Episode 192: You Knew All Along | Katie O'Malley on Trusting Instincts

Guest: Katie O'Malley, Executive Coach and Leadership Educator, Founder of (en)Courage Coaching


Episode Summary

Katie O'Malley spent two years overriding the same instinct: about a business partner she distrusted from the first meeting, about a job she felt in her body she shouldn't take, about a marriage she knew wasn't working long before she said so out loud. In this conversation, she and Dawn trace exactly how that override happens, why it so often gets triggered by being told you're "too critical" or "too judgmental," and what it actually takes to start trusting your own read again.

This episode is for the coach or entrepreneur who has caught herself explaining away a gut feeling because someone she trusted told her she was wrong to have it.

Key takeaways:

• The First Instinct — How Katie's body flagged her future business partner as a problem before her mind had the language for it.
• Whose Voice Was She Actually Hearing — Why she believed the people calling her critical over her own read, and where that belief started.
• Thriving Business, Disappearing Self — How her business kept growing while she was quietly disconnecting from her own life outside of it.
• The Pattern Across Three Relationships — What her father, her ex-husband, and her business partner had in common, and how each one used the same line against her.
• Write It Down, Say It Out Loud — The two-step practice Katie now uses to rebuild trust in her own instincts.

Guest Bio and Links

Katie O'Malley is an Executive Coach and Leadership Educator with 20 years of experience across nonprofit, education, and corporate sectors. Her work has consistently centered on developing people, leading her to earn a master's degree in counseling and board certification in coaching.

As Founder and Principal Coach of (en)Courage Coaching, Katie has supported hundreds of individuals, teams, and organizations since 2018. What began as a mission to expand access to high-quality coaching in Chicago has grown into a global practice. She helps clients build authentic careers, strengthen leadership practices, and foster workplace cultures grounded in clarity and accountability, drawing on evidence-based approaches from counseling, organizational development, and leadership education.

Before launching her firm, Katie coached and taught MBA and graduate students at Chicago Booth, the University of Texas at Austin, and DePaul University. Her work has appeared in Fast Company and Thrive Global. She also served on the Fast Company Executive Board and the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, and delivered her TEDx talk in Boston in 2025.

Website: www.encouragecoaching.org
Instagram: @encouragecoachchicago 
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kateomalley
YouTube TedX Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUNGPk978uE
 

 Full Transcript

Dawn: Welcome back to the Self-Trust Solution Podcast. I am Dawn Ledet, your host, The Self-Trust Coach. And today I'm joined by Katie O'Malley. Katie is an executive coach, leadership educator, and the founder of enCourage Coaching, where she helps individuals, teams, and organizations build authentic leadership, accountability, and healthier workplace cultures.

Dawn: Over the last two decades, her work has spanned nonprofit, education, and corporate spaces, and she's coached leaders everywhere from universities to executive boardrooms. Her work has been featured in Fast Company and Thrive Global, and she delivered her TEDx Talk in Boston in 2025. But what I'm especially excited to explore today is the season where Katie had to confront what happens when you stop trusting your own instincts.

Dawn: After years of overriding what she knew deep down, navigating divorce, caregiving, financial fear, and a failed business partnership, she found herself reclaiming something foundational: her ability to trust herself again. Katie, I'm so glad you're here.

Katie O'Malley: Dawn, thank you so much for that lovely introduction.

Katie O'Malley: You got me blushing over here in Chicago.

Dawn: Yes. So take us back to this season when so much was happening at once: divorce, caring for your father, business decisions, financial pressure. What did life look like externally, and what was happening internally?

Katie O'Malley: Yeah. So gosh, this all kicked off — it had been obviously in the works for several years, if not decades.

Katie O'Malley: But everything really came to a head in 2023. And for me, this season was both energizing and exhilarating, but terrifying at the same time. So in 2022, I left my full-time job at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business to enter into full-time business ownership with enCourage Coaching.

Katie O'Malley: And it was fantastic, growing in ways that happen when you can dedicate forty to fifty hours a week to a small business. At the same time, I knew my marriage was not a partnership any longer, and at that time I had someone come my way who was really looking for a business partner.

