Too Human To Ignore

FOR WOMEN LEADERS WHOSE RESULTS SPEAK LOUDER THAN THEIR TITLE


LEAD WITH THE INSTINCTS YOU ALREADY HAVE.
BUILD THE TEAM THAT MAKES YOUR NEXT PROMOTION OBVIOUS.

You outperform, you say yes to more, and you still end up explaining your value. Too Human To Ignore gives you a proven five-part system that you run inside the 1-on-1s and team meetings already on your calendar, so you and your team rise together.

Yes! Rush me a copy — $20
Ebook only · Instant download

When doing everything right still doesn't get you promoted

Have you ever wondered why being great at your job hasn't made you the obvious choice for the next step up?

You took the extra project. You covered the gap nobody else wanted. You earned the credential. And still, you're in the same seat.

One client put it to me this way: "I have more ideas than I have hours in the day. I've given this everything, and I'm still not being recognized."

She's not alone. A study of nearly 30,000 employees at a large North American retail chain found that women received higher performance ratings than men, yet were rated lower on potential and were less likely to be promoted. Their high performance was seen, yet it still wasn't enough to prove they were ready for more.

If this sounds familiar, nothing about you is broken. Working harder was never going to close this gap. What's missing is a system to put what you already have to work.

YOU DON'T HAVE A SKILLS GAP. YOU HAVE A DEPLOYMENT GAP. THE EMPATHY, PRESENCE AND JUDGMENT YOU ALREADY CARRY HAVE NEVER BEEN PUT TO WORK INSIDE A SYSTEM BUILT TO PRODUCE REAL, MEASURABLE RESULTS

Why working harder hasn't made your value visible

Maybe somewhere in you there's a belief that goes like this: if I just work hard enough, someone will notice.

It's a reasonable belief, and plenty of workplaces reward it early on. It feels safe because it asks nothing of you except more of what you already do well.

It also keeps you exactly where you are. Recognition runs on visibility and sponsorship, and on a system that produces both. More effort only proves a competence nobody was questioning. Bain & Company found that after two or more years in the workforce, women's ambition drops by more than 60% and their confidence by roughly half, while men's stay essentially unchanged. Same buildings, same work. That erosion has almost nothing to do with ability.

Why extra credentials and networking haven't moved your career

Another certificate raises a bar that someone else still decides you've cleared. Volunteering for every project wears you down without guaranteeing anyone notices. Getting into the room gets you proximity, and proximity on its own converts into very little.

Companies respond with the fix that's easiest to announce: a mentorship program on paper, a panel on women in leadership, advice to speak up and negotiate harder. The whole burden lands back on you, with no framework underneath it.

Meanwhile, the deeper pattern keeps running. In 1977, sociologist Rosabeth Moss Kanter documented how leaders promote the people who remind them of themselves. It's rarely conscious. Nearly 50 years later, women still hold just 29% of C-suite roles. And the Chartered Management Institute found that 82% of managers start their first leadership role with no formal training at all. Most leaders are handed the title without a map. Women are then measured against a model that was never built with them in mind, and told the gap is theirs to close. So they work harder. They stay later. They earn one more certificate. And still, nobody sees their real value. Quietly, they start to wonder if the problem is them.

It never was.

Why I wrote this book

In 2008, eight months after starting as a ground-floor technician, with no corporate background and no management training, I was handed one of the highest-profile properties in Toronto. The manager before me had walked out. The contract was close to being cancelled. Two months in, the recession hit.

Every leader I could study was a man, so I copied what I saw. Bravado. Certainty I didn't have. My team read straight through it and went quiet.

So I called them together and said the sentence that frightened me more than anything I've said as a leader: "I don't have all the answers. I need yours."

They leaned in. They brought me problems I didn't know existed and ideas I'd never have had. We grew revenue by more than 100% by 2009, while the rest of the sector lost money.

That was the beginning. For years, I built on that lesson, refining it on the hardest teams I was handed, and the promotions followed, all the way to the top 200 executives at the largest company in my industry worldwide.

But the higher I climbed, the bigger the rooms got, and I felt the pull to play small. I stayed quiet and covered the difference with hours, until burnout cost me two years away from corporate life. I came back knowing two things: no leader should carry everything alone, and leading as anything less than myself was never sustainable. I promised I'd never play small again.

I wrote this book because more women belong in the highest leadership roles, and because every team deserves a leader who puts people first. Everything I learned is in here, in order, so you don't have to spend 19 years finding it.

Why deploying the instincts you already have works when working harder didn't

When you run the skills you already have inside a clear system, your team starts delivering, the people above you start paying attention, and someone with real influence starts saying your name for you.

It works because of what I call the External Mirror. You're almost always more capable, more ready and more valuable than the story you've been telling yourself, because you've never seen yourself the way the people around you do. Once you can, you start reflecting that belief back to your team. Trust isn't earned through performance. It's created through investment. The leader who goes first, who invests in her people before they've proven anything, is the one whose team rises.

These instincts are only gaining value. In a study of 55,000 professionals, Korn Ferry found that women score higher than men on 11 of 12 emotional intelligence competencies. The World Economic Forum's 2025 research placed empathy and active listening among the skills generative AI is least able to replace. They were never the soft skills. They were the mechanism.

