From Headsets to Headquarters: Former KFC COO Monica Rothgery on Leadership, Joy, and Doing What’s Yours to Do

“You’re not burned out because of your job. You’re burned out because you’re doing someone else’s job.”

That line stood out to me when I sat down with Monica Rothgery, former COO of KFC and one of the most joyful, no-BS leaders I know. Monica was the first woman in the US to hold that position and the first member of the LBGTQ community to get to the C-suite at YUM!

For the fiftieth episode of the Business of Joy, we talked about:

✨ What the Army didn’t prepare her for at Taco Bell

🎧 Why she wears a headset during her keynotes and what it says about who she leads for

🌏 How she led a turnaround in Thailand, despite no global ops background nor language skills

⚠️ What “compressed productivity” is, and how it’s quietly suffocating innovation in your org

🔥 The radical clarity that comes from  ...