Katie O'Malley: And looking back now, in a lot of ways, I realize there was a bit of a predatory aspect to that — knowing that I was going through such personal emotional upheaval, with my marriage and one partnership ending, let's start this new partnership with someone who seems very trustworthy. All the while, in the background, my father's health was deteriorating — not because there was anything wrong with him, but his mental health was causing that physical deterioration medically.

Katie O'Malley: And so it was a lot to manage all at once, on top of two dogs and a home. And gosh, I don't even know what to say next about it, but that is the setup of what kicked off in 2023.

Dawn: Things people see externally — what would I have noticed about you during that time?

Katie O'Malley: It's interesting. When I started to tell people what was happening, late 2023 into 2024, they would say, "We had absolutely no idea all of this was happening behind the scenes, based upon what we were seeing on social media, based upon the interactions we were having with you."

Katie O'Malley: And I'm like, yeah — a lot of this drama, for lack of a better word, felt very shameful at its root, because I felt as though I had let these things happen to myself, right? Instead of finally being able to see: these were the things that were happening to me, and my conditioning was what was perpetuating them forward and allowing them to continue.

Katie O'Malley: And so, Dawn, to your question — no one would've really known until I started 2024 at what I affectionately call therapy camp, because I was just shutting down physically, emotionally, cognitively. I had nothing left in the tank, even in terms of my own immunity, and spent a week in Nashville at a place called Onsite, where you're really doing that deep core work around unhealed wounds, family systems, internal family systems.

Katie O'Malley: And emerging from that, I was actually able to start to name a lot of what was emerging, because I hadn't trusted my initial instinct.

Dawn: Mm-hmm.

Katie O'Malley: My thoughts weren't aligning with my feelings or my behaviors, and that was what was causing a lot of this. And as someone who's trained and educated as a therapist, I knew that — but we can't do that work for ourselves.

Dawn: Right. For sure. And I think what you demonstrate is so important: that often it doesn't show up externally.

Katie O'Malley: Yeah.

Dawn: But that's part of overriding yourself, and shame certainly sounds like it contributed to it, as it does oftentimes. But you end up carrying more — not just the difficulty of the circumstances you're going through, but also you're trying to carry other people's perceptions.

Katie O'Malley: Exactly, which is so heavy.

Dawn: Mm-hmm.

Katie O'Malley: It's so unfair to you when you're already dealing with so much. I kind of likened it to — it's like when you leave an app open on your phone and you're like, "I've only been using my phone for an hour. Why am I down to one percent battery?"

Dawn: Mm.

Katie O'Malley: Meanwhile, you have this whole operating system that's draining everything you can't see, and that's really what it felt like, from 2023 until the middle of 2025.

Dawn: Well, you mention another piece of overriding yourself: this partner who came in, that in hindsight you see as somewhat predatory.

Dawn: From the moment you met her, there was something off, right? You had it in your bones, you mentioned, that this was maybe not a trustworthy human. Take us back to that first instinct and what you noticed.

Katie O'Malley: Yeah. So I was roughly seven, eight months into my full-time journey as a business owner for enCourage Coaching, and one of the first big investments I made was becoming an individual sponsor for the Professional Women's Club of Chicago.

Katie O'Malley: So what that allowed for was a bit of visibility for enCourage Coaching — getting me a seat at the luncheon every month down at the Union League Club of Chicago, and the opportunity to connect with other amazing women. Because one of the drawbacks of being an entrepreneur is it can get pretty lonely, right?

Katie O'Malley: And so having that community to go to was a win in a lot of ways. For that particular luncheon, my would-be business partner was the speaker, and I was sitting at the head table because it was my first luncheon as a sponsor. And I'm sitting there thinking, "My gosh —" The slides are a mess.

Katie O'Malley: There's no evidence-based ideas being shared here. It just feels like a lot of crowd work and trauma dumping on an audience during a lunch that's supposed to be about the development of others. And the word that came to mind was hack. This woman is a hack. And then I immediately said to myself, based on feedback I've gotten from my ex-husband, my father my entire life, and then my would-be business partner: "Katie, you're so critical."

