You Can't Have It All by Doing It All; Why High Achievers Mistake Overload for Leadership

Week 3 of The Trust Tax Investigation

For many high achievers, success doesn't disappear overnight.

It slowly drifts out of alignment.

The responsibilities grow.

The calendar fills.

You become the person everyone depends on.

From the outside, it looks like success.

On the inside, it feels like you're achieving more—but enjoying it less.

In this episode of The Trust Tax Investigation, I sit down with leadership expert, executive coach, and former Vice President of Talent and Leadership Carol Enneking to explore how organizations—and the people inside them—can unintentionally create the conditions where burnout grows.

Carol shares what she learned after years leading talent inside large organizations and interviewing high-achieving professionals for her book, The Rebalancing Act. One theme kept emerging:

The very strengths that make people successful—being dependable, ambitious, intelligent, and willing to help—can also become the habits that quietly lead to overload. 

Together, we explore why burnout isn't just about working harder.

It's about losing alignment between what matters most and how we actually spend our time.

In this episode you'll discover:

•  Why "balance" is the wrong goal—and why rebalancing is a healthier way to lead. 
•  How organizations unintentionally reward the people who always say "yes." 
•  Why many high achievers become overloaded simply because they're capable. 
•  How responsibility quietly accumulates until it becomes unsustainable. 
•  Why great leaders develop others instead of becoming indispensable. 
•  A practical way to negotiate priorities with your manager before overload turns into burnout. 
•  How reconnecting your daily work with your values creates hope, energy, and healthier leadership. 

The Trust Tax Investigation

One of the stories many high achievers quietly live by is this:

"If I can do it, I should do it."

That story often earns praise.

More opportunities.

More responsibility.

More trust.

Until one day it also earns something else.

Exhaustion.

The Trust Tax grows whenever responsibility keeps accumulating without enough opportunity to release it, share it, or question whether it still belongs to us.

Sometimes organizations unintentionally reinforce that pattern.

Sometimes we reinforce it ourselves.

Either way, the cost is the same.

The good news?

Once you recognize the pattern, you can begin changing it.

Connect with Carol Enneking

🌐 Website: https://carolenneking.com/

📖 The Rebalancing Act is available wherever books are sold, including Audible, where Carol narrates the audiobook.

Carol also offers a free Legacy Planning Workbook to help you identify what matters most and begin aligning your life and leadership with those priorities. 

Rewrite Your Story

October 15, 2026 • Walsh College • Troy, Michigan

If The Trust Tax Investigation has helped you recognize yourself in these conversations, I'd love to invite you to the next step.

Join comedian, keynote speaker, and playwright Merit Kahn and me for Rewrite Your Story—a full-day leadership workshop followed by Merit's inspiring and hilarious one-woman show, Optimistic Personality Disorder™.

Together we'll explore the stories that shape how we lead, define success, carry responsibility, and experience burnout.

You'll leave with a clearer understanding of the story you've been living—and the opportunity to intentionally choose one that creates healthier leadership, stronger relationships, and sustainable success.

Because the story that helped create your success...

doesn't have to define how you lead next.

🎟️ Reserve your seat:
https://RewriteYourStoryEvent.com

Follow the Investigation

This episode is part of our special five-week series exploring why capable, caring, high-performing people burn out—and what leaders and organizations can do differently.

Week 1: When Success Becomes a Trap

Week 2: Why Does This Happen?

Week 3: Why Organizations Create It

Week 4: How We Break the Cycle

Connect with Natalie Luke, PhD

🌐 https://www.unceilingzone.com

💼https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalielukephdbcmas/

🎙️ Subscribe to UnCeiling You on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 1:01

Welcome back to Unsealing You. I'm Dr. Natalie Luke, and this is the Trust Tax Investigation, a special five-week series exploring why so many capable, caring, high-performing people end up burned out. Over the last two weeks, we've uncovered two important pieces of the puzzle. In week one, we discovered that burnout rarely begins with a collapse. It begins way earlier. When success quietly becomes heavier than it used to be. Different careers, different lives, yet Danielle Griffin, Zoe Thompson, and Sandra Wood all describe the same turning point. The moment success stops feeling sustainable. Then, in week two, we asked a different question. How did we get here? Hannah Kerman, Dr. Melanie Gray, and Angela Couric helped us understand that burnout isn't usually caused by one overwhelming event. It develops through small adaptations, meeting everyone's expectations before your own, living in constant high alert, and tying your identity to achievement and responsibility. This week, the investigation takes another turn. Because if these patterns develop inside people, what role do organizations play in reinforcing them? Most organizations don't intend to create burnout. Most leaders genuinely care about their people. So why do the same patterns keep showing up? Why do the most capable people keep becoming the answer to every problem? And why does responsibility keep flowing to the same individuals? And why does success so often come with an invisible cost? This week we explore those questions through three remarkable conversations. Because if we want to reduce burnout, we have to understand not only the people inside the system, but the system itself. Carol Anakin shows how leadership behaviors shape culture, trust, and psychological safety, and why those everyday interactions determine whether people thrive or merely survive. Hi, Carol. Thank you so much for joining us on Unsealing You. I really appreciate you being here today. Thank you, Natalie. I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. So you spent years inside high-level corporate roles, vice president of talent and leadership at Global Companies or at a global company. And from the outside, it looked like you had it all figured out. What was actually happening on the inside that nobody can see?

