Show Notes
Women are heading into the end of 2025 more stretched, more visible, and more scrutinised than ever. At the same time, the platforms we once relied on to build our reputations have shifted under our feet. This 200th episode names what’s changed, what no longer works, and what ambitious women actually need to take themselves seriously in 2026. In this milestone conversation, Mel and I get real about the three things women cannot outsource: your online presence, your strategic network, and your boundaries. We cover: * Why LinkedIn is no longer the only serious option for your professional presence * How to think about your own domain, simple websites and being Google-ready * Strategic networking that feels meaningful, not sleazy in a bar with name tags * Designing your own gatherings so you control the format, energy and purpose * Moving from passive “I hope they notice me” to active targeted outreach * Michelle’s “I do not” list and how to build your own for 2026 * End-of-year exhaustion, gendered expectations and what women can stop doing * How Lead to Soar and the podcast will evolve, including the move to Substack * A listener request for more fierce, forthright, offensive—not defensive—career advice What you’ll walk away with: * Clarity on where to invest your time online * How to build a professional presence you actually control * The truth about networking that works * The boundary-setting that protects your energy and career * What to stop doing in 2026 * Permission to go on the offensive in your leadership This episode also marks a significant shift. Lead to Soar now lives here on Substack. New episodes and supporting resources will land directly in your inbox. No algorithm decides whether you see them. (with a giant middle finger to unethical platforms that muzzle women’s voices) Perfect listening for ambitious women who are ready to stop leaving their careers to chance and start leading with intention. Listen with a pen in hand. There will be at least one thing you decide to stop doing — and one thing you’ll be ready to start — by the time the episode ends. If this episode was useful, there are three simple ways to go further: Subscribe on Substack This is now the home of the Lead to Soar podcast. Subscribers get new episodes, curated guidance from the back catalogue, and written insights to help you navigate leadership and career decisions with sound judgement. Explore the Lead to Soar Network Lead to Soar is a leadership development network for ambitious women and for organisations serious about closing the leadership gender gap. Members get access to group coaching, practical leadership tools, and a network of women who are actively working on their careers. JOIN HERE Share the episode If this resonated, share it with a colleague, manager, or friend who might need it. Leadership is shaped by what we notice, name, and talk about.
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More from Lead to Soar
HR keeps getting scapegoated for executive decisions. Trina Sunday, founder of Reimagine HR, explains why HR isn’t the empathy department and why capability isn't neutral. Mel and Michelle talk with Trina Sunday, creator of the HEART Work™ Model, about why equity and empathy are leadership capabilities that sit alongside decision intelligence and system design. Trina argues that HR leaders, and the CEOs they work with, need a clear answer to one question: what are we using our intelligence, credibility, and influence to serve? Truth Bomb: Fix the system, don’t fix women. What you’ll learn Why HR so often gets scapegoated by executive teams that don’t take accountability for their own decisions Why a seat at the table gives you proximity to power without automatically giving you influence Why leadership carries a different price depending on who is doing it, and what organisations need to examine as a result How Trina defines a boundary, and what holding hers has cost her Why Trina tells HR leaders who won’t use their influence to get out of the game About the guestTrina Sunday is a human-first leadership strategist, founder of Reimagine HR and creator of the HEART Work™ Model. She works with HR and people and culture leaders through her Game Changer HR Leader coaching program, and hosts the People Unconference (PUNC) in Perth, Western Australia. About the hostsMichelle Redfern is a gender equity strategist and author of The Leadership Compass. Mel Butcher is a consultant and facilitator with an engineering background and more than 15 years of experience. Both women are mission-driven to teach women the business, strategic and financial acumen it takes to reach leadership. Go DeeperIf this conversation put language to something you’ve been navigating without it, that’s exactly the work Lead to Soar Network members do together: https://leadtosoar.network/landing
A colleague decides to act on a workplace bully everyone else has been too afraid to challenge, after management’s own attempt to fix things made the problem worse. Michelle and Mel use the story to ask a harder question: how do you work out whether you’re actually safe enough to speak up, and what should you be asking for when you do? In this episode Mel and Michelle discuss a true story from Michelle’s network: a long-tenured bully in a 20- to 25-person team, protected for years by management inaction and then by a badly designed intervention that asked the whole team, bully included, to speak freely. A colleague, weighing their own employability and financial security against what their more vulnerable teammates stand to lose, decides to file a formal complaint and back the newly appointed manager who is trying to fix things. Truth Bomb: leadership shows up at every level of an organisation, in acts like this one, using whatever power, safety and privilege you already have on behalf of people who have less. What you’ll learn * Why sitting an entire team down together, including the person accused of bullying, and asking everyone to “be honest” is a psychological safety failure, not a fix * Why are some employees structurally unable to speak up, even when the misconduct is obvious to everyone else * How to work out whether you have enough positional power, financial security or professional standing to act safely, and why that differs from person to person * Why a woman is so often the one parachuted in to clean up a mess that several managers before her failed to address, and what that costs her * The difference between alerting someone to a problem and asking for a specific outcome, and why “what outcome are you seeking” changes the conversation * What a proper workplace investigation looks like, and why standing someone down while it happens protects everyone, not just the person who complained About the hosts Michelle Redfern is a gender equity strategist and author of The Leadership Compass. Mel Butcher is a consultant and facilitator with an engineering background and more than 15 years of experience. Both women are mission-driven to teach women the business, strategic and financial acumen it takes to reach leadership. Go Deeper If you’re weighing up whether it’s safe to speak up in your own workplace, that’s exactly the kind of decision Lead to Soar Network members work through together:
Years ago, Michelle Redfern told her manager at one of Australia's big banks that the team had a politeness problem. He told her to keep speaking up. A couple of years later she had a reputation, and one of the words attached to it was "abrasive." Mel Butcher and Michelle look at who gets to speak their mind at work and who pays for it. They cover the question every leader needs to ask (am I consulting people for better ideas, or collecting yeses?), how psychological safety works in a team, and why women receive more vague, personality-based feedback than men. Textio's 2022 research found that women are 11 times more likely to be described as "abrasive" in performance feedback. You'll also get three tools you can use this week: the "mad, sad, glad" team check-in, the "play the ball, not the player" approach from Susan Colantuono's The Language of Power, and a "more of, less of, and why" structure for feedback that is specific and actionable. Related: Episode 161, Career Compass: Mastering Actionable Feedback and Overcoming Gender Bias. Michelle's self-paced course on giving, receiving and asking for feedback is coming soon inside the Lead to Soar Network What evidence do you see in your own workplace? Tell us in the comments.
Career pathing is rarely as linear as it looks, and in Michelle's organisational diagnostic work, the single biggest gap women report is that their manager isn't giving them useful career advice. In this episode, Mel and Michelle pull apart why the traditional career ladder is a scarcity game, why leaving your progression in your manager's hands is a risk you can't afford, and what to do instead. They walk through a four-move framework for evaluating what's next: stay, reshape, shift, go, and cover salary benchmarking, strategic networking inside and outside your organisation, why women are so often asked to prove readiness that men get handed on potential alone, and what leaders owe the people they're meant to be developing.
A listener wrote in with a question anyone with a shelf of half-read leadership books will recognise. She reads good books. She underlines the useful parts. Nothing changes. Mel and Michelle did not script an answer. They worked it out in real time, and the diagnosis arrives fast. If your life is already full, work stacked on caregiving stacked on more work, there is nowhere to put the advice. Truth Bomb: The quality of the book is irrelevant.