Katie O'Malley: "You're so judgmental. You don't know this person. How can you possibly make that assessment," right? Even though I'm almost always right, Dawn, in that. And I think a lot of us are in that instinctual response we get — that gut feeling — because we have so many neural pathways in our—

Dawn: Wisdom that you're not listening to, for sure.

Katie O'Malley: Yeah.

Dawn: Why did you override that instinct?

Katie O'Malley: Because I kept hearing the voices of my late father and my ex-husband being like—

Dawn: Mm.

Katie O'Malley: "You are a critical, judgmental bitch." Like—

Dawn: Mm-hmm.

Katie O'Malley: "Stop." And I realize now they used that feedback toward me as a mechanism to prevent holding them accountable for the things they did that were disagreeable, right?

Katie O'Malley: Then that's when I was becoming critical and judgmental of them. "Oh, this is just how you are as a person, so you can't do this to us, because it makes you not a good person." And I'm like, I can't be a not-good person sitting at this lunch table as a sponsor of the organization, right? So I engaged in conversation with her afterward and politely said, "Let's get coffee sometime."

Katie O'Malley: And that's when a whole season of love bombing started — professional love bombing, which at the time I knew existed in romantic relationships. I didn't realize it could also exist in other kinds of relationships and partnerships, and that was the second time I ignored my spidey sense. I'm like, "No one should be having this much care for me, this much trust in me, this much over-the-top generosity, without receiving anything in return."

Katie O'Malley: And eventually I said, "This generosity is incredible. I really don't know what I can give back to you." And she's like, "I'm looking for a business partner." And at that point, again, I knew — I'm like, "I don't want to do this," but I also felt like I was on the hook in some ways. And again — "Katie, she has these really great Fortune 500 clients, these premier nonprofits she's working with. What are you talking about?"

Katie O'Malley: "There has to be something good there. Getting a new pair of Louboutins every quarter — she's doing something right that you're not." And so I overrode that instinct again.

Dawn: And at the same time, you're caring for your aging father and navigating the end of your marriage. How did carrying so many emotional responsibilities affect your relationship with yourself?

Katie O'Malley: I became completely disconnected from myself.

Dawn: Mm-hmm.

Katie O'Malley: Every day was just about waking up, making sure the business didn't crumble, because that was my financial lifeline. And then making it to the end of the day so I could do it all over again, right?

Katie O'Malley: It became very robotic and mechanical. Wake up, work out, take the dogs out, work from nine to six, nine to seven, take the dogs out again, eat dinner, watch a show, go to bed, wake up and do it again.

Katie O'Malley: And if you asked me to describe things that happened in the entirety of 2024 and the first half of 2025, my recall is not great.

Dawn: Mm.

Katie O'Malley: And memory is something I pride myself on, and a lot of folks note it as a differentiating quality. I was in survival mode for those eighteen months.

Dawn: Yeah.

Dawn: So how was business going during this time?

Katie O'Malley: Business was great. There were — and when I say business was great — lots of individual clients coming my way for career coaching, the desire for folks who wanted to work with me and become enCourage coaches. Meanwhile, on the other side, the would-be business partner was running — because of the intellectual property, the programs, the curriculums I had created, she had a lot to sell to prospective clients.

Katie O'Malley: And so I was coaching, creating, delivering, and then I started to realize, "But wait — where's the money? Where is the return on this sweat-equity investment on my end?" And that's when I was like, "Something is hinky here."

Dawn: Mm-hmm.

Katie O'Malley: "But I can't disrupt one more thing in my life at this moment, so I'm going to let this ride with the would-be business partner."

Katie O'Malley: And there were so many moments in 2024 where, had those other things not been going on — the caregiving for my dad, the divorce, selling the home I thought I was going to grow old in, a huge part of my retirement plan — had those things not been going on, I would've been able to say, "I'm not doing this," right?

Katie O'Malley: But—

Dawn: Mm.