SPEAKER_00 4:03

My well, I think uh I think high achievers, and I would consider myself a high achiever, we tend to do a lot of things and we approach everything with all the energy possible. And in my case, I was doing a lot of things because I thought I should and not necessarily because I wanted to. So I found myself way too busy and with no time to really just breathe and be and enjoy life. And my body started giving me signals saying, this is not working anymore. And I really, I finally decided to pay attention to it. But I think it's really fascinating because it's so easy to fall into the trap of just go, go, go, do, do, do. And that's that's not how you find fulfillment. And I think even though I had a pretty good idea of what mattered most to me, I don't think my daily activities were lining up with what mattered most to me. And it's like you can just blink your eyes and all of a sudden years have gone by. And yeah. So that's why I'm on a mission now to help women reclaim success and redefine it before it redefines them.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

It and it's interesting that you say that your body was giving you some the signs that, hey, this is not working.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

That it that is something that I hear from just about everybody that's gone through this.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

Yes. Isn't it fascinating? There's a lot of talk around nervous system, overfunctioning, you know, these fight or flight responses. And when we're just so busy, I think we get into that frenzied mode, and our nervous system just learns to compensate and work like that. But over time, there are consequences. Right. And so we go from, okay, I can get it done, and I'm, you know, I'll just pull an all-nighter or I'll just do what it takes. And then all of a sudden it's like, mm-mm, that's not sustainable. So that's when it it's difficult.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

Yeah. And then you also said you started noticing things that weren't just you. You like, and you what it's it's not just about you. You you noticed it in other high performers. It's like, okay, so they were achieving less and enjoying less, achieving more and enjoying less, I should say. But when did you stop being the observer and realize that you also had that pattern?

SPEAKER_00 6:28

I would say I probably knew my own pattern first. And that's what led me to write a book. I once I decided to take a break from my corporate life, I decided to write a book, but I started interviewing other women and I knew what my story was. And I I felt like, you know, I I did this for the right reasons in some cases. I mean, I was working, raising children. I went through a period of being a single mother to teenagers when I went through a divorce. And, you know, now thankfully I'm happily remarried. But you know, there were some some really tough times, and you don't get to let your mood decide what you're gonna get done in a day. You just do what it takes to get through it. And so I was doing that, but I I think I realized it was very hard to try to balance everything. And and I started examining, and it was really the divorce. When I finally made that decision, it caused me to look at my life and really think about how do I want to live? How do I want to do things on my own terms? And I I was very purposeful in taking the corporate job and I loved it and I learned a lot, and it was a great period in my life. But I think the years before that had probably already taken its toll on my health. And so I think I knew my own story and I knew that I needed to step back and take some time and just slow my role a little bit. But I started interviewing others for the book. I interviewed a lot of women, I interviewed some men, and it started, it was people I knew. But then when they would talk to me, they'd say, you should talk to so-and-so. Yeah. And pretty soon I was talking to people in lots of different states, all over the US, some international, but they were in all different lines of work, all different ages. And by the end of it all, we finally had to cut the interviews off so we could finish the book. But we started seeing these trends emerge. And it was very, I guess, affirming in a way. It was kind of sad, but also affirming. It's like, I'm not alone, I'm not the only one who goes through this. And and the more I dug into that to it, the more I started seeing that pattern really, it really exists a lot in those high-achieving women. And I and I think it's born from those, those very same things that make us successful. Being ambitious and determined and intelligent. That's also a recipe for taking on too much and giving things energy because you feel like, well, I can. And you know, my mother used to always say to me, just because you can doesn't mean you should. And it's really profound to finally say, huh, that's accurate.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

It's funny how these statements that your mom makes come to you, and then also your daughters discover the statements that you made.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Isn't that funny? Yes, and now my daughter's like, I'm turning into you. I just said something you said to me all those times.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

So your framework starts with rejecting the word balance, not refining it, rejecting it. Why is that word doing damage to the very people who are chasing it the hardest?

