Leslie Mizerak - Leadership & Life After Work

Leslie Mizerak - Leadership & Life After Work Executive and retirement coach helping people lead courageously, navigate transition, and shape what comes next.

Founder of Get Courageous Coaching and Shaping Your Retirement.

09/23/2026

Stop It — You Are NOT Their Friend!

If you lead people, you've had this moment: a conversation you kept putting off, feedback you watered down, a decision you sat on because making it meant disappointing someone you genuinely like.

Most of us tell ourselves we're being kind by waiting. Usually we're just protecting ourselves from the discomfort of being the person who says the hard thing.

In my latest Linkedin article, I share the story of a VP who built his whole leadership identity on being the person everyone loved working for, until that same instinct started quietly costing his team the clarity they needed from him. What changed wasn't that he got colder. He just stopped letting his warmth do the job that honesty was supposed to do.

Read the full article at the link below, and let me know: where are you choosing comfort over clarity right now, and calling it kindness?

Article Link: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/you-friend-leslie-mizerak-executive-retirement-coach-ehmae/

09/09/2026

360 feedback is not the finish line. It is the beginning of a much more important conversation.

AI can help surface patterns and themes, but leadership development still requires context, curiosity, trust, and thoughtful follow-through.

This Forbes Coaches Council article offers several useful perspectives on where coaches can get 360 feedback wrong and what to do differently.

Always honored to be included.

Your leadership has a shape. It’s worth looking at.Launching the Leadership Check-In Wheel, a free 5-minute assessment t...
09/02/2026

Your leadership has a shape. It’s worth looking at.

Launching the Leadership Check-In Wheel, a free 5-minute assessment that shows how you’re showing up across eight areas of leadership.

You’ll get a visual snapshot of your strengths, inconsistencies, and possible growth areas.

No labels. No personality type. No “perfect leader” score.

Just a chance to step back and ask:

How am I showing up right now?

Take the Leadership Check-In here: https://www.getcourageous.com/leadership-checkin

Your mindset about aging shapes the life you're designing.We see it all the time.Two people, same age, same season of li...
08/13/2026

Your mindset about aging shapes the life you're designing.

We see it all the time.

Two people, same age, same season of life.

One talks about what's closing down. The other talks about what she's finally free to try.

Same calendar. Very different design.

One client, a former operations VP, told us she'd stopped picking up her camera somewhere in her 40s. Too busy. Too serious. Not the right time.

When we talked through her Portfolio Life, she realized the "not the right time" was never really about time. It was a story she'd carried about what this stage was supposed to look like.

She photographs three mornings a week now. She calls it her contribution and her structure, all in one.

Here's what that taught us.

Aging is a chance to decide, on purpose, what you carry forward and what you leave behind.

The years keep coming either way. The design is the part you get to shape.

That takes courage, the quiet kind. The willingness to ask what growth looks like now, and to actually go find out.

getcourageous.com

"Always remember who you are."My meam (grandmother) said it to my father. Then she said it to me. I didn't really get it...
08/05/2026

"Always remember who you are."

My meam (grandmother) said it to my father. Then she said it to me. I didn't really get it for a long time. I thought it was just something grandmothers say.

Now I think she meant something harder. Stay yourself, especially when it would be easier not to.

That's not advice you take once. It's advice you return to.

Your financial planner can tell you when you can afford to stop working.They can't tell you who you'll be on the Tuesday...
08/04/2026

Your financial planner can tell you when you can afford to stop working.

They can't tell you who you'll be on the Tuesday after you do.

That's not a knock on financial planning. A good advisor is ESSENTIAL! The projections, the tax strategy, all of it earns its keep. But the number on the page answers one question: when the paycheck can end. It doesn't tell you what replaces the reason you got dressed on Tuesday.

The executives we coach usually arrive with the money handled. What catches them off guard is the other ledger. Contribution. Structure. Momentum. Connection. Purpose. Five things their career was quietly funding alongside the salary, and no advisor was ever asked to plan for.

A few questions worth sitting with before your retirement date lands on the calendar:

>> Who still needs my judgment when the org chart no longer does?
>> What shapes my week when no one else is scheduling it?
>> What am I moving toward, not just away from?

Your advisor built the runway. You still get to design what you're flying toward.

That part doesn't show up on any statement. It shows up in how the next chapter actually feels to live.

Most retirement plans answer the wrong question.They tell you when you can afford to stop. They rarely help you design w...
07/20/2026

Most retirement plans answer the wrong question.

They tell you when you can afford to stop. They rarely help you design what's worth waking up for after you do.

That's the gap our free live workshop is built to close.

Designing a Fulfilling Retirement is a 60-minute interactive session built around the Shaping Your Retirement Fulfillment Wheel: 12 dimensions of well-being that go far beyond finances. Purpose. Relationships. Health. Contribution. Identity. Learning. The pieces that decide whether your next chapter feels like freefall or like design.

You'll leave with:

>> A clearer picture of which dimensions are already strong for you
>> The two or three that need attention before your calendar changes
>> A framework you can keep using long after the session ends

This isn't a sales pitch dressed up as a webinar. It's the actual working session we run with individuals, couples, and executives who want to shape retirement on purpose, not by default.

Bring your questions. Bring your partner if this is a shared decision. Bring the honest version of what you're hoping the next chapter looks like.

Reserve your seat here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/designing-a-fulfilling-retirement-tickets-1987094666639

You spent decades earning the right to choose what comes next. This is where you start choosing with intention.

07/20/2026

The Tuesday after the retirement party is when most executives realize the truth.

You didn't lose a job. You lost five things at once. Contribution. Structure. Momentum. Connection. Purpose. Your career was carrying all of them on the same paycheck, and no single replacement activity can hold that weight.

This is why 41% of retirees experience moderate to severe identity disruption in the first year, according to research in The Gerontologist. The gap isn't emotional weakness. It's architectural.

A Portfolio Life is what fills it. Not a hobby. Not a passion project. A deliberate blend of engagements, each one assigned to a specific dimension you used to get from work. Mentoring two founders a quarter. A standing Wednesday studio morning. A 12-month learning goal you actually track. Friendships rebuilt outside the office walls. The cause you finally have bandwidth to serve.

Most people try to design this after they retire. The ones who feel anchored on day one started drafting the blueprint a year before. You spent decades building the career. Give the next chapter the same respect.

Can we normalize telling someone they’re doing a good job before they burn out? Recognition should not arrive only ...
07/17/2026

Can we normalize telling someone they’re doing a good job before they burn out? Recognition should not arrive only after someone has given everything they have.

Address

Winter Park, FL

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

Telephone

+14076221433

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