7. The Validation Pattern: When Competence Becomes a Shield

Courtney Harkness was the one who held everything together.

She co-founded a wireless infrastructure company with her husband and ran it as COO, scaling it past $50 million and sitting across the table from the biggest carriers in the country. She married him at 24, straight out of college. Twenty-one years and two kids later, the marriage and the company were still the same structure — build one, and the other came with it.

Her husband was having an affair with one of their employees. She found out during the divorce. Because her personal life and her business were never separate, both collapsed in the same moment, over the same negotiating table. The private equity investors had a word for the version of her that wouldn't step aside quietly: unreasonable.

In this episode, Courtney — former COO turned divorce and life-transition coach, and author of the forthcoming book Unreasonable — walks through what it costs to build a marriage, a company, and a self all inside one channel, the specific shame of a successful woman watching her life implode where everyone could see it, and the negotiating discipline — the 24-hour rule, no sudden moves — that got her through a high-conflict divorce.

This is where validation dependency hides inside competence. When capability is the currency you trade for being chosen — in the boardroom, in the marriage, in the room — there's no part of your identity that isn't for sale. We trace where that wiring gets installed, what "it's fine, everything's fine" was actually covering, and why the moment Courtney stopped performing and got honest was the moment she started to rebuild.

If you've ever built your worth into something so consolidated that losing it would take you down too, this one is about you.

GUEST INFO Courtney Harkness — Divorce & Life Transition Coach; former COO Book: Unreasonable (forthcoming, Fall 2026) Instagram: @courtney.harkness

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Host: Andi Johnson — Instagram @advance_with_andi
Take the Validation Pattern Quiz — link in bio.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome to Boys in Boardrooms. Almost nobody with the pattern we're going to talk about during today's episode would tell you that they need approval. They would likely tell you that they are reliable. And that is what makes this pattern so hard to catch in yourself. Competence is a respectable place to hide. And the more capable you are, the longer you can stay hidden there. Because everyone around you keeps confirming that you are fine. But in reality, you are not. You are being paid in recognition for a thing you simply cannot stop doing. It gets even more dangerous when one thing starts doing more than one job for you. So for example, the marriage is also the business partner or the job becomes the reason you believe you are worth something. And while it's all intact, nothing looks like it's wrong. So you really have no reason to look. But then something happens to it, and you find out how much of yourself you had stored in there in that identity. Today, someone is going to tell you a version of this story, which you may have lived yourself. My guest today is Courtney Harkness. She co-founded a wireless company with her husband and ran it as COO, scaling it past $50 million and sitting across the table from the biggest carriers in the country. And the whole time, she was the one who could hold anything together. But then the marriage ended in a high conflict divorce. And because the marriage and the company were the same structure, her personal life and her business came under threat in the same moment. This is the story of who she was when holding it together stopped being an option. Courtney, welcome. Hello. It's great to have you here today. And we're going to dig right into it. I think we're going to have a great conversation for the audience. And I want to start with this concept of capability being currency. So walk me through before the company. We're going to get into your story. But where did you learn? Where did you first learn that being capable was how you got chosen? You know, who was rewarding the carrying and for what?

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Gosh, that's such a great question. It probably took me about 10 years, I would say, after graduating college, to realize, you know, I am capable. And this is a currency that I can use to achieve great things in my life. And it's interesting because that timing kind of coincides with how long I worked for someone else was about 10 years after college. So it took me about 10 years to become an entrepreneur. So I was in corporate America for 10 years. And I would say I knew I was capable. I think a lot of high-achieving successful women probably feel this. We know we're capable, we know we can do great things, but we're holding ourselves back in some way. And for me, holding myself back was working for other people. And it took me about 10 years to recognize that I am better suited to be an entrepreneur. And I think that's when I really started to rely, obviously, on what my capabilities are. You know, what strengths and skills do I have have I had all along that now I'm going to use as my currency moving forward to be a successful entrepreneur and move ahead in business?