The HUMAN System

The step-by-step method inside Too Human To Ignore. You're already delivering results. This system turns the instincts that got you here into three things that results alone haven't won you. A team that rises: people who feel seen, heard and valued, and who are ready to step into larger roles before you step into yours. A career that advances: vetted champions in the rooms where decisions get made, saying your name with proof behind it. And leadership no AI can replace, built on the empathy, presence and human connection that grow more valuable every year. Nothing about it asks you to become someone else. It asks you to lead as yourself, on purpose.

01
Harness What You Already Have
Build your Unfair Advantage Inventory of the lived knowledge most leaders above you never had, see the research proving the instincts you were told were too soft are what make leaders effective, and find the Personal North Star you'll lead by.
02
Understand Before You Act
Use the RISE Model and a Team Reset to make empathy and presence a daily practice, so your team tells you what's actually happening instead of what you want to hear, and problems become opportunities instead of fires to put out.
03
Make Your Value Visible
Learn the real difference between a mentor and a champion, vet and build those relationships with a five-step framework, and share your wins without bragging, because someone has to say your name in the conversation that decides your next promotion.
04
Architect the Culture
Build psychological safety on purpose, so your team brings you real problems before they become crises, ideas they'd otherwise keep to themselves, and their own solutions. Co-create a Team North Star, and run 1-on-1s that reveal what every person is building toward.
05
Nurture Your Replacement
Mentor at every level, train two successors instead of one, and treat delegation as development. Real work comes off your plate, your people see a future worth staying for, and leadership sees the clearest proof you're ready to advance.
Yes! Rush me a copy — $20
See the full system inside · Instant download

What Others Are Saying

"Lindsay taught me her Champion Vetting Framework, and it changed how I approached my career. I stopped hoping the right people would notice and started building relationships with the ones who could actually speak up for me. I became a better leader, had more fun doing it, and got promoted because of it. Now it's in her book, and that section alone is worth the price."

— Joanne, coaching client

"Training two successors has been a game changer. Offloading some of my workload while developing others allowed them to see and work towards a real career path while eliminating burnout for me. I am ready to accept a new promotion and know my team will be in good hands when I do. 

— ANNA, coaching clienT

"I was promoted into a role I never thought was possible, and it's still paying off for me, my team and my company."

— BECKY, coaching client

How Becky went from overlooked Director to Head of Production

Becky was young for her role, leading her very first team, and she was genuinely good at it. She had ideas that could have shaped how her entire region operated, but nobody above her asked. So she made herself smaller, stayed in her lane, and waited to be discovered.

Together, we built her Ignored Inventory, everything she'd done to get noticed that went nowhere, and her Unfair Advantage Inventory, everything she knew and had quietly solved that leadership had never heard about. Once she could see her value clearly, I taught her simple conversation starters to let the right people know, without it ever sounding like bragging.

Soon she was invited into think tank sessions with the Regional VP, rooms she'd never been considered for. She went from Director to Head of Production at head office, and she's still a client of mine today. The gap was never her ability. Nobody had handed her a way to make it visible.

What happened to the people I developed

Jennifer, operations. She was quietly planning to leave because she couldn't picture a future where she was. I noticed she was a natural with clients and paired her with a Sales Manager who'd move up once she stood on her own. She became Sales Coordinator, then Sales Manager, and is now a Sales Director with another company.

Kristine, technician. Her older male peers weren't taking her seriously. We deepened her technical skill and worked through many honest 1-on-1s until she could see what I saw. She became Team Lead, then Operations Manager, and is now a Production Manager elsewhere.

Erin, Sales Coordinator. Leadership wanted her exactly where she was because she was good at it. Through the same shadowing arrangement, she became Sales Manager, then Regional Sales Manager, and has since moved overseas with the largest company in her sector globally.

What You'll Discover Inside

01
How to turn years of unrecognized effort into proof on a page
Put your Ignored Inventory beside your Unfair Advantage Inventory, and something shifts that no pep talk ever has.
02
Why starting at the bottom gives you information your bosses don't have
Leaders at the top work with filtered information. Your Ground Floor Advantage is the unfiltered map, built from lived experience that no AI dataset can capture.
03
How to discover what you stand for as a leader, in two minutes a day
Find your Personal North Star, the direction you steer by when things are good, hard, or simply unclear, so every decision gets easier, and your leadership finally feels like your own.
04
The four ways to respond when your team brings you a problem
The RISE Model shows why the first two get you defensiveness or politeness, and how the other two get you the truth, the real solution, and a team that trusts you enough to bring problems early.
05
What to say in your first team meeting, whether the team is new or you've led it for years
The Team Reset, and the one question that puts every idea and every problem on the table.
06
The difference between someone who advises you and someone who advocates for you
Mentors talk to you. Champions talk about you. A five-step vetting framework shows you who truly holds influence over your next promotion, the red flags to catch before you invest your time and trust, and how to build a relationship that gets your name said in the right rooms.
07
How to share a result without it sounding like bragging
Conversation starters that lead with energy, not achievement, and the research on how they help you sidestep the penalty women face for self-promotion.
08
How to help your team develop a rally cry for when it matters most
The Team North Star session, built to keep the people you serve at the center of every decision. It becomes your team's filter for brainstorming, prioritizing and hiring, and gives them the clarity to decide how to move forward in times of uncertainty.
09
Why you should develop two successors instead of one
And why a team that runs without you is the clearest evidence leadership will ever see that you're ready.
10
How to protect the team you've built from the one thing you can't fix
You can remotivate almost anyone. The hardest non-negotiable in the book is what to do when someone on your team shows you, again and again, that they don't care.

