When Capable Women Overgive at Work
A 60-second leadership reset for navigating the moment generosity becomes overgiving.
People-pleasing in leadership often looks like generosity. You step in to help, offer your expertise, and make sure the experience succeeds for everyone involved. Only later do you realize the role you were playing was never clearly defined.
That realization came for me during a workshop where I had been invited by my coach to teach. The invitation came only two weeks before the event, so there was little time to formally structure roles. My instinct was simply to jump in and help make it work.
I prepared carefully. If I am honest, I probably overprepared.
Because I facilitate transformational experiences for a living, I naturally began helping her think through the structure of the session. We talked through her goals and replaced talking-head segments with deeper experiential work.
I was in my usual mode of owning the whole.
During the two-day event I led several sessions and coached participants throughout. In my mind it felt like shared leadership. At least that’s how I understood it.
After the event ended, I expected a debrief. A place to talk through what worked and what did not. Instead she sent a message thanking me as if I were simply one of the participants.
Her note said:
“I hope you were also able to glean some aha moments during the time we spent together.”
When I read it, my stomach sank.
She had not invited me as a leader. She had invited me as a favored participant.
From her perspective, she was doing me a favor. From my perspective, I believed we were collaborating as equals.
Neither of us were wrong. But our expectations were completely different.
The Pattern Beneath It
Many capable women recognize this moment only in hindsight.
Looking back, I could see the familiar pattern.
The Pleaser in me jumped in quickly. I rationalized away my questions and went with the flow to avoid delays or uncomfortable conversations.
The Prover made sure my expertise was visible with my usual “knock it out of the park” effort.
The Perfectionist wanted the entire retreat to be structured the right way, which created more work than necessary on my part.
In the urgency of the situation, I sidestepped my usual clarity and defaulted to these pressure patterns.
Leadership often begins with noticing that misalignment.
And this is where most people move too quickly, because the instinct is to explain, justify, or smooth it over instead of seeing what actually happened.
Inside this week’s Ritual, I walk you through how to catch this in real time and reset before you overextend, including the exact prompts I use when generosity starts to turn into overgiving.