Leading Women in Tech Podcast

You know something is wrong with your team. Maybe it's the missed deadlines that have become the norm. The low energy in meetings. The friction nobody's naming. The high performer who's gone quiet. Or just a general flatness — a team that's functional but nowhere near what you know it could be.
In this episode of Leading Women in Tech, Toni Collis gives you the honest, practical framework for turning a struggling team around — including the part most leadership advice skips: the leader's own role in the system.
What's covered:
➡️The four types of team struggle — and why getting the diagnosis right before you act is the most important thing you can do. The wrong solution applied with confidence makes things worse.
➡️The over-functioning trap — why managing around a problem signals to your whole team that the problem is acceptable, and what it's costing your best people right now
➡️Why your team is not where you are — the emotional and informational gap between you and your team, and why moving at your pace without accounting for theirs leaves people behind
➡️The three conversations you've been avoiding — performance, expectations, and recognition — and why the difference between a team that stays stuck and one that turns around is almost always the conversations the leader wasn't having
➡️How to retain your high performers when the team is struggling — because they're always the first to leave, and they always have options
➡️The honest question about your own leadership — and why understanding your role in the system is what makes the rest of this possible
➡️Where to start this week — three specific actions, not twenty
Whether you've inherited a struggling team, watched one develop on your watch, or just know things need to change and aren't sure where to start — this episode gives you the framework.
Related episodes: 
⏹  Episode 152 — How to Give Feedback: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/152-how-to-give-feedback
⏹  Episode 174 — What to Do When You Inherit a Poor Performer: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/174-what-to-do-when-you-inherit-an-underperformer 
⏹  Episode 172 — When You Need to Let People Go: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/172-when-you-need-to-let-people-go
⏹  Episode 178 — How to Lead and Retain High Performers: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/178-how-to-lead-and-retain-high-performers
⏹  Episode 250 — Leading Through Change: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/250-leading-through-change
⏹  Episode 158 — Unleashing Team Performance: Simple Coaching Approaches: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/158-unleashing-team-performance-the-power-of-simple-coaching-approaches
Book a complimentary strategy call: tonicollis.com/lets-chat/

Burnout isn't a personal failure. It's a clinical condition with three specific characteristics — and understanding exactly what it is may be the first step toward actually recovering from it.
Sheetal Ajmani, physician turned speaker, coach, and consultant, joins Toni for a conversation that reframes burnout and self-care from the ground up. Sheetal practiced pediatrics for over 16 years and experienced burnout multiple times across her career — the first time in 2006, when nobody was talking about it, and the most recent in 2022, when she made the decision to step away from clinical medicine entirely.
This episode goes deep on what burnout actually is, why high-achieving women are so skilled at missing the signs, and what self-care genuinely needs to look like to make a difference — hint: it's not the bubble bath.
What we cover:
⏹  The clinical definition of burnout — three characteristics, and why naming them matters
⏹  Eustress vs distress: where helpful stress ends and burnout begins
⏹  Why high-achieving women are the last to see burnout coming in themselves
⏹  Anticipatory burnout — the specific exhaustion that comes from knowing a change is coming but not being able to make it yet
⏹  Self-care redefined: why the most impactful forms take less time than you think
⏹  Micro moments of self-care — what they look like and how to find yours
⏹  The difference between self-care and self-improvement (they are not the same thing)
⏹  The Ayurvedic whole-person lens on well-being — and why your emotions, relationships, and career all affect your health
⏹  The one thing Sheetal wants every woman to start doing today
⏹  Why small changes make a larger impact than grand wellness gestures
⏹  The inner critic that adds layers of judgment on top of an already hard experience
⏹  Why burnout is an individual stress response within a social context — and what that means for systemic change
 
Connect with Sheetal Ajmani 
⏹  Website: radiantlivinginstitute.com 
⏹  Podcast: Essential Self Care: https://www.radiantlivinginstitute.com/podcasts/essential-self-care 
⏹  LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sheetalajmani

