Lorraine said she was in the middle of an AI project to streamline part of the operations. She expected great things.
Bluntly, why was she talking with me?
She could see the benefits of the project but had a big nagging “but” she couldn’t get rid of. She’d known me since I delivered multimillion pound IT projects and she was one of the suppliers I used. She had a real insight as to how I work and thought if anyone could figure out what was going on, I could. Quite a compliment.
We walked and talked. I deliberately chose the mountains of North Wales, where we walked through the cool forest and came across a lake surrounded by mountains. I knew it would be perfect, away from her always on, busy business life and would slow her thinking so she could reconnect with nature’s rhythm.
We chatted like old friends. She told me about how her business had grown and how they are market leaders in designing and manufacturing beautiful acoustic panels, natural fabrics and sustainable interior products for high-end hotels, universities and corporate workspaces. She talked about the growth struggles, her team and her A list clients to die for. She had a forward order book of more than 12 months and they still did the manufacturing in the UK.
It sounded a perfect business to me and I found myself silently questioning, “why me? I’m not hearing the problem… yet.” That so often happens, so I’ve learned to trust, go with the flow of the conversation, and the problem will appear many layers away from the initial conversation.
As we walked, I noticed Lorraine’s pace quicken slightly and I knew we were nearing the point in the conversation when she felt comfortable enough to talk about what she thought was the real problem. Her physiology changed and as it did I matched her cadence, then ever so slowly and skilfully so I slowed the pace of the walk ever so slightly to give her time to breathe and think. We rounded a corner and I saw the lake was still. By contrast Lorraine was far from still.
I could sense inside Lorraine was jumping from one thought to the next, her mind racing. I momentarily paused at a rock and she sat.
She told me about her AI projects and how she had hoped they would give her some time back to be herself again. She felt exhausted by everything going on. She said that in an assumptive way, as if I knew the complexities of her life. And then I realised something and said,
You can’t automate your way out of exhaustion if work isn’t the cause of exhaustion.
She just looked at me and I saw the tiny micro shift in her physiology, her nervous system, and then I knew her mind was shifting too, as she said, “how did you know?” I just smiled and asked whether she could say what’s really going on.
She got up in silence and walked to the edge of the lake. It had a shingle shore and she sat and told me as much of her whole story as she wanted to share.
Of course I’m not going to share details, but I can say that Lorraine is in her early 50s. Both her mother and father have health concerns and had recently been hospitalised. One of her children had moved back home temporarily. Another was struggling and needed her support financially and emotionally. Her husband was navigating his own challenges.
This was her backdrop against her growing business, which she said had leadership issues and teams not as productive or happy as she thought they were. This troubled her, as she explained she’d been on leadership training and so had her team leaders. It cost a lot of money. I knew for Lorraine to say that, the cost would have been knocking six figures.
And just when she needed her team to work strongly with her, a key client had become more demanding, which was worrying her as she stepped back in to rebuild the relationship.
She sat back, leaning on her elbows, gazed at the sky and said that somewhere in the middle of all of that was Lorraine. With a self correction of… well, there used to be.
She had realised the woman she saw in every reflection wasn’t really living her own life. She was managing everyone else’s.
“I have advisers,” she said and paused. “The problem is nobody seems to think at the same level anymore.” She wasn’t being arrogant, it was said out of professional loneliness.
Burnout just can’t happen. What am I going to do?
She stopped and looked at me so deeply and said, “I know I’m exhausted, but what worries me is that my therapist told me I’m close to burnout. That can’t happen. It just can’t. What am I going to do?”
With her permission, I explained where I saw the problem. I’d been silently analysing what she was saying and at the same time mentally examining multi-layered solutions from every angle as I untangled the strands of her business and life.
The AI project wasn’t the problem and neither was it the solution. It was a very logical and intelligent attempt to create some much needed breathing space, but it was attempting to solve the wrong problem because the source of the root cause had never been found.
I remember Lorraine being quick thinking, solutions focused and an excellent communicator. Her team loved her and she thrived on fast paced projects. So I knew her exhaustion was unlikely to be related to carrying the team, juggling a demanding client, overwhelmed with emails at midnight or worried her systems and processes were inefficient. Although, with a business sale on the horizon all that was true.
She was exhausted because she had become the emotional, practical and strategic shock absorber for everybody around her. A role she had been carrying for what she described as years. It had become her normal life. No software in the world can do that job for you.
There was another problem too, which caused even more concern. The exhaustion was seeping out of Lorraine and spilling into her business.
