For the leader whose calendar is full, whose record is strong, and who hasn’t stopped to ask what the real problem is.
A real estate business owner came to Wykeeta Peel wanting to grow. She had two staff members and, as she saw it, they weren’t doing enough to help her. She was carrying almost everything herself: the selling, the administrative work, the day-to-day operations. And she was reluctant to hand any of it over, because she didn’t want to overwhelm her team.
“As we peeled back the layers, we discovered that her staff didn’t fully understand her vision or what she needed them to own,” Wykeeta says. “At the same time, she hadn’t clearly defined what only she could do to grow the business.” The question changed. Not “Why aren’t my employees helping me?” but “What am I holding onto that I need to let go of?”
That shape of problem is not rare. DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast 2025, drawn from 10,796 leaders worldwide, found that 71% report significantly higher stress since stepping into their current role, and that a leader’s ability to distribute work has five times the effect of any other method of preventing burnout.
Wykeeta is the founder of Peel Coaching & Consulting, where she works as an executive coach and leadership and growth advisor, and the creator of the PEEL Method, a framework she built to help leaders pause, examine their priorities, evaluate their options and lead with clarity. She came to it after 13 years and five roles at New York Life, where she carried budgets, led teams and turned national strategy into operating plans. A full calendar, in her experience, may not be the real problem. “Sometimes the problem isn’t that you don’t know what to do,” she says. “It’s that there are too many things competing for your attention, and you haven’t decided what matters most.”
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What a Full Calendar Hides
“Most people think they’re procrastinating,” Wykeeta has written. “But when you peel back the layers, what you often find isn’t procrastination at all. It’s a lack of clarity.” When people are unclear, she wrote, they overthink, they hesitate, and they stay busy instead of making progress.
So when a leader arrives with a completely full calendar and says, “I don’t have time to think,” she doesn’t start by helping them fit more in. “I ask, ‘What is taking up your time, and does all of it deserve to be there?’” Together they look at commitments, decisions being avoided, responsibilities being carried, and the things the leader keeps saying they “should” be doing.
“Sometimes they’re solving a problem that isn’t theirs to solve,” she says. “Sometimes they’re afraid to disappoint someone. Sometimes they’ve said yes to too many opportunities. And sometimes they simply haven’t decided what matters most in this season.”
The calendar itself is an unreliable witness. Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index, built on Microsoft 365 usage data and a survey of 31,000 workers, found that people are interrupted every two minutes by a meeting, email or notification, and that more than half of leaders describe their work as chaotic and fragmented. Wykeeta’s reading of it is plainer.
“A full calendar can create the illusion of productivity. Activity isn’t the same thing as impact.”
Wykeeta Peel, Founder and Leadership/Growth Advisor, Peel Coaching & Consulting
Her method for getting underneath the calendar has four parts.
Pause, Examine, Evaluate, Lead
“The PEEL Method creates intentional space before taking action,” Wykeeta says. Pause is that space: room to think rather than simply react. Examine is an honest look at what’s underneath the pressure, and what is really driving the decision. Evaluate is the assessment of priorities, opportunities and options, and the question of what matters most right now. Lead is moving forward with confidence, alignment and a sustainable pace.
For the real estate owner, that meant clarifying her vision, communicating it to her team, defining responsibilities, and learning to trust her staff with the work she was asking them to own. It let her step away from some of the administrative work and focus on what only she could do: selling, building relationships, growing the business. “That experience reinforced something I see often with leaders,” Wykeeta says. “What looks like procrastination, poor performance, or a lack of support can actually be a clarity problem.”
She is careful about what the method is not. “Peeling back the layers isn’t about lowering your ambition,” she says. “It’s about making sure your ambition is taking you somewhere you actually want to go.” The transformation she wants it to create is “not simply helping people do more, but helping them understand what deserves their attention in the first place.”
“Clarity doesn’t come from doing more. It comes from creating enough space to understand what matters most.”
Wykeeta, Founder and Leadership/Growth Advisor, Peel Coaching & Consulting
That conviction was formed somewhere with a budget attached.
Thirteen Years at New York Life
Wykeeta joined New York Life in 2011 as a Market Development Consultant in the Washington DC and Baltimore area, building a marketing training program for field agents and writing the standardized agent marketing training manual the field marketing team used. Two years later, as Corporate Vice President for Practice Management, she led the development of a practice management program that NYLIC University took nationwide to more than 12,000 agents. Out of an agent assistant staffing pilot she worked on came the redesign of onboarding from an eight-week process to a two-week one.
From 2015 she led the Women’s Market across a 13-state territory, helping field offices recruit, develop and retain women talent, a period in which the number of women managers nationwide grew 13% a year. As Market Manager for the Women’s Market from 2020, her territory delivered 8% year-over-year growth in women agents, leading all companies at MDRT. In her final role, from 2022, she was Corporate Vice President and Head of African American and Women’s Markets, leading a $100B marketing strategy that grew life insurance coverage in force from $98B to $106B, with a team of eight and a $1.4M budget, and generated $48M in new recurring annual premium.
What she took from it is not the numbers. “Corporate leadership taught me that leadership decisions have consequences beyond the individual leader,” she says. “When you’re responsible for a budget, a team, business objectives, and results, you can’t chase every good idea. You have to make choices.” She has sat in the room where strategy had to become an operating plan. “So when I work with an executive who has 20 priorities, I don’t automatically tell them to manage their time better.” She asks instead what they are actually accountable for, which priorities will create the greatest impact, what they are spending resources on, what they are personally carrying that someone else should own, and what happens if they don’t do something.