SPEAKER_00 3:09

That makes sense. So it sounds like being the capable one in corporate, in a sense, stopped becoming the compliment, right? And starting to become more of a job description. Yeah. So what happened the first time you didn't want the job? I mean, walk me through a little bit of the arc. You were in corporate for a bit, and then you said, okay, we're we're going in this other direction.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

I think, yes. I think for women who work in corporate roles, they'll probably relate to this. But the more capable you are sometimes, the worse it is for you. In my experience in corporate America, you need to be at about 75. You need to make your boss look good, but never outshine the master. So if you are really, really capable and you're kind of holding yourself back, it starts to wear on you. And so that was just, I think that was just my epiphany was I can't really go at 100% here because I'm gonna make, you know, the people above me either look bad or think that I want their job. You know, there's so much politics that goes on in large large corporations that that started to become draining to me as well. And I think, yeah, I think the more capable you are, and when you're trying to maybe hide it a little bit or diminish it a little bit just to get along, I think the most successful people I've seen in corporate roles are the ones that know how to navigate politics really, really well. Um, but if they're honest with themselves, they're probably not using their full capabilities every day in their in their corporate role.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

Yes, I I I concur. So this podcast is called Boys and Boardrooms, and you have a really great story in that your story combines both. So we were talking about, you know, being capable in the boardroom before you decided to launch this company and you launched this company with your husband. So before we go into again that story, tell me a little bit about who you were in your marriage in the early years. You know, how would he have described you then and how accurate was that?

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Hmm. Okay, so I got married when I was 24. I met my husband in college, basically got married right out of college. We have two children who are now 20 and 17. I was married for 21 years. I would say in the beginning of our marriage, and we were married about five years before we had kids. So I guess before he saw me as a mom, you know, how did he see me? I would say, you know, capable, successful, smart. That was one of the reasons we got along initially. We're both, you know, I would say intelligent. We, you know, have easy, pretty easy conversation about things. That was always important to me. I'm not sure how he would describe me then versus today, to be totally honest. Yeah. And then once we had children, I I think your identity for women who have children know this, it shifts, you know, your mom. Now I I think he would have probably said super mom, you know. He he was always, I will say, complimentary of, you know, like you do great things for our kids, and thank you for taking care of our family. So I think the identity shifts a little bit once you have children.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Oh, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. So what I'm hearing is you have this role that you're playing in the boardroom again, that you you're highly capable, but you're also highly capable within your marriage, you're driven, you're going, and then you take on having children, and you're really carrying so much of it, you know, and probably doing so much of it so well. So you at some point during this journey, you built a company with your husband. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about that story, the builds from my understanding, like private equity, 50 million, carrier negotiations. Tell me a little bit about that story.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

There's a lot. Yes. So when we had, after we had children, I decided to pull back on my working hours. And that was when I started my first company, which was a consulting firm. I was a solo, solopreneur, but I created an LLC and I did marketing consulting. So I had come out of a marketing and PR career. Um, once I had children, you know, I discussed with my husband, I need to be home more, I need to work less. It's just that, you know, my kids are two and a half years apart. It's a lot to handle when they're little. And he was very supportive of that. So he we kind of took two trajectories, right? He accelerated in his career on the corporate side, and I went into self-employment and mom role. And I loved that combination. It was great. And then in 2016, he decided he wanted to leave the company he was at. And that was the time where it's interesting because we didn't start out with this grand plan to go get private equity investors and you know what it eventually became when we first started out. He said, I kind of want to try things on my own. And, you know, can you help me because you have your MBA and you know how to start an LLC and do all of that fun stuff? So I was more behind the scenes, kind of helping with the operation side, just him putting out his own shingle, I would say. And then it mushroomed into, well, we're gonna actually, we were in wireless infrastructure development and he was doing some consulting work, but then it mushroomed into the carrier saying, Well, you you can build out and own these systems just like these larger competitors are doing. Do you want to do that? And then it was game time because then it was a much bigger endeavor. And so I started to wind down my consulting clients to join him full-time in that company. And we bootstrapped it for about 18 months, and then we got private equity investors and uh ended up building out a small team and doing really well. I mean, we competed against large publicly traded corporations. It was a really exciting time. We were part of the incubator at Georgia Tech for developing startups, and we graduated from that program. And it just was a neat thing to be able to be a part of, I will say. It was it was a good experience, you know, obviously, until then some things happened in our personal lives and we decided to get a divorce. So that's when it kind of, you know, imploded, I would say. And it's it's difficult anyway to run a business with your spouse. We has we had always had really separate work identities up until that point. And it was tough, even when things were great in the heyday of the the company, it was a little tough to strike that balance of, you know, we're together all day, we're we're married, we're together at night, we have kids. So it was a little, it was tough to draw the line between personal and work once we were working together in the company.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

