Practical wisdom for senior leaders navigating complexity. These posts explore the skills, mindsets, and practices that help executives lead with clarity, build trust, and create environments where people thrive.

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Why Reassurance Never Cures Impostor Syndrome — and What Actually Helps

Maria Wade, executive coach and author, in a reflective pose outdoors with hands folded beneath her chin.

For years, I proofread everything before I let it leave my desk. Not just articles or client proposals. Emails. Comments. A two-line reply to a scheduling question. I would read each one again, then once more, hunting for the wrong preposition, the missing article, the phrase that might reveal what I feared was true: that my English wasn’t good enough for the work I do in it.

English is my second language. I coach senior executives in it. I wrote a book in it. I got my coaching education at Columbia in it, earned my PCC and MCC in it, passed oral assessments in it, taught in it. None of that stopped the checking. Every finished piece of evidence somehow failed to reach the part of me that was keeping score.

Recently I sat for the TOEFL, a standardized test of English proficiency. A strange thing for someone at my stage to do, maybe. The score came back, and something unexpected happened: the fear dissolved. I still make mistakes. My English is not perfect. But I stopped rereading every email three times, and my responses stopped waiting in drafts for days.

My English did not change that day. I simply held, at last, a piece of evidence my inner critic had not produced and could not dismiss. The score was not a compliment I could discount or a kindness I could explain away. It was data. And for the first time in years, I could read data about myself as information rather than a verdict.

That difference — data, not verdict — is what this piece is about. Because the inner critic that kept me proofreading is the same one that keeps talented leaders rehearsing one more time before speaking, rewriting the deck no one asked them to rewrite, and privately waiting to be found out. You cannot argue that critic into silence. I tried for years. But there is another way to work with it, and it begins somewhere most advice about impostor syndrome never mentions.

The Court That Never Acquits

Here is what I have learned about the inner critic, in my own life and in coaching conversations with senior leaders: it runs a court where it holds every position. It writes the charges, evaluates the evidence, and delivers the ruling. And a court like that can never acquit you, because acquittal was never its function.

Watch what it does with good news. A compliment arrives: they were being kind. A promotion: right place, right time. A successful launch: the team carried it. A breakthrough coaching session: I could have done better. A finished book: if they knew how long it took me, they would think differently. Every piece of favorable evidence gets reattributed on arrival — to luck, to charm, to effort, to other people. The achievement is never allowed to mean what it appears to mean.

Psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes named this pattern in 1978, studying highly successful women who remained privately convinced they were intellectual frauds. They called it the impostor phenomenon. The “syndrome” label came later and was never theirs — Clance preferred “impostor experience”: something people go through, not something they have. Later research found it across genders and professions, and found something else worth sitting with: achievement does not cure it. Often the opposite. Each new success raises the height from which the imagined exposure would happen.

Clance also described the engine that keeps it running: faced with a task, the person over-prepares — or procrastinates, then works frantically — and when success comes, attributes it to that effort, never to ability. So the ritual must be repeated. My triple-checked emails were exactly this: every flawless message became proof that only the proofreading stood between me and exposure.

This is why reassurance fails, however sincere, however often repeated. Reassurance is testimony, and the critic is free to discredit any witness. What it has a harder time discrediting is a different category of input altogether — one it did not generate, cannot reattribute, and never volunteered to collect.

Evidence the Critic Cannot Dismiss

An external assessment is structurally different from a compliment. The standard existed before I did. The scorers had never met me and had no kindness to extend. The result could not be reattributed to charm, to the team, or to anyone being polite. When my TOEFL score arrived, the critic reached for its usual tools and found that none of them fit. They were being kind — they don’t know me. Right place, right time — it is a timed test with a rubric. The team carried it — I sat in that room alone. For once, the data was not produced by the court.

Once I noticed this, I saw how many such structures already exist, and how rarely we use them this way. Assessments scored by strangers against published standards. Certification programs with real requirements and real evaluators. Formal feedback processes, where observations are gathered with method rather than mood. Supervision, a practice from my own field that I wish every profession had — more on it shortly. Every profession has some version: boards, licensures, portfolio reviews, defended theses.

We tend to treat these things as gatekeeping, or résumé furniture. I have come to see them as milestones that generate evidence. In my field, coaching, the credential ladder is sometimes criticized for reducing an art to levels. Maybe. But a milestone I can point to is data my critic cannot argue with, and that is worth more to me than a purer system that leaves the question of my progress entirely to the loudest voice in my head.

So the advice seems simple: when the critic will not accept testimony, go collect data. Take the test. Invite the structured feedback. Find a supervisor.

Except there is a catch, and it is the most important thing I have to say in this piece. Collecting evidence can calm the impostor feeling — or feed it. Same test, same score, opposite effect. The difference is not in the data. It is in the ground you are standing on when you receive it.

