Pour your favorite sip.

When I was an educational administrator, I worked really long hours. I could be working late into the evening, think of a question I needed answered, and fire off an email while I was thinking about it.

There were even times I sent emails at 2:00 in the morning.

Then I would arrive at school the next day and, if that person hadn’t answered yet, I could actually feel myself wondering why.

Wowza.

I thought I was being productive and making forward progress on whatever our team needed next. What I wasn’t thinking about was what my behavior might be communicating to everyone else.

I had never told my teachers and staff, “I may work strange hours sometimes, but I don’t expect you to. Answer me during your normal workday.” And I certainly hadn’t discovered the beauty of Schedule Send yet!

Without meaning to, I was allowing my own work habits to create an expectation for other people. Later, I realized how unfair that was to employees already working very full weeks and then trying to go home and be present with their families.

These days, I still work a lot of hours (I love my job!), but I schedule those emails to arrive the next morning. I’m still working on the working less and sleeping more part. :-)

When “committed” starts to mean “always available”

My own experience makes me wonder how often organizations create an availability standard without ever naming one.

Early morning meeting. Late-night text. A call during dinner. Travel added with little notice. Vacation interrupted because “it will only take a minute.”

Leadership sometimes does require unusual hours and responsiveness. The problem begins when exceptional availability becomes the ordinary standard.

Sometimes we say we value results, but what gets noticed is who answers fastest, stays latest, rearranges personal plans, travels with little notice, or responds while supposedly off.

This is one of the Pressures in my DAWN Leadership Cake Framework. I call it the availability standard: leadership becomes quietly equated with constant accessibility, long hours, travel, or a willingness to let work outrank caregiving and recovery.

And that standard doesn’t land equally on everyone.

Researchers have a name for some of this

Building on Claudia Goldin’s concept of “greedy work,” a 2026 targeted study of a small group of women leaders in an engineering firm described “greedy leadership roles” marked by near-continuous availability, accountability for team outcomes, and frequent spillover into personal life.

It was a small study, so I would not treat it as representative of every workplace. But the question it raises is much bigger:

Have we designed senior leadership around the assumption that the ideal leader has nearly unlimited availability?

A policy doesn’t necessarily change the pressure

This is also why simply having a flexibility policy isn’t enough.

Youngjoo Cha and Rebecca Grady found that employees working in occupations where 50-plus-hour weeks were common were less likely to use paid leave, even when leave was available. Their conclusion is important: overwork norms can undermine the very policies intended to provide flexibility.

Research across 28 European countries has also found that flexibility stigma remains a barrier: negative assumptions about people who use flexible work can discourage employees from actually using those arrangements.

In other words, employees may technically be allowed to step away while simultaneously receiving the message that serious leaders don’t.

A support isn’t really a support if using it makes people question your commitment.

The problem isn’t occasional intensity

Senior leadership will not always fit neatly between 9 and 5. There are emergencies, demanding seasons, travel, and moments when good leaders choose to give more because the work matters.

But occasional intensity and permanent accessibility are different things.

A woman should not have to demonstrate ambition by being reachable at every hour. And leaders who choose to work unusual hours may need to make explicit that their personal work pattern is not everyone else’s expectation.

Sometimes changing the culture begins with something that simple.

Questions to carry into the week

• Where have we confused availability with commitment?

• What are our actual expectations for after-hours communication, travel, meetings, and response times — and have we ever said them out loud?

• Could someone fully use the flexibility our organization offers and still be viewed as equally committed, promotable, and ready for leadership?

That last question may tell us more about our culture than the policy manual does.

Your Fall Cake Takeaway

This week’s Fall Cake takeaway helps leaders examine their team’s unwritten availability rules: after-hours communication, response times, meetings, travel, leave, and whether using flexibility carries a hidden career cost.

The goal isn’t lower accountability. It is making sure we evaluate leaders by the quality of their leadership, not how continuously available they can afford to be.

WHEN AVAILABILITY BECOMES A LEADERSHIP STANDARD

Before you finish your morning cup

I wish I had understood this earlier in my own leadership.

Sometimes pressure isn’t created by a policy. It is created by what leaders model, reward, notice, and quietly expect.

So this week, perhaps we ask:

When did “committed” start meaning “always available” — and is that really the leadership standard we want?

Warmly,
Dawn

Research Notes

Choi, M., Han, M., Choi, S., et al. (2026). Greedy leadership roles: why modern organizations struggle to retain women leaders. Asian Journal of Business Ethics, 15, 189–208.

Cha, Y., & Grady, R. K. (2024). Overwork and the use of paid leave and flexible work policies in U.S. workplaces. Social Science Research, 121, 103006.

Chung, H., & Seo, H. (2024). Flexibility Stigma Across Europe: How National Contexts Can Shift the Extent to Which Flexible Workers Are Stigmatised. Social Indicators Research, 174, 945–965