Katie O'Malley: —the moments when I did present wariness about merging as business partners, it was, "You don't trust me right now because you don't trust anybody right now." Then it was, "You're so judgmental and you're so critical" — the same narrative I had grown up with and heard throughout my marriage that kept me—

Katie O'Malley: Those were the two dynamics that kept me in that prospective merger.

Dawn: Yeah. It sounds like — but business was great.

Katie O'Malley: I mean, not only was I able to maintain the gross revenue from 2023 into 2024 and 2025, I exceeded it a little bit. Not a huge amount, right? But working with my business coach now, she's like, "It's incredible that you didn't just fold and go back to working for someone."

Katie O'Malley: "The fact that you hit the same gross revenue numbers in '24 and '25 just shows what you're capable of, which is basically anything at this point, and I hope you see that."

Dawn: Meanwhile, preparing for the TED Talk as well.

Katie O'Malley: Yeah.

Dawn: I mean, there's nothing like showing us our true capacity.

Katie O'Malley: Mm-hmm.

Dawn: These challenges — but so good that you can look back and see that even through the hardest moments, you're so capable and so able.

Dawn: So — yeah, that's really great. Well, it's very interesting to hear that there is so much gaslighting going on in this relationship, and that it really pulled on what you've heard your whole life from your father and husband, and having this business partner echo that. How do you see that now, in hindsight, contributing to where you are now?

Katie O'Malley: So I see it very clearly, right? Because hindsight is 20/20, and I'm able to identify my own behavioral patterns that allow this kind of relationship to enter my life, and then what I allowed to sustain it. But also recognizing — these three humans shared a lot of qualities and traits, and while I'm not here to diagnose folks and unfairly drop pathology around narcissism, sociopathy, or borderline personality disorder, they all shared a set of qualities that was very broken on the inside and had different ways of projecting that onto others externally to gain control and build power.

Katie O'Malley: And so with my dad, it was incredibly overt — the way he would criticize in private and praise in public, which made it very difficult for me to ever say something was wrong in the household, right? Because that wasn't what people were perceiving of him, which was father of the year. Same with my ex-husband, but more in a covert way.

Katie O'Malley: "What a talented chef — he must be cooking these beautiful meals for you every night, and he's so gentle and kind and hardworking. Look at all of this effort he put into this meal." Meanwhile, that's the only thing he did for three or four months at a time — this one meal for family or friends.

Katie O'Malley: And then with the business partner — oh my gosh, you guys are working so hard, and I'm so glad she brought you in under her wing — and everyone thought I worked for her instead of with her.

Dawn: What about yourself through this — how does it contribute to what you've been able to achieve, and how you see yourself now?

Katie O'Malley: Yeah. I mean, how I see myself now — the truth of the matter is, I am not ready to let any new people into my life yet. I am sticking with the core group that has consistently shown up for me and treated me with dignity and respect and genuine kindness, throughout my life or for a significant period of time — and this holds for friendships, romantic relationships.

Katie O'Malley: As I work in therapy to rebuild my self-trust in terms of decision-making around relationships and who I allow into my life, I think the impact it's had on me right now is: I don't need anyone else to achieve what I want to achieve.

Dawn: Mm.

Katie O'Malley: In this moment, what I want to achieve right now is financial security for my future, rebuilding what I lost in the divorce and in that business partnership, and really focusing in on the friends and family that were with me.

Katie O'Malley: And when I share that with folks, sometimes they're like, "Oh, that's so pessimistic. You don't want to make new friends? You don't want a partner?" I'm like, not at this moment in my life. I don't trust myself enough yet, and when I do, I will explore it. But I'm not there yet. So in therapy, I'm looking at what are the criteria for what I need and want, not just what's coming my way, and that's been very difficult to establish, Dawn.

Dawn: Yeah. Well, I will tell you, as someone who doesn't know you very well — there's a lot of evidence that you one hundred percent can trust yourself.

Katie O'Malley: Thank you.

Dawn: It's just the choice of doing it, and I know there are many reasons — I don't mean to simplify that. There are many reasons why that choice has been difficult, but I just hope you see yourself that clearly — that you have so many examples of seeing this, of identifying it.