The Catch: Unconditional Self-Acceptance

This July, I began a six-month mentor certification program with Janet M. Harvey. At our first session, she said something I have not been able to put down since: we cannot receive feedback unless we are in unconditional self-acceptance.

Unconditional self-acceptance is not a soft phrase, though it sounds like one. It has a precise history. The psychologist Albert Ellis, founder of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy and one of the architects of what became cognitive behavioral therapy, made it a cornerstone of his approach. His argument: human beings are incurable self-raters. We take a single outcome and convert it into a global sentence on the self. I failed becomes I am a failure. The session went poorly becomes I am not a real coach. Ellis considered this conversion both illogical — no single performance can summarize a person — and psychologically corrosive. His alternative was exacting: evaluate your actions, skills, and outcomes as honestly as you can, and refuse to rate your worth as a person on any of it. Judge the performance. Never sentence the person.

Ellis would look at my strategy of collecting external evidence and ask a sharp question: evidence of what? If the answer is evidence of my worth, I have not escaped the impostor loop. I have industrialized it. The test score becomes the new proofreading: a ritual that must be repeated, because worth that is proven by evidence must keep being proven. There is always another credential. The bar always moves. I know coaches with walls of certifications who are more frightened than when they started, and executives with flawless track records who are rehearsing harder than ever. Evidence collected to prove the self is the impostor cycle wearing a productivity costume.

But evidence received from self-acceptance is a different act, even when it is the same test. If my worth is not on trial, a score is free to be what it actually is: information about a skill. My English is working. My coaching meets this standard. This competency is still developing. Data, not verdict.

That is what Janet’s sentence reverses. We treat self-acceptance as the reward at the end of growth: once I improve enough, gather enough proof, I will finally accept myself. It does not work in that order, because without self-acceptance the proof never arrives intact. The critic distorts it on entry — inflates it, discounts it, or converts it into a new demand. Self-acceptance is not the finish line. It is the ground. Feedback needs somewhere to land.

And here I have to be honest about my own story, because the TOEFL score did less of the work than I first thought. The reason I could read it as data was not the rubric or the strangers who scored it. It was where I was standing when I opened it. I did not fully understand that until someone else saw it before I did.

Witnessed, Not Claimed

Not long after Janet’s session, I was in supervision with my own supervisor, Meryl Moritz. Supervision, for readers outside coaching, is where a coach brings their actual work to a senior practitioner who helps them see what they cannot see alone. I am a certified supervisor myself, and I still bring my work to supervision — including my supervision work. No level of experience outgrows the need for another set of eyes. Partway through our session, Meryl paused and named what she was observing. What she was seeing in me, she said, looked like self-acceptance.

I had not claimed it. I had not even been working toward it, and I would not have dared use the word about myself. Someone qualified to see it, watching me work, named it from the outside.

I have written before that self-awareness is not something we can simply declare. The research is inconvenient on this point: how accurately we see ourselves and how accurately we grasp the way others experience us are two nearly independent capacities, and what deserves the name self-awareness is verified across perspectives, not asserted from within. Sitting across from Meryl, I understood that self-acceptance obeys the same law. Claimed, it is cheap — the loudest impostors and the most defended egos all claim it. Witnessed, it is something else. It shows up in how you receive an observation about your work while it is still hanging in the air.

And I have to tell you where mine came from, because it was not a technique. It grew out of an intentional spiritual practice I have kept for years — a practice I did not begin in order to fix my inner critic or upgrade my leadership. Self-acceptance was never the objective. It arrived on its own schedule, unexpected, a gift. I am wary of saying this in a blog post, because it resists the format. I cannot hand you five steps to it, and I distrust anyone who says they can.

What I can tell you is what the ground responds to. Not hacks. Not affirmations recited against your own disbelief. Practices — spiritual, reflective, relational — that slowly change your relationship with the one doing the evaluating.

Which brings me to what you can actually do.

What You Can Actually Do

If any of this is landing, here is how I would begin. The order matters more than the methods.

Tend the ground first. Find a practice that is not aimed at self-improvement — spiritual, contemplative, reflective, whatever form is true for you. A practice like this hands the critic no new material. It works further down, slowly changing your relationship with the one doing the evaluating, until there is a self that can sit still while being seen. Alongside it, put at least one person in your professional life whose role is to observe your actual work and tell you the truth: a supervisor, a mentor, a coach — not a cheerleader. What you want is accurate seeing from someone with no verdict to deliver.

Then, and only then, collect the data. Choose instruments the critic cannot cross-examine: assessments scored by strangers against published standards, structured feedback gathered with method, certifications with real bars to clear. Take the test you do not strictly need — that was what the TOEFL was for me. Treat the milestones of your profession as evidence of progress rather than rank, and let yourself count them.

