KEYNOTE
Solve the Right Problem
Why our instinct to fix discomfort is costing organizations time, energy and connection.
A keynote for leaders and teams who are very good at solving problems, and tired of solving the wrong ones. Delivered by a psychotherapist who has spent 20 years watching brilliant people learn the difference.
The problem behind the problems
Your team isn’t short on problem-solvers. It’s spending them on the wrong things.
When people meet uncertainty, disagreement or disappointment, they tend to read the discomfort as a sign that something is wrong. Then they get to work, and there has never been more to reach for: another meeting, another process, another tool that promises certainty. In most organizations, the pattern shows up in two ways.
Carrying everyone else’s discomfort
The leader who needs the whole team happy before moving forward. The manager who rushes to settle every disagreement. Caring about someone’s experience gets confused with being responsible for changing it.
Handing our discomfort to someone else
The employee who can’t be okay until their manager changes. The team member who turns defensive at feedback. People wait for something outside themselves to change before they can act.
What it costs
Wasted time. Extra meetings, endless reassurance, decisions reopened again and again.
Wasted energy. Overmanagement and avoided conversations that drain the people you most need steady.
Missed opportunities. While everyone manages the tension, nobody is looking at what actually needs attention.
The missing piece
Psychological safety starts with a steady leader.
Kate has spent 20 years working from the science of secure attachment: what a child needs to grow up healthy and well. The answer is surprisingly simple. Children need a steady adult who can tolerate the chaos without rushing to fix it, so they can trust the relationship.
Organizations are made of relationships, and teams need the same thing from their leaders.
A leader who can stay steady through uncertainty, disagreement and someone else’s frustration creates the conditions where people tell the truth, take risks and recover from mistakes. A leader who can’t ends up managing everyone’s discomfort and solving the wrong problems.
Most organizations talk about psychological safety. Far fewer talk about what it asks of the leader.
What your audience leaves with
Three questions they’ll still be asking a month later.
Simple enough to remember in a hard moment, and practical enough to use in the next meeting.
01 · What if it’s not a problem?
Before reaching for a fix, pause long enough to ask whether there’s actually something to solve.
02 · Is it discomfort or danger?
Discomfort feels urgent, but it rarely means something is wrong. Telling the two apart changes what happens next.
03 · What does the moment actually need?
A solution, a boundary, an honest conversation, connection, or sometimes nothing at all.
After the talk, people can
Disagree without getting defensive
Lead without managing everyone’s emotions
Care about a colleague without carrying their experience
Tell a real problem from an uncomfortable moment
Better relationships don’t compete with performance. They make better performance possible.
Why Kate
Most speakers study uncertainty from a distance. Kate has spent twenty years inside it.
Through her clinical work and the practice she founded, Kate has supported more than 6,000 capable, driven women at the exact moment their usual strategies stopped working. Her clients were high-achieving women facing new motherhood, a situation no amount of planning can control. It turned out to be one of the clearest windows anywhere into how smart people respond when the stakes are high and the answers aren’t available.
“What if it’s not a problem?” isn’t a line written for the stage. It’s a question Kate has asked clients for years, because of what it does: it interrupts automatic problem-solving, and it often brings immediate relief.
She founded the Parent and Family Wellness Center in Boulder, Colorado, wrote Reinventing Supermom, hosts the Motherhood Uncut podcast, and has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, CNN Health and HuffPost.
A story from the keynote
When Kate and her husband took their daughters to live in Tokyo for six months, they gave the family one goal: be as uncomfortable as possible.
That changed everything. Discomfort stopped being evidence that something had gone wrong and became part of the experience they’d chosen. Audiences remember what happens when you change the measure of success, and what becomes possible when comfort stops being the goal.
Formats
Shaped around your audience.
Every talk is customized after a planning call with your team.
Ideal for: leadership offsites, all-company meetings, women’s leadership conferences, healthcare and education organizations, working-parent networks and future-of-work events.
Keynote · 45–60 minutes
For conferences, all-company meetings and leadership summits.
Keynote + workshop · Half day
The keynote, followed by a working session where teams practice the three questions on real situations.
Leadership session · 90 minutes to half day
A smaller, more personal conversation for executive and leadership teams.
Virtual · 30–60 minutes
For distributed teams, webinars and employee resource groups.
Hear Kate before you book
Let’s talk about what your people are facing.
A new speaking reel is on the way. In the meantime, Kate is glad to join a 20-minute call with your planning team to walk through the talk and how it would fit your audience. It’s the best way to hear how she thinks.
Tell us your event date, audience size and what’s happening with your team right now.