Dawn: It's just choosing to listen to that voice—

Katie O'Malley: Yeah.

Dawn: —that's telling you, because it is very wise, let me tell you. So—

Katie O'Malley: I think — thank you for reflecting that back to me, and I agree, in terms of my work, my business — I trust myself wholeheartedly.

Dawn: Yeah.

Katie O'Malley: It's more in relationship that I'm working on building that dimension of trust.

Dawn: Which is — I always love to tell people, when it's in one dimension, it's in you.

Katie O'Malley: Oh, I love that.

Dawn: So absolutely, you have the skill. Now it's just learning to apply it to this other—

Katie O'Malley: Mm.

Dawn: —space. It's already yours. So yes, I just know that is definitely part of your future. So tell me now — how do you begin rebuilding your trust in your own instinct in those areas?

Katie O'Malley: Yeah. So I think to start — a big decision I recently made, I don't even think you know this yet, is that I, a woman who has been a city girl for my entire adult life, am moving to the suburbs. And I came to that decision without talking to friends or family. I just made the choice. And it's being driven by my niece being able to finish out her senior year of high school at the high school she's been in, with the friends she's made—

Katie O'Malley: —for her entire childhood. Because her mom got a great job opportunity out in Boston, and it feels really good to be able to do that. And as soon as I realized this was a possibility, I just raised my hand and did it, because it felt right in my bones. And I think if I had been presented with this choice in 2022, 2023, or 2024, I don't think I would've even named it as a possibility, right?

Dawn: Mm-hmm.

Katie O'Malley: And so it is a win for my niece. It's a win for me. It's a win for her mom. And moving forward, it's not that I don't want to bring in the perspectives of other people in my decision-making process, but when I know, I know, and I just go, on that personal side of things — because when I do it professionally, it's always a win.

Dawn: Yeah. Yeah. When you know, go.

Katie O'Malley: That's right.

Dawn: Well, and you're definitely bringing the courage from enCourage into this, which is so good to see. You said something really powerful about the body knowing the answers to questions our brains don't yet know to ask. Tell us a little about that and how you listen to yourself differently now.

Katie O'Malley: Yeah. So that statement really came out of reading both The Body Keeps the Score while I was in graduate school, and not understanding yet the mind-body connection — very little to nothing about somatics. But — how do I say this — while I don't have a diagnosis of being a highly sensitive person, I am highly aware of what's happening in my body at all times, and what's impacting that.

Katie O'Malley: And I think one of the best examples is that day at the luncheon — I knew, my body knew, this wasn't going to be a good relationship for me.

Dawn: Mm-hmm.

Katie O'Malley: And I didn't listen. Another example — oh my gosh — when I pivoted careers at thirty to get my master's degree in counseling, I was going through an interview process with universities because I wanted to do career and leadership development work, and insurance companies don't want to cover therapy sessions about work because it's not a mental health diagnosis, though the bridge with burnout is right there.

Katie O'Malley: But that's a conversation for another time. So I went into higher ed, going through the interview processes, and within higher ed it is so demanding.

Dawn: Mm-hmm.

Katie O'Malley: One-, two-, three-day interviews. And I got an interview at the University of Texas at Austin that was two days, and on the second day, Dawn, they said I was going to be in a conference room.

Katie O'Malley: The conference room held fifteen people, but the whole division was invited to come if they wanted to, and it was standing room only. There had to be fifty people in this room where I thought there might be fifteen.

Dawn: Mm-hmm.

Katie O'Malley: It's May in Austin, Texas. I am in a suit. I am pouring sweat underneath my outfit. And one of the questions I got was from the associate dean of the division, and he asked about using assessment tools in the evaluation of student learning outcomes, and I got maybe thirty seconds into my response.

Katie O'Malley: He wasn't even looking at me, and said, "That's enough." And in that moment, my body said, "If they offer you this job, don't take this job. Do not take this job."

