Posts by Karyn Brinkley

February 14, 2025 Hi, Karyn. I need a new job. I NEED a new job. I can’t keep going on with the one I’m in. It’s not just about getting no satisfaction from it (which is important to me), my relationship with my boss is toxic and I’ve tried to make them happy and I…

January 31, 2025 Hi, Karyn. It feels like we’re lurching from crisis to crisis at the moment and I feel like I’m spending way too much of my time trying to deal with anxiety in my team. To be clear, I don’t think things in our organisation are any more unstable or uncertain than they’ve…

January 17, 2025 Dear Karyn Last year you sent me a card about burnout and at the time I kind of shrugged it off. I was too busy to go to your event and anyway I really thought I was managing everything okay. Fast forward to now and I think I’m in trouble. I’ve come…

December 6, 2024 Hi Karyn. This seems like a petty problem in the big scheme of things but it’s doing my head in so here goes. I work in a heavily male-dominated industry and have been in it for long enough to know how to deal with most of the sexism and micro-aggressions. The upfront…

November 22, 2024 Hi, Karyn. I’ve spent months warning my team that redundancies are coming and trying to get them to pull together and concentrate on how we can present our value as a team so we can avoid losing people. Most of them have responded really well but I have a couple who genuinely…

November 8, 2024 Hi Karyn I’ve been in a deputy role for around 9 months, working remotely from a team in the capital (working in the local office, but my team is all in the city). The job was advertised as a remote role and I voluntarily travel to the city one day each fortnight…

October 25, 2024 Hi Karyn, would love some help with this. I’m in an organisation that talks a good game about work/life balance but we have a COO making life hell with his weekend email emergencies (that are never actually emergencies). On the most recent long weekend I got copied into emails on Saturday, Sunday…

May 16, 2025 Hi, Karyn. I need some help with a very needy team member please. I feel like my boundaries are pretty good and communication in my team generally is great but this woman is driving me quietly nuts and I’m running out of strategies. Half the time she’s waiting for me in the…

June 27, 2025 Hi, Karyn. I’ve been following your posts for a while and I know you write about burnout. I’m not there yet. But sometimes it feels like a real possibility. It doesn’t seem to matter how organised I am or how early I get started, sometimes I just can’t get on top of…

June 13, 2025 Karyn, help! I’m finding this situation tricky to handle, mainly because I can understand both sides of the conflict. I have a large mixed team although there’s a small majority of women. Coming up to school holidays I always start hearing the whingeing from single women about the mothers in the team:…