Lorraine was exasperated and couldn’t understand why small issues were becoming bigger issues and what irritated her even more was that no-one could give her a solution (until now). She recognised that decisions were taking her longer to make because she struggled to see things clearly enough to be decisive. There was a backlog of approvals and she knew the team confidence was falling as she became a bigger bottleneck.
And while nobody could see it on the balance sheet yet, I knew where this road led.
Exhausted leaders eventually create exhausted businesses
And with a sale on the horizon, Lorraine had enough business experience to know that a buyer doesn’t pay for a business that only works when the owner is in the building. Her love, care and passion was quietly lowering the price of her exit.
She still loved the thought of AI taking the repetitiveness and irritations out of her business. She talked excitedly about AI learning her style and being able to write an email. I smiled and said, yes but it cannot have the difficult conversation with your father about his future care.
I agreed AI can summarise the meeting, but it cannot help you navigate the guilt of missing your daughter’s event because a client crisis landed on your desk just before you were leaving the office.
And of course AI can automate the workflow, but it cannot remove the weight of responsibility you feel for your team, your family and your future.
The Collision Years
What had struck me as Lorraine talked was that the pattern was becoming obvious.
Lorraine is no longer the exception. In fact, she’s becoming increasingly typical. I meet women like her every week. Extremely capable, intelligent, successful women quietly running on fumes. Parents ageing, children needing support, business growing, teams wobbling, relationships changing, bodies changing, big decisions waiting. The pressure is immense and it silently bubbles and builds. Nobody talks about the pressure of what I call the Collision Years.
Women who, when you look at them, are doing remarkably well, but there is a truth behind the smile. I’ve written and talked a lot about this.
The collision years don’t just steal time. They silently steal your ability to rest on every level, leaving you feeling mentally, emotionally, creatively exhausted.
Most women don’t need more productivity, another app, the latest AI tool, they simple want peace of mind, need clarity and covet more energy.
Ironically, the clarity they are looking for often creates the productivity, profit and growth they have been chasing all along. When leaders stop carrying everything, create an effective system that supports them, teams grow and when teams grow, businesses grow.
And the system? What does that look like? It’s about the clarity about what matters now, it’s having someone who can see the bigger picture to untangle the knots, confidently seeing what can be put down or parked without feeling guilty. That’s a real tricky one because everything is important and the capable woman can do everything, just not all at the same time.
Women ask me where their energy is leaking, which decisions will create relief and which will create more pressure. They tell me they’ve explored yoga, meditation and the spiritual aspects of their life, but still feel exhausted.
But exhaustion is rarely a time problem. It is a symptom of a clarity, responsibility or emotional load problem that, ever so gently over a long time, settles itself in for the long haul as a nervous system regulation problem that won’t be fixed with isolated solutions. It demands a synergistic solution and that for Lorraine was also the key.
The lesson exhaustion offers is for us to go deep and go to the source to relieve the exhaustion or impending burnout.
What Actually Shifted
By the time Lorraine and I headed back down the mountain, nothing in her life had physically changed. Her business still needed leadership. Her parents still needed support. The AI project was still running, but now with a different perspective.
Yet something had shifted.
She had stopped thinking she could automate her way out of a human problem. In those few hours she had changed inside and had started seeing the real problem. We’d talked about hidden revenue opportunities and reverse engineered scenarios that would put her business in a significantly stronger position. She was aghast at how much opportunity there was in her business, money just lying there waiting to be in her bank. That took one huge weight off her shoulders.
And then, there was visceral clarity as I call it. The feeling deep inside. It’s always there and I know what it looks and feels like. The funny thing about clarity is that it rarely arrives through working harder. It arrives when you finally see what is actually going on. It’s like setting your compass to your true north. And when you unearth that level of clarity, life and business become very different.
For many women navigating the Collision Years, the first moment of clarity is realising something quite profound, which is different for everyone.
Lorraine thought she needed AI to give her time back. What she needed was clarity. Clarity does more than just reduce pressure, it improves decisions and better decisions almost always improve profit.
I said to Lorraine, you’re exhaustion has nothing to do with losing your edge, you’re feeling exhausted because you are carrying far more than anyone can see or ever imagine. The pressure is immense.
The answer is rarely to carry more. The answer is to see clearly what is not longer yours to carry and you can finally put down.
Get in touch and let’s have a confidential conversation that costs nothing, but might change everything. 30 minutes for a virtual coffee. No script. No sales pitch. Just an honest conversation between two people. Nothing to prepare… just turn up.
Love. Gail.