Your boss might be a menopausal woman. And she might want to talk about it. Nearly every woman of an age I ask is dying to talk about how their changing hormones affect their work lives… and yet it's something we rarely do in the open. It can feel like an "unsayable."

Anxiety can get in the way of our efforts to be the empathetic, thoughtful leaders we want to be. When we're in an anxious state, it's really tough to take a beat, explore the feeling, and react with empathy to another person. We can get impulsive; we worry about getting to the next thing because our threat response is up. We talk too much or over-explain or micromanage. It happens to the best of us.