Is This Right For You?

This is NOT for those who:
  • Aren't ready to let go of the belief that working harder will eventually be enough.
  • Are still convinced they have to choose between empathy and results, instead of using one to drive the other.
  • Still worry that developing someone to lead at their level makes them less essential, not more promotable.
  • Would rather keep carrying everything alone than build a team that rises with them.
This is for:
  • The woman who's ready to stop waiting to be noticed and start being strategic about who champions her.
  • The leader who knows she already has the instincts to lead exceptionally, and wants a proven system that accelerates growth for her, her team and her organization.
  • Anyone who wants a team that's genuinely engaged and excited about where they're going together.
Yes! Rush me a copy — $20
Begin with the first practice tonight · Instant download

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this just another leadership book?
Most leadership books hand you concepts to interpret on your own. This one hands you practices to complete on the page, in order, with each pillar of a proven system depending on the one before it.
I'm a brand-new leader. Or I'm already senior. Is this for me?
Yes. It's written for a new leader with a team of four, a senior leader with a region of hundreds, and everyone in between, in any industry.
Will this add hours to my week?
Most of it happens inside conversations you're already having. The 1-on-1 is probably the most underused meeting on your calendar. You'll use those hours differently rather than adding new ones.
Do I need my company's support or budget to make this work?
No. Everything in the system runs inside the meetings you already lead, with the team you already have. Most of it costs nothing but your attention.
How fast will I notice a difference?
Your team will start responding well before your title changes, often within the first couple of months, and the trust that makes it last keeps building from there.
What if my workplace is genuinely unsafe?
Your safety and wellbeing come first, and nothing in the book asks you to endure that. But a workplace that's exhausting isn't the same as one that's unsafe. If what you're facing is no path forward, no support and a workload nobody could sustain, those are exactly the things this system is built to change.
What if it isn't what I expected?
You have 30 days to request a full refund for the Ebook. No questions asked.
Where does the free strategy conversation come in?
Right after checkout, you can book a free strategy call with me on the thank-you page, and you'll also find a link inside the book whenever you're ready. The book gives you the full system, and I hold nothing back. But every team, organization and career goal is different, and the fastest results come from a plan built specifically for you. On the call, you'll walk me through your team, the leaders above you, what you've already tried and the role you're working toward. I'll show you where to focus first, which parts of the system will make the biggest difference for you, and what I'd do in your seat. You'll leave with a clear next step, whether or not we decide to work together.
Lindsay Coleman

Lindsay Coleman.

At 29, with no university degree, no management experience and no interest in corporate life, Lindsay was handed her first team as Director of her company's highest-profile location in the region. The previous leader had walked off the job, the team was in disarray, and the client had been threatening to cancel for months. With no time to settle in as a young woman leading in a male-dominated industry, she abandoned the leadership styles she'd been trying to copy and found her own, and it worked. Those lessons sparked her dedication to building, deploying and refining human-centered leadership practices that create teams that rise, driving both her own repeated promotions and stronger company results. Now, as AI reshapes workplaces around the world, empathy, perspective and human connection are becoming the capabilities organizations need most, and leaders who practice them have never been more valuable.

Over the years that followed, she became known as the leader companies handed their most difficult teams and at-risk contracts. She held director roles in sales and operations, eventually becoming Director of Strategic Accounts with a portfolio of 52 locations across North America, and joining the top 200 executives at the largest company in her sector globally by the age of 40.

Lindsay's mission is to help women leaders reach their highest career goals while developing more human-centered leaders across every industry.

When she's not coaching high-performing women one-on-one, you can find her writing, singing and performing music, hiking with her dog, Jax, on the trail by the lake, or planning her next travel destination with her partner.

Walk into your next promotion conversation with proof, a champion and a team ready behind you

Imagine your next review. You arrive with a page of evidence in your own handwriting. Someone with influence has been mentioning your name for months. Your team handles the day without you, and you can choose between two people from your own team ready to step into your seat.

The promotion stops feeling like a fight and starts feeling like the next step everyone already expected. You get there as the leader you already are.

Right now, there is someone on your team with an idea they haven't said out loud, and a future they can't quite picture for themselves. They're waiting to find out whether this is the kind of place where ideas get heard and futures get built. They'll learn the answer from you. Make sure it's yes.

TOO HUMAN TO IGNORE

YOU WERE ALWAYS READY.
NOW MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO IGNORE.

A proven five-part system for building a team that rises, a career that advances and leadership no AI can replace, using the instincts you already have.

Yes! Rush me a copy — $20
30-day refund · Ebook only · Instant download