Pour your favorite sip.

Labor Day weekend always feels like a little dividing line to me. Summer isn't technically over yet, especially here in Florida, but September still carries that familiar sense of returning to rhythm.Does anyone else remember when school started after Labor Day?

Our summer Saturday Sips wandered through family, caregiving, fairness, perfection, bias, work, and even a few recipes along the way. This fall, I want to shift our focus a bit.

Over the next few months, I’m going to use myLeadership Cake Frameworkas the backbone for a Fall Cake Framework Series: looking at what women leaders are being asked to carry, what quietly drains their capacity, and what support needs to grow underneath them so they can stay, advance, and lead well.

Not easier or less consequential leadership.Sustainable leadership.

And I want to begin with something deceptively simple:

The job description may not have changed. But the job has.

When the role quietly gets bigger

This has been top of mind with two executive clients recently. Both are highly capable women, and both are carrying more than their roles were originally designed to hold.

Organizational changes create gaps in oversight. Legal and compliance responsibilities don't disappear simply because an organization is understaffed. Hiring and onboarding take time. And leaders are continually deciding whether partially finished work from someone still learning is actually more helpful than simply doing it themselves.

Then there’s the human side.

Capable women oftencando more. Their care for their teams can also make them reluctant to add more work to people who are already stretched.

Besides, it’s only for a short while, right?

Until temporary becomes normal.

Soon she’s covering the open position, handling the employee everyone sends her because she can navigate difficult conversations, carrying the project that doesn't quite belong anywhere, mentoring others, smoothing culture issues, and becoming the person people seek out because they know she will listen.

What has actually come off her plate?

Often, very little.

Competence has a strange reward

One pattern I see is that the people we trust most can become the people we load most heavily.

She's capable. She'll figure it out. She's good with people. Everyone trusts her. She won't let it drop.

Each sounds like praise, and usually it is. But put enough of them together and competence can quietly become an organizational staffing strategy.

I know something about that personally. During one season of leadership, I remember being praised because“no one could get as much done as Dawn.”

I received that as a compliment. But what did that output cost me and my family, and what happened to my ability to think creatively about what was coming next when nearly all my capacity was consumed by today?

Being able to carry more doesn't necessarily mean someone should keep being given more.

The top of the cake keeps getting heavier

This is what the top layer of my Leadership Cake Framework represents: expectations.

Results. People. Culture. Change. Relationships. Performance. Visibility.

High expectations aren't the problem.

The problem is when the top layer keeps getting heavier while little is removed and too little is added underneath to support the added weight.

Research on job demands and resources has shown this for years. High demands are not automatically harmful. But when demands increase without enough autonomy, support, clarity, time, staffing, or development, strain rises.

For women, there can also be work layered onto the formal role that is particularly easy to miss: mentoring, emotional support, relational repair, culture-building, and keeping people connected.

Important work. Real work. But often not work anyone has formally accounted for.

Before we tell her to manage her time better...

When a capable woman says she is overloaded, our first instinct may be to help her become more efficient: delegate better, prioritize, set boundaries, say no.

Some of that may help. But before we turn the solution back toward her, leaders need to ask:

Has the organization designed a job that a reasonable human being can actually do?

If a new priority was added, what was removed? If she is covering another role, for how long? If her responsibilities expanded, have authority, staffing, resources, or compensation grown with them?

And if everyone depends on her, is that simply evidence of her excellence, or is it telling us something about the organization underneath her?

Questions to carry into the week

• What has been added to your strongest leaders' roles in the past two or three years?

• What was actually taken away when those responsibilities were added?

• Who has become the person everyone depends on?

• Are you praising someone's capacity while quietly consuming all of it?

That last one makes me squirm because sometimes we overload people preciselybecausewe value them.

Dawn's Fall Cake Takeaway

As we move into this Fall Cake Framework Series, I want to give you something practical to take with you each week.

Instead of our summer recipe, I'll be sharing aone-page of Dawn's Fall Cake takeawayyou can save, print, or share with your leadership team or a woman leader you care about.

This week's companion helps you notice what has quietly been added to a role, where support may not be keeping pace, and what to askbefore overload becomes a retention problem.

LEADERSHIP SUSTAINABILITY CHECK-IN

Before you finish your cup

High-performing women rarely need us to tell them how to work harder. Leaders can instead notice when capability has become the reason the organization keeps asking for more.

The answer isn't lower expectations. It is making sure theauthority, resources, priorities, and support underneath those expectations grow too.

Because sometimes the woman isn't struggling with the job she accepted.

She's struggling with everything the job quietly became.

Warmly,
Dawn

Research Note

Bakker and Demerouti's Job Demands–Resources research shows that rising demands require corresponding resources such as autonomy, support, feedback, staffing, and development to sustain engagement and reduce strain. Research on invisible and low-promotability work also shows that women are often asked to carry mentoring, emotional labor, and organizational “housework” that is important but undervalued.

Wondering what's happening beneath the surface in your organization?

My freeKnow Before They Goassessment helps leaders identify early signs that high-impact women may be stalling, disengaging, or questioning whether leadership is still worth the cost.

KNOW BEFORE THEY GO ASSESSMENT