecting, implementing and managing performant client server protocols. As part of providing these APIS we manage the core Content Index service and the Editorial service that houses all the meta data associated with content that we sell on the stores. We provide means to get a bulk feed of this content meta data through our Enterprise Partner Feed program.

What about the Universal Media Team?

We are seeking an outstanding applied data scientist to join the Universal Media Team responsible for building a comprehensive data platform for powering Universal Search, Siri, TV app, Safari search and more services across all Apple platforms. Candidate should be a self starting, energetic individual with excellent communication skills to effectively collaborate with all levels of the organization. She/ He will take ownership of projects that focus on topics such as classification, attribute ranking, filtering, mapping or enriching of entity records or their data. Implement standard and proprietary algorithms for handling and processing data. Use distributed data processing and analysis methodologies. Work closely with engineers to implement solutions to the highest standard possible.

Senior Technical Sourcing Recruiter

Relus Technologies

Relus Cloud is an Atlanta-based AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, trusted by hundreds of organizations nationwide. We create an “all-in” approach to AWS and we empower clients with tailored public cloud, big data, people, and training solutions.  Our practice areas include cloud migrations, DevOps, cloud managed services, big data solutions, as well as IT staffing and recruitment. Our Talent Delivery Practice focuses on filling the skills gap that exists wth many of our clients. Just like our Cloud and Infrastructure teams, we are architects, only we are building the most disruptive companies of our generation. We have a mission and immense dedication to build technology-focused companies of lasting value. 

You might find me focusing on:
► Data Science - Big Data, Hadoop, Hive, Pig, Python, R, MATLAB, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Search, Visualization
► Open Source - Ruby/Ruby on Rails, Python, Django, Flask, Perl, PHP, Scala, Go, Erlang, Haskell, Clojure, Node.js
► Java, C, C++, C#, .Net
► Front-End - HTML, CSS, JavaScript, CoffeeScript, Angular.js, Backbone.js, Ember.js, Knockout.js, jQuery
► Microsoft .NET - C#, ASP.NET, VB.NET, SQL, Azure
► Mobile - Android, iOS, Mobile Web
► Technical Operations - DevOps, QA, Automation, Operations

Lead Technical Recruiter & Trainer

Kabbage, Inc

Focused on thinking up new ways to find great people and engage our teams with great talent, I'm engaging with outstanding professionals that want to push the envelope and disrupt the status quo. At a glance, I focused on:

- Manages efficient, fast-paced, full-cycle recruiting operations which support Kabbage’s rapid hiring growth.
- Coach, develop and mentor US and India recruiting teams.
- Partners with executives and hiring managers to thoroughly understand the company's hiring goals and plan effectively.
- Create and execute a talent acquisition strategy aligned with Kabbage’s business objectives and culture in order to meet aggressive hiring goals, with a focus on proactive sourcing including social networking, internet research, cold calling, regular networking at events and conferences
Architected and installed all new new processes, optimized the transition to, and deployment and use of Greenhouse ATS, and created reporting metrics.
- Partnered with VP’s and Team Leads to build out and launch LinkedIn network referrals and direct hiring manager outreach.
- Constructs job specs for hiring managers and managed posts to Indeed, LinkedIn, Internal and external job boards. 
- Managed vendor agreements and partnerships with vendors to support executive search, recruitment marketing, employment branding, and sourcing applications.
- Implemented on-going quarterly outreach and marketing to passive candidates via Greenhouse and LinkedIn Recruiter.
- Direct and oversee the use and implementation of tools, processes, and metrics related to performance management, succession planning, talent assessment, diversity and other related activities.

Director of Recruiting

Velossent, LLC

Working with VC & PE-backed companies, I specialized in the placement of top performing executives, recruiters, technologists, and engineers nationally. Frequently with working with Founders and Executive Leadership, I worked to maintain an extremely high standard, delivering proven high achievers who mesh with their culture and direction.

Also, I love working with and leading my teams - teaching and training recruiters and sourcers to build high performance recruiting teams is my speciality!

At a glance, I focused on:
• Responsible for full lifecycle recruiting of enterprise sales executives, front-end & back-end developers, infrastructure architects, recruiters, human resource business partners, product managers, project managers, and C-suite leadership.
• Created and led practice group for placing HR & Recruiting professionals.
• Coached candidates and clients through the recruitment process in order to arrive at a mutually beneficial candidate placement. 
• Created a recruitment road map with hiring managers to set clear expectations of skill requirements, personality preferences, interview timeline and offer negotiation.
• Designed and implemented repeatable sourcing and recruiting strategy training and onboarding for new recruiters and sourcers.
• Researched and led transition from CBIZOne ATS to Bullhorn.
• Utilized LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Indeed, Meetup.com, Dribbble, BeHance, GitHub, Stack Overflow, Slack, BitBucket, Instagram, and YouTube to create and engage online talent communities.