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Well, I think the problem is that balance is temporary. And I think the way we approach balance is like it's this utopian, perfect, amazing place where we'll get to and everything will make sense, as if we're gonna stay there. And you can be in pretty good balance one day, but life is always changing. Life's coming at us faster than it ever has before. And I think it's much more helpful for us to be agile and to think about okay, what do I need to do in this moment right now to get back on track? But a lot of times we we start chasing things like balance, having it all, all those messages that we get. We aren't even stopping long enough to think about what it even is in terms of what we want to have, what we want to do, what we want to be known for. And we're just going at these activities again and again, and we're on this treadmill, and it's like we aren't ever jumping off. And so I think it's knowing what you stand for, knowing what matters most to you, and then making decisions in alignment with that so that when life gives you curveballs, you know how to get back on track. Yeah. And that that's a that's an exercise that takes time and self-reflection. And I don't know that a lot of people purposely just stop and do that.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

I think that's a a great piece of advice. And and I think that we will feel so much more like, okay, this is who I am and what I want to do. And so you also replace balance with rebalancing. It you sort of talked about it. Can you walk me through what that actually looks like for a senior leader who's running on the same definition of success that she has been for the last 15 years? The trust tax investigation has been revealing something important. Burnout isn't simply an individual problem. It isn't just about resilience or time management or learning to say no. The people we've spoken to have shown us that burnout grows through the interaction between people and the environments they work in. This week's guests each shine a light on different parts of that environment. How work gets distributed, how responsibility quietly accumulates, how leadership behaviors shape a culture, and how organizations can unintentionally reward the very patterns that eventually leave their best people caring more than they should. Encouraging you? If organizations help create these patterns, organizations can change them. Let's get back to the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Definitely. It's funny because that just became the title of my book, The Rebalancing Act. And then all of a sudden it was like the word that defines the work that I do, and now I'm about to embark on my second book, which is taking the same concepts and applying it to business. So it's really about starting with the end in mind. You know, the late great Stephen Covey said, begin with the end in mind. And for me, the way I like to define it is using the word legacy. So I like to ask people, what do you want to be known for? What is it that you want people to say about you when you've passed through this phase or this career, this company, or this life? What do you want to be known for? And then back up from there. Set the goals that you want to have and the things you want to achieve in your life, but back up and compare it to how you're living right now and determine if it's in alignment or if it's out of alignment. And then if it's not in alignment, you don't have to, you know, completely change overnight or anything like that, but just take a few small steps to start working more toward that which is most important. And so for a lot of women, it looks like learning to say no without guilt. It looks like really thinking about, okay, now I'm gonna think about saying no in a different way because when I say no to things that aren't really in alignment with my highest priorities, then I can say a stronger yes to the things that are.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

And it's funny how when you frame it like that, women feel a lot better about saying no, but you've got to know what you're aiming for and what matters most to you. And like I said, we get so busy just doing things for others and doing things just because they need to be done. And that's a wonderful quality. But and it's not just women, it's women or men. I do, I do think uh my research definitely showed that the women think differently in terms of taking on tasks than men. And there's that guilt factor that seems to plague women more than men. We have this obligation.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Can you say a little bit more about that? Like how women, how how women and men take on tasks differently?

SPEAKER_00 16:34

Yes. So it really comes, we think differently. It comes to kind of how we're wired in our brains. And I am not a brain scientist, so this is somewhat anecdotal and also backed by some research and uh other exploration that I've done, just in readings and things. But women and men tend to think differently. Men are very good at compartmentalizing things. When they're at work, they're wearing their work hat, so to speak. You know, we talk about wearing different hats for the different roles. So when men are at work, they're focused on work. When they're sitting in front of the TV watching their favorite football team, they're focused on the game. When they are in their family life, they're focused on the family, and that's great. But with women, it's more like this constant firing on all cylinders in the back of our mind. And so we could be sitting at a in a board meeting in a corporate role, and in the back of our mind, we're thinking, oh, I need to stop by the store on the way home tonight, or I've got to make sure I get to daycare to pick up the baby by X time. And so we're constantly thinking about what's next, what else are we juggling, what else needs to get done? And and it was funny because I spoke to one of my doctors about this, and he's a a male and he's uh practicing at a cancer hospital, and his wife does too. And he said, It's so funny, you're writing that book. He said, and I I was talking about how men and women tend to approach these things. And he said, When I'm in clinic, I'm in clinic. I'm thinking about the next patient. I'm looking at the chart, I'm going from patient to patient, and that's all I'm thinking about. And he said, My wife has the same clinic day as me, but she can be texting me in between patients saying, Don't forget to go get the cleats for juniors baseball tryouts, you know. And he's like, I don't know how she thinks that way, but we just are wired that way. And so it really shows up in how we take on tasks because we tend to take a lot on, we tend to bear a lot of responsibility as that nurturer. We bear that on our shoulders. And then we feel bad when we can't deliver for everybody. But a lot of times the last person we're thinking of is ourselves, and we're running ourselves into the ground trying to do everything.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

