The Hidden Variable Affecting Your Leadership Performance
An Ask the Expert Feature with Denise Stegall
Some of the most capable women we know have spent months — sometimes years — quietly wondering why they don't feel quite like themselves anymore. Too often, the symptoms that quietly erode your confidence, focus, and energy at work get filed under stress or burnout — when the real story is happening in your biology.
That's why we're featuring Denise Stegall, founder of Healthy Living with Denise and a trusted Menopause Mentor for professional women in midlife, in this edition of Ask the Expert.
If you've ever walked out of a meeting wondering where your sharpest self went, this article is for you. Denise brings 25 years of wellness expertise and a rare gift for making complex health topics feel clear, actionable, and — most importantly — within your control.
The Hidden Variable Affecting Your Leadership Performance
Mary was mid-presentation when her mind went blank.
It was not nerves. She'd given this talk a dozen times before. But her thoughts scattered, her face flushed, and she watched years of hard-won confidence quietly slip out from under her. She drove home stunned, wondering if she was losing her edge.
If you've ever had a version of that moment, the meeting where you couldn't find your words, the decision that suddenly felt impossibly heavy, the patience that used to be your superpower running thin, you're not imagining it. And you're not alone. This is what high-achieving women in midlife see every day, and no one is talking about it.
Here's what usually happens next: Your doctor says it's stress or anxiety and hands you a prescription for an antidepressant. One in three women with perimenopause symptoms is offered antidepressants before anyone thinks to check their hormones. The root cause goes unaddressed, and the symptoms get filed under "just part of the job."
But there's a biological factor most of us were never taught to consider, one that starts shifting as early as your mid-30s: Declining progesterone.
Think of progesterone as the steady COO of your body. Quietly keeping you feeling balanced. Steadying your mood. Helping you sleep. Calming your nervous system. When it's running the way it should, you get deep sleep, emotional stability, fewer cravings, and a brain that works the way you expect it to.
When it declines, that buffer disappears. The signals that follow—poor sleep, brain fog, irritability, low mood—are easily misread as stress, aging, or just having too much to do.
For leaders, this isn't just personal health. It's a performance issue: reduced focus, low confidence, decision fatigue, less patience for ambiguity, and more self-doubt, right when you need less of it. Setbacks now knock you sideways.
You are not losing your edge. You are losing progesterone.
That distinction changes everything. It's not a character flaw. It's not a weakness. It's not the beginning of the end of your ambition. It's biology, and biology you can actually do something about.
Three months after addressing the root cause, Mary returned to the same boardroom. Sharp. Calm. Fully present. She landed the biggest contract of her career that afternoon. The difference wasn't a new productivity hack or a mindset shift. It was finally treating the actual cause instead of the symptoms.
Here's why this matters beyond any one of us: your leadership, your vision, your energy, they all run through your biology. Thriving women build thriving companies, teams, and communities. Supporting your hormones isn't indulgent. It's a business strategy.
You don't have to white-knuckle your way through the best decades of your career. Start by asking better questions. Get curious about what's actually going on in your body. The smarter path starts with understanding what you're working with, and once you know, you have the power to change it. I have created the Hormone Clarity Tool to help you understand the connection between what you are feeling and what your hormones are doing. Check it out here.
Connect with Denise: https://denisestegall.com/
