CEO of Your Life with Cynthia Jamieson

Guest Bio: Cynthia Jamieson

Cynthia Jamieson is a transformative leadership and growth coach who has spent 37 years in Human Resources and has held more than 4,000 coaching conversations.

She hosts the podcast Who Are You to Lead, Anyway? and writes Cynthia’s Substack, where she explores what happens when capability turns into obligation, and how capable people begin choosing again. She holds the ACPC, PCC, and CBC coaching credentials. Cynthia knows this terrain firsthand: she burned out in her thirties doing everyone else’s job because she believed she had to.

1. Who Is Actually Making the Decisions?

Self-determination theory, one of the most tested models in motivation research, identifies autonomy as a basic psychological need. When people experience their actions as chosen rather than pressured, motivation and well-being rise. When they feel controlled, even good work drains them (Ryan & Deci, 2000). [Primary empirical source.]

Autonomy is not doing everything alone. It is acting from your own values instead of from pressure, guilt, or habit.

The test isn’t whether you said yes. It’s whether you were free to say no.

2. When Capability Becomes Obligation

Cynthia calls this the Endurance Trap: being good at something quietly becomes being responsible for it, every time. A temporary favor becomes a permanent expectation, and your own needs become negotiable (Jamieson, 2026). [Practitioner source.]

The research backs her up. In a series of studies, women were asked more often than men to take on non-promotable tasks, the necessary work that rarely leads to advancement, and were more likely to say yes (Babcock et al., 2017). [Primary empirical source.] The pattern is not a personality flaw. It is how the requests are distributed.

Some of what you call your personality is a job description you never agreed to. (Cynthia’s line; credit her when you use it.)

3. What It Costs