Yeah, yeah. I I uh I think that explains a lot, especially when I talk about responsibility and making sure that you're taking on the responsibility that's yours and not other people's. Um responsibility for outcomes, responsibility for emotions, responsibility for just, you know, knowing what is in your lane. Now you were in this inside the corporation. You're not watching it from the outside, you're on the inside, and you're you're in the talent, you know, making sure that you're helping to use everybody's talents in the corporation. What did you watch the data tell you that nobody in the room was willing to say out loud when as you were observing this?

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Well, what's interesting and why I had the idea for the next book is that companies have the same problem of taking everything on and wearing people out. And so I definitely noticed that on a corporate level. But it's it's also interesting to observe it on an individual level because and this in the book, we started talking about archetypes of the way women show up. And so there were things like overloaded Olivia, which by the way, more people identified with than any other one. It's lovable Lila, you know, the one that wants to be everybody's favorite colleague. It's invisible Isabella, the one that just is hoping somebody will come tap her on the shoulder one day and tell her, you do a great job. Let's promote you, you know. And it doesn't always work like that. But and it's funny because you had another podcast that I listened to that talked about the concept of competence and and getting things done starting to become a negative for you. And, you know, the minute you become that person that everybody can rely on, that's when you start taking on too much. And so it works at first, you know, you get rewarded, you get extra projects, you get some recognition, but over time you become the one that they know will do it and won't push back. And yeah, and that's a dangerous place to be. And I'm not saying you shouldn't want to do what it takes and you shouldn't want to work hard, but I'll give you an example from my corporate life. And by the way, I I went from corporate to entrepreneur for 18 years and back to corporate. And by the way, when I was an entrepreneur, I was teaching leadership. So I thought I knew everything there was to know about leadership. Then I stepped back on the inside and got to see just how difficult it is. But in my first job, I had a boss that he would uh he would go to the people that he knew would get things done. And I was one of those people. And once I started making a list and just keeping track of all my priorities, it became so much easier to negotiate with my boss about what the priorities were. And we don't often take time to do that. We might go to our boss and say, I'm so stressed, I can't get it all done. You know, we start putting emotions and valuative judgments on how we're feeling about the work. But when you just speak from a factual basis and say, this is the list of priorities I'm working toward right now. What would you like me to move down on the list or take off the list so that I can make room for this additional item that you've just given me? And I'm not saying it in an insubordinate, insubordinate kind of way or a disrespectful way. I'm saying it out of genuine concern to be able to do everything that needs to get done most in the best way possible. Because when we try to do too many things, we end up doing a whole lot of things kind of halfway and not as much good.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Yeah, for sure. And we want to, and we want to go back to what you said before, realign the activities that you're doing with your values so that you're stretching in the direction that you want to go.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Yes. It's like, what are my superpowers? What are those unique talents and gifts that I bring to this role? Whatever the role is, whether it's parent or caregiver or any any role that we play, what do I do uniquely well that I need to be spending my time on? And what could others do? That's always a good question. What could others do just as well as I could? Or maybe they wouldn't do it just like I would, and maybe it wouldn't even be as good, but it would be good enough. Yeah. Or maybe if I took time to teach them, then I could take this task off my list of things to do. And and being a good delegator is part of being a great leader. And you cannot have it all by doing it all. And we make that mistake a lot. We think we can do it better than anybody else, or it takes too much time to tell someone else. And so we just keep doing it. And and that's not a great idea.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

There you go. And you know, a true leader is a lead someone who actually brings up other leaders. You're not a leader.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Yeah. It's not about having so much knowledge in here that no one could replace you. If you're that person, you'll never have a day off. Because people aren't learning to be self-reliant achievers. And I always tell leaders, your goal is to replace yourself so that you can move on and do bigger and better things. And when you approach it that way, instead of with a scarcity mindset, you know, some people think it's like job security to keep secrets and have all the knowledge in here. But, you know, we're all way too busy with way too many things to do to operate like that. And we need to learn to spread the wealth, spread the tasks, work with other people and teach them so that they can become great leaders.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

So someone is new to this. They decide they're going to look at their values. They're going to start saying, okay, here's my list. Let's prioritize so that I'm doing the things that are associated with my values. They find people that, you know, could do some of the things that they've been doing. These are behavior changes. What emotionally do you think is going to hit them as soon as they start doing this?

