Guest Bio: Cynthia Jamieson
Cynthia Jamieson is a transformative leadership and growth coach who has spent 37 years in Human Resources and has held more than 4,000 coaching conversations.
She hosts the podcast Who Are You to Lead, Anyway? and writes Cynthia’s Substack, where she explores what happens when capability turns into obligation, and how capable people begin choosing again. She holds the ACPC, PCC, and CBC coaching credentials. Cynthia knows this terrain firsthand: she burned out in her thirties doing everyone else’s job because she believed she had to.
1. Who Is Actually Making the Decisions?
Self-determination theory, one of the most tested models in motivation research, identifies autonomy as a basic psychological need. When people experience their actions as chosen rather than pressured, motivation and well-being rise. When they feel controlled, even good work drains them (Ryan & Deci, 2000). [Primary empirical source.]
Autonomy is not doing everything alone. It is acting from your own values instead of from pressure, guilt, or habit.
The test isn’t whether you said yes. It’s whether you were free to say no.
2. When Capability Becomes Obligation
Cynthia calls this the Endurance Trap: being good at something quietly becomes being responsible for it, every time. A temporary favor becomes a permanent expectation, and your own needs become negotiable (Jamieson, 2026). [Practitioner source.]
The research backs her up. In a series of studies, women were asked more often than men to take on non-promotable tasks, the necessary work that rarely leads to advancement, and were more likely to say yes (Babcock et al., 2017). [Primary empirical source.] The pattern is not a personality flaw. It is how the requests are distributed.
Some of what you call your personality is a job description you never agreed to. (Cynthia’s line; credit her when you use it.)
3. What It Costs
Burnout research describes three parts: exhaustion, cynicism, and a falling sense of effectiveness. Workload matters, but so do lack of control and a mismatch between your values and the work (Maslach & Leiter, 2016). [Primary empirical review.]
For many marginalized women, the pressure has an added layer. Research on the Superwoman Schema found Black women describing an obligation to show strength, suppress emotion, resist help, and keep succeeding regardless of the toll, a pattern linked to stress and health costs (Woods-Giscombé, 2010). [Primary qualitative study.]
This is where your positioning lives: healing what power systems took. Name it gently. The strength was survival. It does not have to be the operating model forever.
Strength that never gets to rest isn’t strength anymore. It’s a sentence.
4. Taking the Seat Back
Job crafting research shows people can reshape their roles by changing tasks, relationships, and how they think about their work (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). [Theory paper; widely supported by later studies.] A CEO makes those decisions on purpose.
Practical moves to discuss: notice the automatic yes before it leaves your mouth; ask “Whose is this?” before taking a task; hand back one thing this week that was never yours; and put your own needs on the calendar like any other commitment.
Note: avoid claiming people have a fixed daily supply of willpower or decisions. “Decision fatigue” and “ego depletion” findings have not held up well in large replication attempts, so they are contested.
You don’t take the seat back all at once. You take it back one honest decision at a time.
References
Babcock, L., Recalde, M. P., Vesterlund, L., & Weingart, L. (2017). Gender differences in accepting and receiving requests for tasks with low promotability. American Economic Review, 107(3), 714–747. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20141734
Jamieson, C. (2026, October 9). Being good at it is not a life sentence. Cynthia’s Substack. https://cynthiajamieson.substack.com/p/being-good-at-it-is-not-a-life-sentence
Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (2016). Understanding the burnout experience: Recent research and its implications for psychiatry. World Psychiatry, 15(2), 103–111. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20311
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68
Woods-Giscombé, C. L. (2010). Superwoman schema: African American women’s views on stress, strength, and health. Qualitative Health Research, 20(5), 668–683. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732309355146
Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. (2001). Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work. Academy of Management Review, 26(2), 179–201. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2001.4378011
Thank you Nabanita, julie elder, EG, Millie Jones-Cowles, Nabanita, Mandy Ohman Shauna Rae and many others for tuning into my live video with Cynthia Jamieson! Join me for my next live video in the app.