I will say that. Did you feel like you were carrying more than you could handle at the time? Or was it just were you on autopilot? Talk me a little bit more through through that period.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

I would say the optimal point was after the first few years when we had hired people, I was able to train some people that I trusted and that were doing good work. And I was able to, you know, go into the office, work, you know, we we relocated our office down the street from where my children's school was. So I would leave at 2:30 and go pick them up. And, you know, all of that was just working in a nice fashion. And we were kind of rolling along. The first few years were really difficult because we were burning the midnight oil and trying to, you know, do a lot ourselves. Once we got investors and we had enough business coming in that we hired a team that I would say was the optimal. And we were, we had a good, we had a good team that we could rely on. So I think it took a little bit of pressure off both me and my ex-husband to be able to trust other people. And that's hard to do when you start your own company. Where is that inflection point where you say, okay, I've got to, I can't have my hands at every single thing that goes on. You know? So I would say it took us until about like year two and a half, three to really understand if this is gonna scale, we have to let other people come in and help us.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

So you're, you know, you bring in other people, they're helping you, things are going well for a while. Yeah and then we have the break. So, you know, there's always there's always that moment, and you're on the other side of it now and obviously doing fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

But yeah, tell me, tell me more about the break. So, and I have a book that is coming out later this fall, and I talk about this there, but um Congratulations. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

Yeah. What's the book called, by the way?

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Unreasonable. Unreasonable great. That is what my private equity investors called me when I would not go quietly out of the business during the divorce process.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Wow, that's a great time.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

So my husband was having an affair with one of our employees, is the summary. And obviously, that was a deal breaker for me, and it obviously had a lot of repercussions in the business with our investors, everything. So the tough part, I would say, for me was it wasn't just going through divorce, it was my whole entire life. That was where I went every day. Those were people I considered friends that you know I worked with. So imagine just all of that imploding all at one time. That made it really, really difficult. Because I think for a lot of people going through divorce, they they can kind of find that lane to distract them, like, okay, well, I'm just gonna go focus on work and my kids and do that right while I'm trying to figure out this divorce. But mine was all together. So it was it was difficult. We ultimately did, you know, reach a settlement and I agreed to step aside from the company as part of my divorce. And so that gave me the opportunity to go into coaching, which is what I do now, um, advising successful women on major life transitions, which I very much enjoy. And I am starting law school in two weeks. So I am also have a new project underway.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Yeah, it's very exciting. That's great. I worked in big law for a long time. I'm not a lawyer, but I did you PR like you for starting PR departments for for big law. So it's it, it's a fun space to be in for sure.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Congratulations. It's a very fun space. It's something I've always wanted to do. I got my MBA after call, you know, worked a few years after college, got my MBA, but I had gone back and forth between law school and business school. And so now I just feel like, okay, well, it's never too late. So let's go ahead and do this.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Yeah. So Courtney, uh unreasonable. So you were called unreasonable, but you had mentioned, I think maybe before you decided to be unreasonable, right? You had said there was a specific shame in being a successful woman whose life is imploding, as if, you know, saying it out loud would cancel everything you built. So I'm sure you went through this period where all of this happened before you went and fought for yourself, perhaps. What did you believe would happen if people knew? Like in that moment when you were feeling that way.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

