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Some leaders build their management philosophy from the best workplace experiences they’ve had. Sarah Hofstetter built hers from one of the worst.
Sarah is co-founder at 37Arc, a board director at Campbell’s and Kenvue, and a senior advisor at Boston Consulting Group. She’s also the co-host of the Brave Commerce podcast from Adweek and the mother of two adult kids, both of whom (to her surprise), followed in mom’s footsteps and went straight into the advertising industry after college.
Her career spans decades of leadership at agencies during a period when the rules for working mothers were being written in real time, often badly. Rather than let that shape her, she turned it into a leadership style built on psychological safety, empathy, and radical candor.
From Painful Precedent to Building a Better Parental Playbook
Sarah’s pivotal moment happened before she was even a mother. Pregnant with her first child in her early 20s, she told her boss the news - and got a distinctly unenthusiastic reaction. The parental leave policy at the time offered her a choice: return after six weeks and get paid for that leave, or take the full twelve weeks unpaid. Money was tight, so she went back after six weeks. She did the same thing with her second child.
“It wasn’t a psychologically safe environment.”
That experience didn’t just stay in the past - it became the blueprint for what she refused to replicate once she had the power to change it. When she became a leader, she made a point of genuinely celebrating every pregnancy announcement on her team, no matter the business timing, and building the kind of trust that let people tell her the truth about their plans early, rather than hiding them.
That reaction set a tone that outlasted any single announcement. People at her companies knew that a pregnancy - or any major personal milestone - would be celebrated openly, not simply tolerated. This made people more willing to bring their whole selves to work generally, not just around parental leave.
Make It Safe to Talk About the Yuck
Asked what she’d tell someone building a company today, Sarah starts with psychological safety - creating permission to be honest about the hard parts, long before there’s a policy to fix them.
“You have to make it be okay to talk about the yuck — whatever the yuck is.”
That honesty pays off operationally, too. An employee who feels safe telling you they’re expecting at four months gives you a real runway to plan, and encourages others to do the same.
While CEO of 360i, she built the playbook for how working parents were supported both going into and returning from leave. In return, those employees worked hard and stayed. The company retained top talent at tenures that far exceeded industry averages.
Judge the Work, Not the Clock
Asked what’s still not the norm but should be, Sarah lands on a simple operating principle: stop watching when and how people work, and start caring only about the outcomes people deliver, not the hours they keep.
She points to her own strict observance of the Sabbath - shutting down completely every Friday at sundown, no matter what’s due Monday - as proof that boundaries and work ethic aren’t opposites. The work still gets done. What matters, she says, is building a culture where people are judged on whether the job gets done, not on when or how they did it.
“You think that I didn’t have a work ethic ‘cause, hey, she’s shutting down at four o’clock... It didn’t matter. The work got done. If you have the work ethic, you’ll figure out a way to get it done.”
She also pushes back on the idea of work-life balance altogether, calling it the wrong standard to strive for.
“I don’t think there’s such a thing as work-life balance. I really don’t. I think there’s what’s right for you situationally at a particular time, without losing sight of your North Star.”
Her advice to employers: give people the outcome and the deadline, not a script for where and how to get there. Whether someone needs to log off for a school pickup, a nap, or sundown, the measure of a good employee rarely has anything to do with the clock.
Model the Behavior You Want to See
Sarah is candid that for years she told her own kids she “had to” go to work, rather than admitting she loved it, worried that enjoying her career too openly might look like bad mothering.
She’s since realized the framing mattered more than she understood at the time, and the same dynamic plays out inside companies: leaders who apologize for their ambition, or hide boundaries and personal commitments, quietly teach everyone watching that work is something to be endured rather than chosen.
“I don’t think my kids have an unhealthy relationship with work, but it’s not like I was helping the situation, because I would say I had to - because otherwise, why would I not want to be with them?”
For employers, the lesson scales up: leaders and managers who are transparent about enjoying their work, setting boundaries, and making intentional trade-offs give their teams, parents especially, permission to do the same without guilt.
Ask What Someone Needs Before You Try to Fix It
Sarah is, by her own description, a solutions-oriented person. She is someone who instinctively absorbs a problem and starts working it. That instinct served her well as a leader, but can actually be limiting when the situation - or the individual - needs something different.
A new approach came from a conversation with Dr. Valerie Oswald, now CEO of Kodiak Cakes, who shared a simple framework for figuring out what someone actually wants when they bring you a problem.
“Do they need a toolbox? Do they need a tissue box?
Or do they need a garbage bin?”
A toolbox means they want solutions.
A tissue box means they want an empathetic ear.
A garbage bin means they just need to vent it out and move on, no fixing required.
Sarah’s default has always been a toolbox, whether the person in front of her wanted it or not. Learning to pause and ask which one someone actually needs, she says, is a new muscle, one she’s building both at home and at work.
Sarah’s Tips for Leaders:
Make it safe to name the hard stuff. Psychological safety lets people tell you about changes early, giving you real runway to plan, whether that’s for parental leave or anything else.
Manage to outcomes, not hours. Give people the deadline and the goal, not a script for when and how to get there. The clock isn’t the measure of a good employee.
Model the behavior you want to see. If you hide your enthusiasm for the job, or your own boundaries and commitments, your team learns to hide theirs too.
