She was ready to step up – everyone could see it, and so could she. Keen, even excited. And underneath the excitement, stuck.
Because stepping up meant leading people – some of whom had been at the firm longer than she had and had helped her find her feet when she arrived. The model in her head said leading them meant directing them: telling people who once showed her the ropes what to do.
She couldn’t see herself doing that. So, every time we edged toward the next step, I got the same response. Yes, but. Yes, but they won’t take it from me. Yes, but will they think I have earned it?
I’ve come to recognise that stuck point – I’ve watched several capable managers arrive at the same place. It’s rarely a lack of ability. It’s a picture of leadership that makes the next step look impossible.
So, I asked her something sideways. What do ALL leaders have in common that makes them leaders?
She didn’t have a ready answer. Most people don’t. Here’s what I’ve landed on, after a long time watching it. Every leader, whatever their style, does two things. They provide direction. And they engage people in that direction. The order-giving, the charisma, the authority – those are styles. Direction and engagement are the constants underneath.
That mattered to her for one reason: neither of those things requires you to stand over people who were there first and issue orders. You provide direction by naming a problem the whole team already feels. You engage people by asking them to help solve it – and then actually listening. She didn’t have to become someone she wasn’t.
So instead of arriving with her fix for a problem the team was genuinely feeling, she brought it to them as a shared one. What if we tackled this together? What can we do and what would be the pay-off?
Something shifted while we talked it through. The “yes, but” became “yes, and”. She went from “I can’t see a way forward” to “I can do this” inside a single conversation – and then the floodgates opened. Not just ideas for the one problem, but for a whole run of things she’d been quietly stuck on for months. The block was never the problems. It was the picture of leadership sitting on top of them.
Here’s what she really discovered.
Leadership isn’t a position on the org chart. Management is – a box, with a title and people reporting into it. Leadership is a mindset and a way of working, and it isn’t handed to you when you make partner. You can practise it from exactly where you stand, whatever your title, whoever’s been there longer.
Which means the thing she feared – that she hadn’t earned the right to lead – had it backwards. You don’t earn the right and then start. You start from where you are. That’s what earning it looks like.