I think there's so much fear that it clouds your judgment. And so fear mixed with shame. I think a lot of people see divorce as a failure. And I really try to help my clients when I work with them rewrite that narrative. It's just, it's not your failure. It's not like you did a bad job and you got fired. But that's kind of what it feels like to a lot of people that they failed at something if the marriage fails. So I think there's a lot of fear, and that leads to a lot of self-doubt. And it's really, really hard to center yourself when everything's falling down around you. And so I learned pretty early on, and I would describe my ex-husband as high conflict. So I was in a high conflict divorce with a high conflict personality. I learned pretty early on that if I leaned on my business skills and applied them to this divorce, that I don't know when that light bulb moment was, but at some point I realized, you know, divorce is a business deal, which I actually have trademarked that. Divorce is a business deal. Uh, because it is. It is, true. Because it is. And so I thought that initially, right? But I when I was thinking that, I was thinking just about the money and the financial piece of things. This is a business deal, we got to figure this out. But then I started to think about, I mean, it's everything. That's everything in the divorce. I I need to apply the approach I would take as a business person negotiating a deal with anybody else, the whole deal, all of it, everything we have to figure out. And the biggest piece of that for me was removing the emotion. So I don't want to have emotional conversations with you. I don't want to get tied up in um the back and forth. I finally, I think at one point said to him, I'm gonna draw a line in the sand here, and we are not gonna discuss anything that happened before today. I don't want to look backwards. I don't want to, you know, review what I don't want to have a postmortem as to what went wrong. I'm only looking forward. And that actually helped us have much more civil discussions, I would say, going, going into the divorce negotiation. So that's one piece of advice I would have for people going through a divorce, really any type of divorce is there's really nothing to be gained from you going backwards and talking about what went wrong, in my opinion. I think that's something you do privately in your own, you know, therapy or wherever you want to do it. But doing it with your soon-to-be ex-partner is, in my opinion, a waste of time and energy and effort. So I like to say my superpower is not reacting. And that has gotten me through a lot of a lot of really tough situations and also no sudden moves. I don't make reactive decisions anymore. And that was a hard, hard-earned lesson during my divorce. So if something, you know, happens or I receive a piece of news or information, it's like, okay, let me take a minute to process this. It's very rarely an emergency where you have to jump right in and respond to somebody. I find waiting, you know, a lot of people talk about the 24-hour rule, waiting 24 hours to respond to anybody about anything in the absence of a true actual emergency is typically the best approach, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Absolutely. One I've also heard too is the scale of one to five. So if something, if you can rate yourself from one calm to five, very agitated, you should not have a conversation if you are from a three to a five ever, because you're going to be talking through stress and you're not going to make smart decisions. So yeah, I I love the idea of pausing. It's it's one of the you're activated.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

If your nervous system is activated, you should not be having important conversations. 110%. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Not going to get anybody anywhere that way. Um, so those are great lessons that you learned. I want to go back to you talking about how everything was built in a way in one structure. You built your your marriage, and in a sense, in your worth, right? You've got all of it tied into your marriage, your job, wife, partner, operator, every part of kind of you being chosen or being this highly capable person is running through a single channel. So when it's all consolidated like that, you know, looking back, do you think there was some because it was so consolidated, there was something that you couldn't see? Or what did that consolidation let you avoid seeing?