Katie O'Malley: And then, again — hearing that voice: "Katie, you're so judgmental. You're so critical. Maybe he's just having a bad day," right? You can't turn down an opportunity at the University of Texas at Austin because of one interaction out of fifty.

Katie O'Malley: Wouldn't you know, this person became the reason I ended up leaving after being there for less than two years, and made it impossible for me to work or be promoted there. And after I left, I reached out to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — before all of what we're seeing now was happening — and they said, "You one hundred percent have a case here."

Katie O'Malley: They set me up to talk to three different attorneys. And my time had run out — you have to file within 365 days, which is not helpful to the employee whose employer is keeping their livelihood, right? But — I knew I shouldn't take this job. I took it. Austin is where I met my ex, now ex-husband.

Katie O'Malley: There are a lot — but then I think having that experience is partly what propels the work I do now around healthy and courageous workplaces. So you try to make meaning, right? To be human is to suffer, and it's the meaning we make of our experiences that matters most. But at the time, I was like — I knew, and I didn't listen to my body.

Dawn: Mm-hmm. I think that's such a good point. I mean, even when we do override ourselves, there's so much fruit to be gained. It's painful fruit, but there's so much we can still glean from it and use to help and support others, which you are doing now so beautifully. But what would you tell — for someone listening who keeps talking themselves out of what they already know, that gut feeling, those instincts they have — what would you want them to hear?

Katie O'Malley: I'd want them to hear two things — or three things. First: it's okay you're overriding yourself. It's okay. You need some self-compassion. There must be lots of stuff going on that's making this not feel like the safest choice for you right now. But then the second thing I would say is: write it down. And the next time, write it down on the same sheet of paper again and again and again, and then say it out loud to another human.

Katie O'Malley: Because a lot of professors at Chicago Booth would say, "If you don't write it down, it doesn't exist," which I agree with. And if you don't say it out loud to another human, there's no one to hold you accountable around this. And it's not the accountability to make the big choice or make the decision — it's the accountability to trust what you're experiencing.

Katie O'Malley: And when I finally said out loud to someone what had been happening in my marriage, in totality — this was a person I respect deeply, her name's Kathy, also a therapist — and she said what you said: "Katie, you're being gaslit. You have to divorce this man." And I had explored divorce attorneys, all of these things, and after our brunch I went home and said, "I want a divorce."

Katie O'Malley: Because sometimes we just need permission from somebody else to do it.

Dawn: I wonder if you needed that permission, or if you really just needed to hear it all out loud, as a third—

Katie O'Malley: Right.

Dawn: —as almost a third party, because that is true. When we're in it, we see moment by moment, even though our body is carrying the weight of the years.

Dawn: But saying it out loud, I bet, had a real impact for you — to actually get it out of your mouth and hear yourself say this experience, the whole thing.

Katie O'Malley: And you're absolutely right, I do think there's a little bit of permission there. But as I was saying it — she even said to me, "Katie, if I told you the story, what would you tell me to do?"

Dawn: Mm-hmm.

Katie O'Malley: I'm like, "I would tell you to get out of your marriage. This is banana pants." And she's like, "You know what you have to do."

Dawn: Let's not talk about — I think she heard it, and you gave yourself the permission. I'm just gonna say that.

Katie O'Malley: Ooh, I like that. Yeah.

Dawn: I think it's very easy — and especially your experience has invited overriding in a way, right? And so I have so much compassion for that. But just right under the surface, right there existing, that just needed you to see it, was—

Katie O'Malley: Mm-hmm.

Dawn: —so much ability to trust yourself, and so much wisdom and knowledge.

Dawn: So I just hope you see that. I think it's so beautiful.

Katie O'Malley: Thank you.

Dawn: So tell us a little bit about what you're building now, who you love working with, and the enCourage Foundation.

Katie O'Malley: Yeah. So at enCourage Coaching and the enCourage Foundation, truthfully, we are on a mission to prepare job seekers for the future of work.

Katie O'Malley: We are at a kind of crucible moment in our economy, and particularly in our labor market, and it's no longer just about how we find and help our clients find work that allows them to thrive and not just survive — it's how we're preparing them for what's coming down the highway eighteen to twenty-four months from now.

