Lead Like a Mother: Work-Life Balance, Burnout Recovery & Leadership Skills for High-Achieving Moms
From the author of Boldly Both, Lead Like a Mother: Work-Life Balance, Burnout Recovery & Leadership Skills for High-Achieving Moms is the podcast for working moms who look “put together” but feel exhausted, overwhelmed, and one more email away from snapping. If you’re a high-achieving working mom juggling meetings, school drop-offs, deadlines, and the endless mental load while secretly Googling “working mom burnout,” “how to balance work and motherhood,” or “time management for high-performing moms,” this show will feel like you’ve finally been seen.
Each week, you get practical strategies to balance motherhood, career, and leadership without burning out, so you can stop living in survival mode and start feeling like yourself again. You’ll learn realistic work-life balance habits, time management for busy working moms, burnout recovery tools, and simple boundary-setting scripts for work and home that help you protect your energy, reduce stress, and calm the constant mental chatter.
Episodes dive into leadership skills for high-achieving moms, communication, delegation, decision-making, and confidence, so you can lead well at work and lead well at home without feeling guilty or stretched too thin. You’ll hear honest conversations about invisible labor, emotional load, mom guilt, perfectionism, and maternal burnout, plus coaching-style episodes with small, doable steps you can implement in one week to create more peace, margin, and clarity.
Hosted by Christina Runnels, a licensed therapist, author of Boldly Both: A Mom’s Guide to Balancing Career and Family Without Guilt, and sought-after speaker on working mom burnout and leadership, this podcast blends evidence-informed strategies with real-life mom wisdom you can use right away. If you’ve ever thought, “No one really understands how much I’m carrying,” this is your space for validation, practical tools, and long-term burnout prevention designed specifically for ambitious, high-achieving working moms.
Next Steps:
Get Boldly Both: A Mom's Guide to Balancing Career and Family Without Guilt: https://bit.ly/BoldlyBoth
Visit the website: https://www.ChristinaRunnels.com
Connect with Me: Hello@ChristinaRunnels.com
Lead Like a Mother: Work-Life Balance, Burnout Recovery & Leadership Skills for High-Achieving Moms
How to Set Boundaries as a Working Mom: Scripts to Say No at Work and at Home Without Guilt
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Feeling like the reliable one for everyone at work, at school, at home, and also the most exhausted person in every room? This episode is for you.
Connect & work with Christina:
- Speaking, workshops, consulting: Hello@christinarunnels.com
- Buy Boldly Both: A Mom's Guide to Balancing Career and Family Without Guilt
- Follow on Facebook
Free burnout check-in (from Episode 1):
Start tracking how depleted you really are and how often you’re saying yes from empty.
👉 Get the Burnout Check-In PDF:
Free Working Mom Burnout Check-In PDF
In this episode you’ll hear:
- Why “You’re so reliable” can feel like both a compliment and a curse
- A real Tuesday: meeting request + Flock DM + text from school all at once
- How always being the “responsible one” becomes part of your identity
- Two questions to ask yourself before you say yes to anything
- Two simple scripts to say:
- “Yes, but with truth” at work
- “No, to protect who I am” at home, school, and with friends
Episode roadmap
- 0:00 – “You’re so reliable” hook
- 2:20 – The meeting + Slack + school text moment
- 7:52 – Question 1: “What part of me wants to say yes?”
- 7:57 – Question 2: “If I say yes, what am I saying no to?”
- 9:11 – Script 1: Yes, but with truth (work)
- 10:24 – Script 2: No, to protect who I am (home/school/friends)
- 11:32 – This week’s boundary experiment + Episode 8 teaser