SPEAKER_01 18:21

Yeah, I think it was too much togetherness, too much consolidation. I didn't have a clear separation between, you know, who I am as a person and then my identity as like wife, mother, COO. You know, they were all tied in. Um, and I think that's relatable for a lot of women who say, I don't know if I have my own identity outside of mom and wife. It's kind of that, but then add on one more layer of person running this company with your husband. Right. I think it was a lot. It was a lot to to take on, um, a lot to handle. You know, I have said this before. I think my ex-husband and I were better business partners than we were romantic partners. So that was maybe a good lesson that I learned is we were really good at doing certain things together and we built something really great, but maybe we weren't actually suit like suited to be like the vulnerability can't come through.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Right when you're both so you're highly, you know, highly capable and effective and you're working towards something and you're so goal, you know, goal dependent hard to be able to bring out that that vulnerability that you need to be able to have that connection in a relationship. Yeah, I think it's a pattern to be a lot. Yes, yes, I agree with that. So you said, I loved this, I love, I love this by the way. You said the moment that you stopped performing your way through it and got honest is the moment you rebuilt. That's when you went and you formed obviously a coaching business, and uh, you seem to be very satisfied by that. So what was that actual moment? Like, where were you? Like when did it, when did it land for you? Okay, I have to get honest with myself and and really get back down to the basics.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Yeah, that's tough to I don't know if I can point to one moment. I think it was a series of small things that I started to do that were more authentic. So probably, you know, one of the first was kind of changing my answer when people would ask me how I was doing, you know, and I always had a stock answer for like it's fine, everything's fine, I'm just working through it. It's just another project that I'm doing, you know. This divorce is just like any other project.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Yeah, it's fine, I'm fine. And I can't tell you the amount of times I hear, we're fine, it's fine, everything's gonna be fine.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

I've seen a shirt. It's fine, it's fine, everything's fine, I'm fine. Yeah, that's what it feels like. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

So that was, you know, so it started to maybe in little baby pieces. I started to be more authentic. And it, you know, depending on who I was talking to. So I probably started with my closer circle. And then I think being more honest translated into just people I didn't even really know that well. If they would ask me, you know, how you know, it's like, oh yeah, just be honest. Just say you don't need to dump all over people, but you can just say, Yeah, I'm going through a divorce, it's pretty tough. That's enough, you know. But being a little more vulnerable and taking down the mask and the shield, uh, the suit of armor that we wear all the time. Um, so I think I just kind of like slowly took it off. And another piece of that, a byproduct of that, I guess, is I just did I no longer cared what other people were thinking or the judgment piece. So I think they went hand in hand. I started to be a little more authentic. I had fear and shame around you know what I was going through. And then as I did it more, I thought, well, I it doesn't really matter what these people think.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

So it was very freeing. It's the biggest shift. That's I I run this entire podcast. The through line is validation dependency. It's it's this dependency on others' validation that keeps us stuck in roles, whether that's in a marriage, whether that's in a job, a friendship, you know, performing a certain way, even as a parent, because we're expecting some sort of validation. And ultimately that validation is so external dependent that your life can crumble around it. So you, you know, and but when you find yourself on the other side, the freedom that's there, I think it's so beautiful. And that's what it sounds like you're trying to teach other women now, right? Your work is helping women essentially to stop running their lives on approval, right? So how is that work translating for these women? Like when they come in and they they start with you, they come in and they're going through these big life transitions. Walk me through where they are at the beginning versus when you had some time with them. Um, what's the biggest change and shift that you see in their day-to-day?

