Big Sis Briefing: Halftime - It’s Our Turn To Lead Differently
Last week I posted about pathocracy on LinkedIn.
ICYMI: pathocracy is a term coined by Polish psychiatrist Andrzej Łobaczewski to describe systems where people with personality disorders accumulate in positions of power. Not by accident but by design. The system selects for the exact traits that perpetuate dysfunction.
I shared it because someone mentioned it on a call and I'd never heard the word before, despite 15+ years in corporate law. It named something I'd lived through but couldn't quite articulate. That slow normalisation of cruelty, the exodus of integrity and the way good people get sidelined for having a conscience.
The post did some serious numbers and has been reposted dozens of times. But the real engagement happened where it always does: in the DMs.
A stream of private messages, all with variations of: Thank you for this. I thought I was the problem. I thought I was too sensitive. I internalised it as my failure.
That's the tell for me. The fact that people can't publicly engage with this content without risking their careers tells you everything about the power structures we're naming.
Noticing vs. Solving
Awareness is essential. Naming pathocracy matters because you can't change what you won't acknowledge. But naming alone doesn't solve anything. The "what now" piece is where it gets complicated.
I think that the solve depends entirely on where you are in your career and which generation of workers you belong to.
Gen Z Gets It (They're Fine)
I'm not particularly worried about Gen Z in this context.
The younger lawyers, law students and early-career professionals I interact with across platforms daily are not delusional about corporate mythology the way we were.
They understand the trade-offs, they're sceptical bordering on cynical and they know it's theatre or “corporate cosplay” that they're willing to play along with to a point, but they're not internalising corporate dysfunction as personal failure.
They walked into a burning building and said "yeah, this is f*cked" from day one.
That perspective protects them in ways us millennials never had.
The Millennial Reckoning
Millennials, though? We're in a different position entirely (as is our lot in life).
We grew up thinking work was sacred, that loyalty would be rewarded and that playing by the rules guaranteed security. We internalised the boomer work ethic wholesale and spent a decade wondering why we kept getting burned before realising the whole thing was on fire.
We're exhausted. We're disillusioned. Increasingly, we're also angry.
But, it's our turn now.
We're slowly but finally moving into leadership. Mid-career. Mid-management.
Some of us are stepping into senior roles for the first time. We're the ones making decisions about culture, about hiring, about what behaviours get rewarded and what gets called out.
We have a choice to make.
We can perpetuate the same pathological systems that broke us or we can build something different.
The Gentle Managing Revolution
I've written before about gentle managing. It's the quiet work of leading with empathy while maintaining standards, knowing when to push and when to pause and choosing to model a new kind of professionalism that values both results and humanity.
Gentle managing isn't soft, it's incredibly strategic. It's recognising that psychological safety isn't a nice-to-have but a legal and ethical obligation. That how you make people feel doesn't just impact morale, it impacts performance, retention, innovation and risk.
It's actively refusing to normalise the boomer panic culture that treated burnout as a badge of honour.
But gentle managing alone isn't enough if you're operating within a pathocratic system. Sometimes the most radical thing you can do is refuse to prop up a collapsing structure with your body.
Know When to Walk
Look, let’s be real for second: some things are just too broken to fix.
We were raised on the "be the change" mythology. The idea that if you just worked hard enough, cared enough, stayed long enough, you could transform toxic culture from the inside.
But there's a point where staying becomes complicity and where your effort is just keeping a fundamentally broken system limping along.
You have to know when it's worth your energy and when walking away is the strongest move you can make. Only you know the tipping point for you.
The Halftime Assessment
Think of this as halftime. You're not retiring anytime soon. If you're a mid-career millennial like me, you've got another 20-30 years in the workforce. That's a lot of runway.
But the game you thought you were playing? The team you thought you were on? The playbook you memorised in your twenties?
Yeah, none of it exists the way we were promised, does it….
So pause. Reassess. Ask yourself:
What was I chasing? Validation? Security? Status? Does that still resonate with who you are now, or were you performing someone else's definition of success?
What do I actually want now? Not what you should want. Not what looks impressive on LinkedIn. What would make the next 20 years feel like they're yours?
What am I willing to tolerate? You have options now that you didn't have at 25. Skills. Network. Savings (maybe). Reputation. What's your floor? Where's the line you won't cross anymore?
Who do I want to become as a leader? Do you want to lead like the people who led you? Or do you want to break the cycle?
Breaking the Generational Lower Case T trauma Cycle
Every time you choose psychological safety over performative toughness, you're breaking a pattern. Every time you give honest feedback without cruelty, you're modelling something different. Every time you hire for potential instead of pedigree, you're changing who gets access.
This is how cultures shift. Not through top-down transformation programs. Through individual leaders making different choices in individual moments.
For the Millennials Stepping Into Power
Here's what I want to say to every millennial stepping into leadership right now:
You are not required to perpetuate what once broke you.
You can lead differently. You can set different expectations. You can refuse to sacrifice your team's wellbeing for quarterly metrics. You can push back on policies that exploit people under the guise of "high performance”.
You can be the manager you needed when you were coming up.
If you can't do that within your current organisation, if the system is too pathological, too resistant or too committed to its own dysfunction, you can take your talent elsewhere.
Within the current system or outside it entirely.
We're building our own things now. Consulting practices, coaching businesses, even media companies. Alternative career paths that don't require us to pretend corporate pathology is normal.
The boomers had their time, Gen X kept the wheels turning and Gen Z is calling bullsh*t on the whole thing.
But it's our turn to lead and maybe for the first time ever, we get to decide what leadership looks like.
What This Means Practically
If you're still early-career / trapped by circumstances: Acknowledge what you're in. Stop internalising the dysfunction. Learn the game, but know you're playing it, not being played by it. Start building your exit runway: skills, network, personal brand, savings, options.
If you're mid-career / peak millennial burnout: Do the halftime reassessment. Reset and audit what you're chasing versus what you actually want. You have more leverage now than you think. Use it.
If you're ready to move: Move. Within the system or outside it. Take the skills, leave the rest. You're not abandoning anything, you're refusing to be complicit in might now feel like your own exploitation. That is radical and revolutionary.
Final Thoughts
I don’t think it’s any secret that for most of us, the system we were promised is fundamentally different to the one we are experiencing. But, that's okay!
We're allowed to be angry about it, we're allowed to grieve it, we're allowed to pivot and we're also allowed to build something better.
Not always by fixing broken systems from within but by modelling a different way forward entirely. By choosing integrity over advancement when the two are in conflict. By walking when staying would compromise who we are or at least, who you want to be.
This is our halftime.
Take the pause. Reassess the actual game. Make more intentional moves going forward, for the person you are today and in the system as it exists today.
Not the person you were when you started this path 10, 15 or 20 years ago. Not the system you were promised. The one that's actually in front of you.
Then decide: are you going to prop it up or are you going to build something new?
Onwards 💖
Mel
