I think every time a leader contemplates an exit, they start at the question "what do I owe my team?" It's hard to step away from something you built. It's hard to step away from people who decided to come with you.

I think it's a good question to ask. But I think you also have to ask what you owe yourself.

I keep coming back to this idea of the leader as a force multiplier. Which makes the core question: what are you multiplying? Are you a positive multiplier on a positive situation? Or are you a shock absorber of dysfunction, trying to be a 0.X multiplier on the chaos that ensues?

That one is exhausting. That one, you know exactly what the people you leave will be dealing with - because it's what you were dealing with. Probably some things will fall apart. Is it your responsibility to prevent that? Or have you been over-functioning to offset it for too long?

Although leaving my last job was a hard decision, I didn't agonize over it. I had this deep knowing that I had come, done what I intended, and left things as well as I could. I wrote down my list of predictions. Did the best handover I could. And then, got on with my life.

It took me time - and a few nightmares - to realise that I was actually quite burnt out, and it had been making me pretty emotionally withdrawn. Enjoyed a little too much hearing about the failures that I had been calling for a while. Finally, in the past few weeks, I feel like I've escaped the forcefield, that I've reached the new place from where I build something new, something exciting, something mine.

I don't really like poetry, except for one poem. The Mary Oliver one, "what do you want to do with your one wild and precious life?"

In January I knew more about what was not this, that I did not owe anyone my one wild and precious life. Now, it's June, and I'm in a space where I'm asking, is it this? Is it this? Sorting things into the yes, no, maybe, if there's a good reason piles. DRI goes in yes. The LSE MBA Essentials course finished, and more structured learning of that type goes in maybe.

Here's what I'd ask someone starting to think about what they owe themselves.

What's your timeframe? A bad day is a bad day. A bad week, a bad week. You can console yourself through those, and maybe should because this industry is in turmoil, the job market is terrible and not every rough patch is a signal. But notice when the timeframe you're consoling yourself on has gone for too long. When "I can get through this week" became a way of life. When I looked at the biggest problems for 2026 and they were the ones I'd spent 2025 banging my head against... I knew I didn't want to do that again.

What level of disruption is okay? I had a plan to tie everything up in a neat bow. I didn't get to execute it, and now I'm grateful, because it meant I got on my way sooner. There is no tying it neatly anyway. If you're good at your job, and hard to replace, you can't prevent the problems your absence will create. You can only mask and delay them.

When will you be ready? If you wait so long that it would not be worse for people when you leave - if you've worn down to where your leaving is a relief - that's not noble. You didn't protect anyone. You traded some months of stability for some severity of burnout - was it worth it? This last job, I think I left on schedule. The job before it, the burnout was worse - but it was 2020, wasn't everything? But, I wonder now if I should have left sooner; the multiple friends staging interventions was a flashing red light, not a mild suggestion.

The benefit of more emotional energy and control over my time is reconnecting with people. It's a reminder that leaving a job is not leaving the people. The job ends. The career doesn't, and more importantly, life continues. Some relationships end, but not all of them, and you can't really predict how things will play out over time. One of the things I'm proudest of across my whole career is how many people I've worked with at two different companies. One person, three. So many of us reunited between my last two jobs that it was not so much leaving the people, but leaving first, and creating something they joined me in later. This time, who knows. Maybe down the line, I will join them somewhere.

Capitalism says your life is your measure of your output. Mary Oliver put it differently. All in all, I'd bet on life advice from a poet over capitalism.

-Cate

What I'm doing

• Our first cohort of Navigating the AI Shift has been a blast. It's been fantastic to see people create space for their emotions, and move through them to exploration and play. Our most fun course yet, and due to the popularity we're kicking off a second cohort on Monday. If you know someone who would benefit, please pass it along.

• driyourcareer.com has a new look. It started as one stuck piece of marketing copy and turned into a whole new design system, home page, and landing pages... and then an internal refresh too, just because I could. I wrote about the joy of scope creep, and finding the win.

• Inspired by this, I progressed down a Claude design rabbit hole and refreshed everything. cate.blog and What Raccoon also have an updated - and aligned - look and feel. Spending more time on this has helped me challenge my uncritical acceptance of all things visual, although I have to say that navigating the visual refresh on WordPress was much worse than I anticipated... but it's nice to see things looking more polished.

• Continuing to learn all things infrastructure with Twill. I wrote about changing my mind on something - I had new information but hadn't updated the plan... and realized it was time to make a new plan. Terrifying, but clarifying. Admitting when your opinion has changed, and why, is an underrated leadership skill.

• I've been quietly adding more coaching clients this year, expanding what I thought of as my "profitable hobby" (since I took the CoActive training in 2021) into a more meaningful part of portfolio life. If you're looking for a coach, or know someone who is, I still have a little capacity. I'm also paying it forward by being part of this initiative.

• Finishing up MBA Essentials - 10 weeks, and honestly a lot. How hard it was made me glad I'd put it off, because I really don't know how I would have done it on top of a full time job. But pleased both with what I learned and my overall score (high nineties) - I live for the validation 😆

• Spoke on a LeadDev panel about the high cost of AI immaturity, on how to work out where your org actually sits on AI adoption and what it takes to move forward without skipping the guardrails.

What I've been reading

• Wise Effort by Diana Hill. I picked it up after hearing her on the Happiness Lab. Her thing is that energy, not time, is the real constraint - which echoes what we talk about across DRI courses, as well as many times I've got in my own way.

• Guidelines for Respectful Use of AI by Camille Fournier. Can't believe it still has to be said, but "don't ask someone to review what you haven't reviewed yourself" is a rule to live by.

• Four Levels of AI-Driven Engineering by Surabhi Gupta at Klaviyo. Helpful articulation of the AI learning curve and how organizations can manage it.

• The CEO of e.l.f. Beauty on Maintaining a Startup Culture While Scaling in HBR. Two underused ways to build alignment: incentives clear enough that people chase the same number, and values clear enough that people can actually decide on them. People believe what you pay them for, not what you tell them.

• Understanding Burnout by Susan Almon. A short, kind, actionable video on burnout.