SPEAKER_01 22:57

I love it. And I will just comment on what we were just speaking about before. It is so peaceful on the other side. It is when you stop seeking external validation, the peace that you feel is it's amazing. So when I have women come to me, and I do work with some men also going through high conflict divorce. When you have been with a high conflict partner, especially if you're a successful, you know, high achieving person, everything else in your life you can handle, but you're in a toxic, high conflict marriage, often what happens is my clients are just trying to fix it because they're like, I fix everything. So something bad will happen and they'll just see it as like a speed bump and they'll just run right over it or run right through it. And instead of stopping and saying, like, that was a red flag, like it might be time for me to leave this marriage. Typically, they have ignored a ton of roadblocks because they're used to just pushing through. Like, nothing stops me. I'm a high achieving person. I've been to medical school, law school, you know, I've done all these things. That's the rule. I fix everything. Yes. And then I get validation, external validation from everyone around me who says, gosh, she is so great at every look at her list. She just runs everything so well. And and we feed off that external validation. So when they come to me, typically they have reached a breaking point, something has happened, and they are, you know, ready to leave their marriage and they're just defeated. They feel defeated because they haven't been able to quote unquote fix this problem. The transformation that I see from the first point when I start working with them to the end, typically when they're, you know, actually getting the divorce finalized and then coming out the other side is so rewarding to me because they are like different people. And I often will say to them, let's look back, and a lot a lot of my clients have been with me six months to a year, and I'll say, let's look back to that moment where we first started working together and remember how you felt. And they will very often say, I don't even know who that person is. I don't even recognize that person. Um, I don't know her. So when they come in initially, there's a lot of again, fear and shame, but they they are afraid of doing things that they want to do for fear of what the outside world's reaction will be. And that's what we're breaking out of.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

I love that so much. Yeah. And then so tell me a bit more about your book with unreasonable. Is it your story? Are there some, you know, things that say coaching patterns that are running through it? With like love to love to get a little nod to that for the listeners because I love it.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

It's a little bit of a hybrid memoir and how-to. So it is my story, and then I sprinkle in lessons about, for example, this is what happened when I confronted my ex-husband about the affair, and you know, and then the lesson I'm giving to people in the book is while that was very rewarding to me in the moment, it felt good in the moment. I don't think that was the right step strategically. And so I try to give people insight through my own story of pitfalls and things to avoid. And I teach lessons. So there's little call-outs like, here's your lesson from what I'm telling you. I lived it. So let me help you hopefully not make some of the mistakes I made. And then hopefully you can walk away from this with, yeah, it's a really interesting story. And then you might learn a little bit about how to approach your divorce if you are going through one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

Okay. So to tie it all together, who are you on the other side? So you, you know, highly capable, built this amazing company, went through the divorce, you know, you've gone through motherhood, and now you're helping other women not have to live through with approval, with validation dependency, seeking approval, I should say. So what is what is Courtney, what does Courtney do differently now? How are how are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 26:45

When I wake up in the morning and I think about what my, I'll call it North Star purpose is, you know, it is to empower other women to break the status quo. And so it's in whatever area of their life they want to do that, I want to help them do that. And that's how I see myself today. And it's just been very rewarding and fulfilling.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

That's that's amazing. So women come to you and they're like, I want to build a new business, or I want to leave my partner, or I want to do all of these things that take them into the next level. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

All of them. And a lot of times it's tied in. So very, very often when I'm coaching my client through through divorce, a career change is also about to happen. And then they start doing so, they've never even thought about leaving their job or going out on their own or starting their own business. And then as we're going through the process, all of a sudden, this no longer suits them. This doesn't serve them anymore. This is not fulfilling. So we work on career coaching, career planning. And then, of course, then we ultimately get to dating and romance after divorce. And so we talk about, you know, and they go in a completely different direction than they've gone before. So, yes, it is empowering women to change the way they've been doing things so that they truly become fulfilled and not just acting a part that they think they're supposed to be acting.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

So if women want to work with you and maybe step into this, this, this phase of empowerment for them, which sounds very exciting. I think I love repositioning it like that, right? That this doesn't have to be an ending can also be an empowerment. So thinking of it that way, where can they find you, Courtney? You're you know, on Instagram, obviously you have a book coming out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

Instagram's the best way. I'm Courtney.harkness, and it's like darkness with an H on Instagram.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Okay, excellent. Well, thank you so much for your time. This was an amazing conversation, and I I truly admire your mission and I'm really excited to read your book when it comes out.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

Thank you. Thank you for having me.