When everything is shifting — a restructure, a board crisis, a project on the edge of collapse, or just the relentless uncertainty of leading a team through sustained change — the expectation is that you hold it together. You stay steady. You have the answers.
But nobody tells you how.
In this episode of Leading Women in Tech, Toni Collis builds out the adaptive leadership toolkit every senior leader needs for navigating a genuine crisis — not the kind of crisis leadership that sounds good in a conference keynote, but the practical, honest, unglamorous work of staying grounded when everything around you is shifting.
This is not about eliminating the pressure. It is about developing the specific capabilities that let you remain clear, present, and effective within it.
What's covered:
Why crisis leadership is a trainable capability, not a personality trait — and why the unruffled leader you're comparing yourself to is a fiction
The team-speed problem: why your team is not where you are emotionally, and what it actually means to meet people where they are
Crisis communication as a leadership skill — not just a PR function. The specific language that calms, orients, and aligns your team when they're in crisis mode. And why you need to say it far more times than you think
The internal dimension: staying grounded in yourself before you can hold space for anyone else
Protecting decision quality when the stakes are highest — the difference between genuine urgency and anxiety-driven urgency
The blame game, why a crisis is never the time to play it, and the story from early in Toni's career that has stayed with her ever since
The isolation of senior leadership in a crisis — and the structural responses that make it manageable
 Related episodes: 
Episode 170 - Does it have to be lonely at the top? Drawing the line between being a boss and a friend
Episode 243 - Struggling to Be Heard? Master Leadership Communication Strategies and Coach Upwards
Episode 248 - Recognizing the Signs: Identifying Early Indicators of Burnout
Episode 250 — Leading Through Change
Episode 274 - How to Stop Overthinking at Work: Tools for Clear, Confident Leadership Decisions.
Episode 278 - When No One Listens — How to Lead When Your Voice Isn't Heard
Episode 294 — Burnout-Proof Leadership 
Episode 298 - When the Stakes Are High, Does Your Voice Go Quiet? How to Communicate With Clarity Under Pressure 
Ready to work through a genuinely difficult period with support? Book a strategy call: tonicollis.com/lets-chat

What does it actually take to become an industry leader when you never planned to be one?
Charli Rogers, Chief Customer Officer at Botify, joins Toni for a conversation that covers the full arc of her leadership journey — from an accidental start in tech to leading customer success teams of 150-200 people across multiple continents, to taking her first CCO seat at a company sitting right at the intersection of search, AI discoverability, and the future of how brands get found.
This conversation covers all things great leadership from quiet confidence, allyship in executive teams, what holding space for women in a boardroom actually looks like in practice, and the language shift — "and" versus "but" — that Charli teaches every woman she mentors.
Charli also gets honest about the biggest challenge she's navigating right now: how do you lead an AI-forward customer experience function while keeping the team delivering, changing everything about how you operate, and nobody really knows what the next two years look like?
If you're figuring out what kind of leader you want to be, how to back yourself at the next level, or how to build allies in rooms that weren't always built for you — this is the episode.
What we cover:
◾ The serendipitous career path from accidental tech foray to Chief Customer Officer
◾ Why Charli put her hand up for people leadership before she felt ready — and what happened next
◾ Quiet confidence: what it really looks like at the executive level and why it's different from the performative kind
◾ The "and" vs "but" language shift and why words matter more than most leaders realize
vAllyship in the exec room — what it looks like when it becomes second nature rather than a conscious act
◾ Holding space for women in a male-dominated executive team: practical, not theoretical
◾ AI in customer experience — leading an AI-forward function while the team keeps delivering today
◾ Building a virtual board of directors and why network investment is a long-term leadership strategy
◾ The worst piece of advice Charli was ever given: "dial it down, Charli"
◾ Confidence plus capacity: why both are non-negotiable and how to know when it's time to speak up
 
**Useful links**
◾ Connect with today's guest and sponsor, Charli Rogers and Botify:
          ◾ Charli: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlirogers/ 
          ◾ Botify: https://www.botify.com/ 
 
This episode was sponsored by our guest, Charli Rogers at Botify. Thank you Charli for helping to bring Leading Women in Tech to this community!

Are you brilliant at your job — but starting to wonder if this is really it?
One of the most common and least-talked-about challenges facing senior women in tech is the moment when something needs to change, but you don't know exactly what, and the fear of getting it wrong is keeping you exactly where you are.
This is not a "how to find a new job" episode. It is an episode about how to think clearly and strategically about career pivots — before you make a reactive decision you spend the next two years recovering from.
Whether you're bored and feeling guilty about it, you know you need to leave but can't see where to go, or you're ready to pivot but don't know where to start — this episode is for you.
Keep listening to learn more about: 
Why the restlessness you're feeling is not a character flaw — it's a signal worth taking seriously
The four types of "something needs to change" — and why getting the diagnosis right is what separates a strategic pivot from a reactive one
The full range of options available to you — including internal pivots, functional moves, smaller organisations, fractional leadership, and entrepreneurship
A five-step framework for thinking through a career pivot strategically without making a decision from your most exhausted place
What's really underneath the fear — and why the identity question is the thing that keeps most women stuck
What a good career pivot actually looks like — and the one first step to take this week
Whether you're actively planning a change or just starting to sit with the question, this episode will help you think more clearly about what you actually want next.