Why More Women Are Leaving Corporate

I have noticed something interesting in my business lately. My inbox is becoming filled with messages from corporate women looking to break into the entrepreneurial world. In our conversations, they share their deep frustrations about being misled by companies that tout work-life balance, but in reality, maintain a company culture where this balance is nearly impossible to implement. They talk about companies whose values do not match their management behavior or mandates. They complain about endless meetings, about having no time or space to think or be, and being tired of dedicating time and energy to managing other people’s egos. They question if the work they are doing in the world actually makes an impact greater than the boardroom. Some are bored and disengaged from their work, others are inundated.

In the moments we spend together, they confide feeling lost, unsure if they should get another job at another company, stay put where they are, become an entrepreneur, take on a consulting project or two, or just take a vacation. For all of them, my answer is the same, I don’t know. 

But what I do know is this. Women aren’t just burned out because they are overworked, they are burned out because they are out of alignment.

And being out of alignment afflicts entrepreneurs and corporate people alike. I should know. While I became an entrepreneur for freedom, several years in I felt stuck in the company I had created. On the outside I was successful, but inside I was lacking a sense of real satisfaction. I had built a company, but I had also built myself a pressure cooker.

Realizing this led me to a path of personal exploration, inner and outer. I meditated on surfboards in the Pacific, stayed on yurts on remote farms, worked with the country’s best coaches, joined elite masterminds, helped rescued animals, and flung paint at a canvas blindfolded during art therapy. I was healed by shamans, horses, kinesiologists, biomagnetists, past life regressions and countless breathwork and sound bath sessions. All in all, I have invested the equivalent of a Harvard MBA in my own self-directed continuing education and became a master coach along the way. Now, I coach other women entrepreneurs on how to prosper without the pressure cooker.

What I learned through this was the source of my misalignment, which I can boil down to this: I had spent so many years subscribing to an achievement system I didn’t actually believe in. First when I was working for a company, and then when I was working for myself. I assumed the definition of success that was modeled out there in the world, was one that was linear and external. By doing this, instead of creating a game all my own, I was playing the same game everyone else was playing.

This kept me stuck in my head and detached from my heart. By overthinking decisions, I gave the microphone to my mind and completely dismissed what my body was saying. In fact, I nearly forgot I had a body at all.

Inside these intimate conversations with corporate women, I heard of how they believe the path to success often requires a habitual withholding. Many feel they cannot voice certain unpopular truths, opinions, ideas or pushback if they want to win favor and move up the ladder. 

In this environment, women quickly learn that in order to “succeed” they need to check parts of themselves at the door. The feminine qualities of intuition and feeling have had no real place in a business world that over-values intellect, strategy, consensus, speed and volume. 

This comes as no surprise in a society that has ingrained in us the idea of compartmentalization. We’ve been conditioned to only bring parts of ourselves to the various roles in our lives. We bring oneself to business, another self to our friends, another version on the playground, on the yoga mat, and the list goes on. Many women have not felt safe enough to bring their whole selves anywhere. It’s no wonder they feel out of balance.

This way of contorting ourselves into neat little compartments isn’t only ineffective for the integration many women want to experience now, but it’s dishonest and disempowering. When we withhold parts of who we are— in any role— we withhold our feminine power. And the more we do this in all of the micro-moments that make up our days, in decisions big and small, the more we abandon ourselves, and the more out of alignment we become.

Many women have subconsciously overlooked their own personal definitions of success in favor of what our society deems as successful. While this may have worked just fine before, like many things in the crucible of covid, this discrepancy has become exposed and inflamed. As work begins to resume as “normal”, many are rubbing up against these limitations which have long existed, but they themselves have a new outlook. 

I have gotten a glimpse of what The Great Resignation is really about for so many corporate women. It is about the longing to bring their whole selves to work and the frustration that comes from the belief (that is often backed by the historical evidence of their own experiences) that it’s not possible, not welcomed, and not a viable path to success. 

Entrepreneurship offers the opportunity to create work for yourself, and bring your whole self to your work in the process. This is incredibly alluring at a time when many women are aching to break free, live their lives on their own terms, and to make a lasting impact.

I get it. I love being an entrepreneur— mainly because it allows me to grow professionally (my business and my bank account) without sacrificing the things that matter most to me in my personal life. For me and the women I coach, business and personal are not separate, there is no compartmentalization. Rather, our work enhances our personal lives and vice versa. But you don’t need to become an entrepreneur to experience this.

The truth is that we ALL have agency over our own lives, entrepreneur or not. We all get to choose how we show up for our work, whether that’s at a company of our own creation or someone else’s.

Anyone can decide, at any moment, to begin bringing their whole selves to work. It starts with slowing down enough to listen to yourself in any given situation, not to the small voice in your head, but to the deeper feelings in your body. After that, it is simply a matter of deciding how you want to honor what this voice is saying, finding the language to convey it clearly, directly, and in service to the highest good, and having the courage to actually do it.