The hardest lesson was about people rather than plans. “Having a strong strategy isn’t enough,” she says. “You have to bring people with you.” When she saw that alignment wasn’t where it needed to be, “I had to slow down, listen to what I wasn’t hearing, adjust the approach, and reconnect people to the ‘why’ before pushing forward.”
The person who shaped how she leads was her former manager there, Fred DeFilippo. “He had a remarkable ability to stay calm under pressure, bounce back from setbacks, and guide teams through change without creating additional anxiety,” she says. “Watching him taught me that resilience isn’t pretending things are easy. It’s staying grounded enough to help yourself and the people around you move forward when they’re not.”
“I don’t believe every problem needs another strategy. Sometimes you need to stop, get quiet, and figure out what the real problem is.”
Wykeeta, Founder and Leadership/Growth Advisor, Peel Coaching & Consulting
She applies the same test to her own calendar.
Intentional With Your Yes
“For a long time, I thought having good boundaries meant learning how to say ‘no,’” Wykeeta wrote in one of her Peel Back the Layers posts. “I’ve realized it’s not that simple.” She has said yes because she didn’t want to let someone down, because she thought she could squeeze one more thing into her schedule, and, as she put it, because it felt easier than having an uncomfortable conversation. “Every unnecessary ‘yes’ took time and energy away from something that mattered more.” Boundaries, she wrote, “aren’t really about saying no to people. They’re about being intentional with your yes.”
So the habit now is a single question, asked before she commits to anything: “Does this align with what’s most important right now?” Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes no, and sometimes “not right now.” “I’ve learned that all three are okay,” she wrote. “I don’t always say no, but I want my yes to be intentional.”
She extends the same grace to the days that don’t go to plan. Procrastination, she has written, is not always a sign of laziness. “It can stem from exhaustion, fear, or the weight of responsibilities that others may not see.” What helps is not self-criticism but “granting yourself the grace to recognize your current state, reset, and take the next step.”
Outside her practice she serves on the Pearls of Hope Community Foundation, Inc. board, which advances programs that expand economic opportunity in underserved communities. She has been its Fundraising Chair since 2025, after four years on the board as Secretary. “Community service has taught me that leadership isn’t always about being the person in front of the room,” she says. “Sometimes it’s about creating opportunities for other people to shine, contributing your strengths, and doing work that matters beyond yourself.”
Where Wykeeta Is Now
Wykeeta founded Peel Coaching & Consulting in August 2024, and today advises executives, entrepreneurs and emerging leaders on strategy, leadership development and organizational alignment. She writes a regular Peel Back the Layers series on LinkedIn, each post opening a single topic, boundaries, clarity, procrastination, and closing on a question for the reader. This year she was named a 2026 National Career Mastered Top Entrepreneurial Woman to Watch, a recognition she described as affirming “the work, the mission, and the purpose behind every bold move,” and she will be featured in the fall edition of Career Mastered Magazine.
The person she most wants to reach is the high-performing leader who looks successful from the outside but privately feels stretched, stuck, or unclear about what comes next. “They may have a full calendar, a long list of accomplishments, and people depending on them, but haven’t created enough space to ask, ‘Is this actually what I should be doing right now?’” For that leader, and the organizations around them, she is open to coaching, strategic advisory work, partnerships and speaking engagements. “I’m building Peel Coaching & Consulting into a platform where the PEEL Method can help more leaders create clarity, lead with intention, and build success that is sustainable, not just impressive.”
If she wants readers to keep one idea, it is this. “The first answer isn’t always the real answer,” she says. “A full calendar may not be the real problem. A difficult employee may not be the real problem. Procrastination may not be the real problem. Sometimes you have to peel back the layers to understand what’s really driving the pressure, the decision, or the resistance. That’s where clarity begins.”
Five Reflections from Wykeeta
What decision have I been avoiding? That question may reveal more than another productivity hack ever could.
What am I actually accountable for? Not every good idea deserves the resources, and only some priorities will create the greatest impact.
What am I personally carrying that someone else should own? The staff who seem not to be helping may not yet know what they are meant to hold.
Does this align with what’s most important right now? Yes, no, and not right now are all acceptable answers.
What happens if I don’t do something? A full calendar can create the illusion of productivity. Activity is not the same thing as impact.
From the Diary of Wykeeta Peel
Wykeeta Peel is a Hanover, Maryland-based executive coach and the Founder and Leadership/Growth Advisor of Peel Coaching & Consulting.
| Role | Founder and Leadership/Growth Advisor, Peel Coaching & Consulting |
| Based in | Hanover, Maryland, United States |
| Previously with | New York Life Insurance Company, 2011 to 2024 |
| Also with | Pearls of Hope Community Foundation, Inc., board member and Fundraising Chair (Secretary for four years before that) |
“Clarity doesn’t come from doing more. It comes from creating enough space to understand what matters most.”
Editor’s Note
Executives Diary features Wykeeta Peel because she brings a method to a problem most coaching leaves at the level of advice. Her PEEL Method is short enough to remember and rests on 13 years of turning national strategy into operating plans at New York Life, with the budgets and the results to show for it. The editors were convinced by the case she chose to tell: a business owner who thought her staff were the problem, and a coach who asked what the owner was holding onto instead. The question is the work, and she asks it of herself first.
Executives Diary, Editorial
