You’re Not Burned Out. You’re in the Wrong Place. with Kathy Caprino

Most people use “burnout” to describe anything from a hard week to a career in crisis. Kathy Caprino thinks that’s a problem.

In this episode of Coaching to Flourish, John and Raj sit down with Kathy, a global career and leadership coach, Forbes senior contributor, and host of the Finding Brave podcast, to pull the term apart. Kathy spent eighteen years climbing to VP in corporate publishing before a series of crises, capped by a layoff one month after 9/11, sent her into therapy, then into coaching. That path shapes how she works: she looks at who you’ve been your entire life, not just the problem in front of you.

The conversation covers a lot of ground. She often sees burnout situations that are less of an occupational condition and more of a sign of an identity clash, the exhaustion of using hard-won skills that were never your natural talents. She lays out the seven power gaps from her book The Most Powerful You, and why women so often reject the idea of wanting power in the first place. She’s candid about AI, both as a believer who built her own trained clone and as a former therapist watching it give advice with no guardrails. And she gets practical about recovery: boundaries, saying no, and the daily walk she takes even when she’s too tired to want to.

Along the way, Kathy coaches Raj live on her own drive and boundaries, and the episode ends with a frank discussion between John and Kathy about their views on the pros and cons of being straightforward or “directive” in what the coach shares with their clients.