Specifically placed a variety of professionals including:
• COO
• CTO
• Vice President of Engineering
• Vice President of Product Management
• Vice President of Human Resources
• Director of Talent Acquisition
• Director of Data Science 
• Director of Product Management
• Senior HRBP
• Product Manager 
• UX Engineer 
• Python Engineer 
• Corporate Recruiter 
• Product Manager
• . NET Developer

And many more!

Recruiting Manager

ZocDoc

Initially contracted for 3 months to drive sales management and executive leadership recruiting for NY HQ including. Contract extended through onboarding of new VP of People. At a glance:

• Focused on full-lifecycle that included sourcing, qualifying, and interviewing candidates all the way through offer and onboarding stages.
• Designed and implemented sourcing strategies via LinkedIn, Facebook, Meetup.com, Indeed, and NY networking events to grow a diverse and qualified candidate pool.
• Led team of 3 to open Phoenix, AZ, sales office in under 30 days.
• Worked with hiring managers and C-Level leadership to establish a set of core competencies for each role on the Hospital Systems team and develop effective lines of questioning to be used during interviews. 
• Partnered with VP's, Directors and team leads to build out procedural guides for two new candidate sourcing initiatives (LinkedIn network referrals and direct hiring manager outreach). 
• Utilized analytics and tracking tools inside applicant tracking systems including Taleo, Greenhouse and LinkedIn Recruiter to provide team leadership with weekly/monthly/quarterly updates on pipeline and candidate sourcing effectiveness. 
• Assisted in the development of job specs used to attract talented applicants to Zocdoc via job boards and LinkedIn.

Executive Recruiter

Hi, I’m Brian Fink — recruiter, talent strategist, and professional dot-connector.

For nearly two decades, I’ve helped startups, scale-ups, and global enterprises find the people who build the future. Whether it’s engineers architecting AI systems, marketers driving growth, or leaders defining culture, I specialize in recruiting top-tier talent that doesn’t just fill a seat — they raise the bar.

I’ve led searches for companies ranging from early-stage ventures to Fortune 100s, partnering directly with founders, execs, and hiring managers to close hard-to-fill roles. I believe great recruiting isn’t just about pipelines and platforms — it’s about business acumen, storytelling, and knowing when to challenge the brief.

Outside of work, I speak on hiring trends, write irreverent essays about the recruiting world, and moonlight as my daughter’s biggest fan and loudest cheerleader.

Specializations:
► Data Science - LLM (Large Language Models), Generative AI, Python, Transformer, NLP, Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Conversational AI, Chatbot Development, Sentiment Analysis, Neural Networks, Computer Vision, Signal Processing, Hugging Face, and MLOps.
► Open Source - Python, Django, Flask, Perl, Scala, Go, Erlang, Haskell, Clojure, Node.js, Elixir, Clojure
► Cloud Technologies - Kubernetes (K8s/GKE/EKS/AKS), Terraform, AWS, GCP, Azure, RedHat, On-Premise Hardware

Brian Fink

Tell the people you love that you love them. Don’t wait. Moments matter.

I bring people together to solve complex problems.

We treat life like a dress rehearsal.

We stay in the waiting room, reading outdated magazines, convinced that our name hasn’t been called yet. We tell ourselves that real life—the one where we take risks, forgive our fathers, and tell our crush we love them—starts after we get the promotion. After the kids graduate. After the market stabilizes. After we lose ten pounds.

We are actively trading the only asset we actually own—time—for a future that is statistically unlikely to happen the way we imagine.

Seneca said it best 2,000 years ago: “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.” We are pros at wasting it. We are experts at deferring joy in favor of a safety that is, at best, an illusion.

And then, the universe grabs us by the throat and reminds us that the waiting room is on fire.

We treat life like a dress rehearsal. We stay in the waiting room, reading outdated magazines, convinced that our name hasn’t been called yet. We tell

Open article: The Waiting Room by Brian Fink • 6 min read

Shout out to Trent Cotton, the person I connected with the most on LinkedIn this year. #YearinReview

No alternative text description for this image

taplio

The Battle

Allison Allen, ACC

Brian Fink

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreAllison Allen, ACC's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreBrian Fink's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Allison Allen, ACC

Brian Fink

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Allison Allen, ACC's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreBrian Fink's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreAllison Allen, ACC's LinkedIn Performance