What happened next taught me more about emotional regulation, shame and personal leadership than any professional training ever has.

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When the call came from school, I wasn’t prepared. Within seconds, every leadership skill I teach for a living went quiet and something else took over.

Shame.
Fear.
The desperate need to still be seen as a good mother.

This episode is one of the most personal things I’ve ever shared on the podcast. My son gave me his full permission to record it.

And when I shared what had happened with my team, they kept telling me: other people need to hear this. There is so much in this story that goes beyond our family. So here it is.

WHAT THIS EPISODE IS ABOUT
This isn’t just a story about a school suspension.
It’s a story about what happens when the people we love most activate the deepest parts of us.

It’s about the gap between who we are at work and who we become at home.

About shame, triggers, and what emotional regulation actually looks like when it’s tested in real life, not in a training room, but at the kitchen table and in a school meeting that was far more charged than any boardroom I’ve sat in.

And ultimately, it’s about what it means to Lead on All Fronts® – in real life, when it’s tested most.

WHY LISTEN

If you’ve ever snapped at your kids and thought, I would never speak to my team like that. This episode is for yo tto help you understand why it happens and what to do differently.

If you’re succeeding at work but secretly feel like you’re failing at home. High achieving at work and struggling at home are not contradictions. They’re connected. This episode shows you how.

If you’re exhausted from holding everything together and home is where it finally unravels. The reason home hits differently isn’t weakness. It’s the people you love most triggering the parts of you that work never touches. This episode explains why and what changes when you understand it.

If you’ve ever felt judged as a mother and let that judgement drive your decisions. I felt it in the school car park, in the corridor, in my own head before I’d even spoken to my son.

This episode is the honest account of what shame does to us and how to lead from a different place instead.

WHAT YOU’LL HEAR IN THIS EPISODE

— Why home is often the hardest room to lead in and why that’s not a failure

— What shame does to our nervous system and why it arrives before logic

— How to regulate yourself before you respond and why that changes everything

— Why the people we love most can trigger us most deeply

— What Leading on All Fronts® looks like when it’s tested most

LISTEN NOW

You can read the transcript here.