Katie O'Malley: Because the layoffs we're seeing now are the result of investments being made in AI, not AI actually taking people's jobs yet — that will be coming. And so how are we helping folks develop both the technical skills and also the very human skills that AI cannot replace — critical thinking, discernment, learning agility, empathy.

Katie O'Malley: And not just the performance of empathy, right, that AI can do — but being able to give them these toolkits, all grounded in self-awareness, whether they are an individual contributor all the way up to an executive. At enCourage Coaching, we work with the whole gamut, and typically if we're working with more than one person on a team, we come in and help the team—

Katie O'Malley: —because there's something more going on there. The enCourage Foundation — this is really exciting. If I had my druthers, enCourage Coaching would've been a nonprofit from the jump, but if I wanted to do it full time, I did have to be earning a living wage that supported both me and my ex-husband.

Katie O'Malley: And so, now that I'm out of that situation, earlier this year we filed for the enCourage Foundation to become a 501(c)(3) in the State of Illinois, with the idea that we would be helping unemployed folks in Illinois whose unemployment benefits had run out.

Dawn: Mm.

Katie O'Malley: So essentially, folks who couldn't afford to work with enCourage Coaching.

Katie O'Malley: What I realized, after attending several conferences this spring around human resources, people ops, and the future of work, is that's essentially going to be putting a Band-Aid on a bullet hole. What folks really need is that developmental training and learning to be prepared for what's coming next.

Katie O'Malley: And so helping folks identify the skills that differentiate them, going deep on those, but having a generalist ability to really adapt to whatever is coming down the pipe — because the velocity at which things are moving, this is the fastest we have ever moved, and it will be the slowest we ever move from this day forward.

Dawn: Mm. Yeah. Such important work. Tell folks where they can connect with you and learn more about your work.

Katie O'Malley: Yes. So there are two or three places you can do it. First, our website, encouragecoaching.org. You can find out all about our mission, our values, our purpose, the services we offer, and lots of great free resources and tools on the site.

Katie O'Malley: If you need a good giggle in the middle of the workday, or to feel less alone in what you're experiencing at work, I encourage you to follow us on Instagram at encouragecoachchicago, where I post a lot of knowingly funny workplace bits, and a lot of cute pictures and videos of my chief happiness officer, Foxy the Goldendoodle, which people really love.

Katie O'Malley: And then on LinkedIn, /katomalley — that's where we post a lot of great research, more about our services, and how we can be helpful to individuals, teams, and organizations looking to build courageous careers and workplaces.

Dawn: Awesome. We are going to have all of those links in the show notes, so definitely go check that out.

Dawn: Katie, this conversation is such a powerful reminder that self-trust often isn't about learning anything new.

Katie O'Malley: Yeah.

Dawn: It's about finally admitting what we already knew, and I think so many people are going to recognize themselves in this experience of overriding instincts, minimizing red flags, or abandoning themselves in order to maintain connection, approval, or the appearance of safety.

Dawn: So thank you so much for highlighting this and sharing your story and being here with us.

Katie O'Malley: Thank you for the opportunity, Dawn. I hope this resonates with your audience.

Dawn: Yes. If today's conversation stirred something in you, I want you to first go check out all of Katie's links. But I also want you to take one extra step before you close this episode, and that's to take the self-trust identity map.

Dawn: Before strategy, before motivation, before effort, you need to know where your identity is operating from, because that is what determines everything that follows. It's free, it takes three minutes, and it will give you a precise read on where you're operating from right now and exactly where to focus next.

Dawn: That link is in the show notes as well. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss what's coming. These stories are just getting started. See you next time.

Know where you're standing. Then know where to work.

Take the free Where Are You Standing? assessment. It takes three minutes and shows you exactly where you're standing in relation to your Floor, and exactly where to focus next.
https://www.theselftrustcoach.com/identity-assessment-page

Want to go deeper? The Floor: Your Build is available now. Self-paced, structured, and built around the same framework.
https://www.theselftrustcoach.com/the-floor-your-build