SPEAKER_00 25:12

I think the word that comes to mind immediately is hope. I think they're going to feel more hopeful about the future because it's not just, you know, keep doing the same thing and keep feeling overwhelmed. It's starting to think beyond that. It's starting to think in a bigger picture way, to think about what really matters. And it starts making some things not seem so huge and insurmountable. And I'll tell you, I actually had uh one of my clients call me and say, I don't know whether to thank you or be mad, but I had an employee that as a result of your speaking to us decided she wanted to quit because she had a lifelong dream to do something else and she could retire and get benefits here and go do that. And she said, I was really sad to lose her. But how great that she is going to chase what matters most. So you never know what kind of emotions or actions that will lead to. And you don't have to try to get there immediately. But just one purposeful step moving toward that alignment should help someone feel more hopeful and more in control of what they can control instead of feeling like it's just all happening to them.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Right. So before I ask my last question, where can people find the rebalancing act and your listener resource page?

SPEAKER_00 26:33

Sure. It's at my website, which is just my name, Carol Enniking.com. There's a link to purchase the book, but you can buy the book anywhere you buy books. It's available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and then also in Audible. And I'm the narrator on the Audible. And so it's easy to find the book. But it's funny because I was so focused on writing the book, and then I started speaking about it. And people were saying, What if I want to continue the conversation? What if I need some tools? So there are some resources on my website that are free. You join the community and you can get a legacy planning workbook that's easy to work through on your own and helps you start answering some of those questions. If you just have 45 minutes or an hour, you can work through some of those questions and start creating your plan for what you want to do and what matters most to you. So my website is the best place to go to find all that information. And of course, I'm on all the socials as well.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

Okay. We'll have a link in the show notes. Great. So here's here's the final question. Someone's listening today, they recognize themselves in this conversation, and they they want permission to do something. What what permission are you going to give them that they should take now? What permission slip should I have now today and use today?

SPEAKER_00 28:02

This is gonna come out sounding kind of funny, but being a friend of mine wrote a book called Being Being Selfish is a superpower, and I love it because people, especially women, think it's selfish to put themselves first. So I want your listeners to give themselves permission to put their needs first long enough to figure out what matters most. You show up so much better for everyone in your world around you when you feel good about your own life and when you're depleted and exhausted and unable to give any more to anything, it's hard to show up well. So give yourselves permission to put yourself first and give yourself permission to say no to some things so that you can make some room, not just for other things, but also for some white space, some margin for those curveballs. Curveballs come our way all the time. So put your needs first, think about what matters, and work toward focusing more on those and less on the stuff that doesn't matter, because you can let things go.

SPEAKER_01 29:13

There you go. Thank you so much. I appreciate that advice, and I thank you for being on the Unsealing You podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed it. This week, the trust tax investigation widened the lens. We asked something bigger. What role do organizations play in creating the conditions where burnout grows? Our guests reminded us that burnout isn't only about individual choices. It's also shaped by the way work is designed, how responsibility is shared, how leaders respond under pressure, and whether organizations develop people or quietly depend on the same people to carry more. Understanding that changes the conversation because burnout isn't solved by asking people to become more resilient. It's reduced when leaders create environments where responsibility is shared, trust grows, and success doesn't depend on a handful of exhausted people. Next week, we bring the investigation to its final chapter. We've uncovered why it happened, we've examined how organizations reinforce it. Now comes the most important question of all. What do we do differently? How do individuals rewrite the stories they've been living? How do leaders create healthier teams? And how do organizations reduce the trust tax before burnout becomes the whole story? That's where we're headed next. Until then, pay attention this week, not just to the people who seemed overwhelmed. Notice the work that always finds the same people. Notice the responsibilities that quietly grow. And then notice the leaders who develop others versus those who simply carry more on themselves. Because the trust tax is rarely hidden once you know what you're looking for. I'll see you on the next Unsealing You episode.