And run the motive test, before and after. Before: ask Ellis’s question — evidence of what? If the honest answer is evidence that I am finally enough, wait. That collection will feed the loop, not quiet it. After: watch what happens when a good result arrives. Relief that settles is data doing its work. Relief that immediately spawns the next requirement — the next credential, the next degree, the moved bar — is the impostor cycle asking for another round. The result itself will not tell you which is happening. Where the bar goes next will.

None of this is a cure, and I would not trust it if it were. My critic still shows up, usually when something matters. The difference is that it no longer runs the court alone. There is other evidence in the room now, and ground to stand on while it is read.

Where This Lives in the Leadership Integrity Framework

Readers familiar with the Leadership Integrity Framework® will recognize where this work lives: in two of the four dimensions. In Purpose — the inner world of leadership — this is the developmental shift I consider foundational: the movement from trying to prove your worth to leading from it. A leader still proving cannot afford accurate information; a leader leading from worth can finally use it. And in Presence, it becomes visible to others, because feedback integration is a practice of Presence. How you receive an observation in the moment it lands — without defensiveness, without collapse — tells people whether your steadiness is real or performed. I wrote in the book that leaders should treat feedback as data, not as a threat to their authority, and that I am selective about which feedback deserves to be worked with at all. Both halves matter. Self-acceptance is not indiscriminate openness. It is what makes discernment possible: grounded enough to let feedback in, clear enough to decide what it is worth.

Imperfect and Working

These days, most of my emails go out after a single read. A few still get a second look — old habits keep their keys for a while — but nothing sits in drafts for days anymore, and when a wrong preposition slips through, it is just a wrong preposition, not the exposure I spent years bracing for. My English remains imperfect and working. I have come to believe the same is true of me.

I keep returning to the order of Janet’s sentence, because it reverses how most of us were taught to grow. Not: improve, prove, and then, someday, accept yourself. But: stand on acceptance, and from there let the evidence — all of it, the scores and the setbacks — arrive as information. Nothing about that order makes the work smaller. It makes the work possible.

So I will leave you with the two questions this piece has been circling. What is one piece of evidence about your work that your critic has never been allowed to count? And what would you need, not to argue with the voice that discounts it, but to stand somewhere it cannot reach?

If those questions stay with you the way Janet’s sentence stayed with me, they will know what to do.

If you’d like to stay connected, subscribe to my newsletter for reflections on coaching, leadership, and thinking with clarity. You can also join my WhatsApp community channel to hear about upcoming community events.

The Triangle You Didn’t Know You Were In

A leader I coach had just stepped into a senior role. His boss used a phrase that stuck with him: “Your job now is to be a force multiplier.” He understood the concept. He’d been promoted because he was excellent at his work. Now the work was to make others excellent at it.

In practice, it looked nothing like the concept.

The work his team handled was genuinely complex. Details mattered. Mistakes had consequences. So he reviewed their deliverables carefully. When something wasn’t right, he revised it himself, often late in the evening, because sending it back with notes would take longer than fixing it. When a direct report struggled with a client relationship, he stepped in to smooth things over. He told himself this was temporary. He was building the team’s capacity. He would step back once they were ready.

Three months in, he was working more hours than before the promotion, his team wasn’t growing, and he came to our session with a familiar frustration: “I have people who just won’t step up.”

We spent the first part of that conversation where you’d expect: delegation strategy, development plans, and accountability structures. Useful territory. But the conversation kept circling back to the same place. I asked him what happened in his body when he imagined sending a deliverable to his boss without reviewing it himself first.

He paused. Then: “My chest tightens. I hear a voice that says, if this goes wrong, it’s on you.“

That was the moment the conversation shifted from what was happening on his team to what was happening inside him.

What if the Drama Triangle isn’t just playing out between you and your team, but inside you?

The triangle inside

Most people encounter the Drama Triangle as an interpersonal model. Karpman described three roles that show up in conflict between people: Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim. It’s useful. It’s well-known. And for most people, that’s where it stops, because they are not aware that the same three roles also run in a place we rarely think to look: inside a single person. They don’t need a team meeting or a difficult colleague to activate. They run in the space between one thought and the next.

For this leader, the inner Persecutor was the voice that said: If this goes wrong, it’s on you. You should have caught that. A real leader would have built a team that didn’t need this much oversight. It sounded like high standards. It felt like a whip.

The inner Victim followed close behind: I can’t trust anyone to get this right. No matter how much I invest in developing them, it doesn’t change. I’m stuck doing the work and managing the work. Not self-pity. Something closer to exhaustion, the kind that comes from believing the situation can’t be different.

And the inner Rescuer was the one who ended the spiral: I’ll just fix it myself. At least then I know it’s done. Relief. Momentary competence. The comforting illusion of control. He wasn’t rescuing his team. He was rescuing himself from the discomfort of the first two voices.

The three roles cycled in seconds. The inner critic attacked, the collapsed self absorbed it, and the soothing part stepped in to end the pain by taking action. By the time he opened his laptop at 9 PM to rework a deliverable, the whole loop had already run. The decision to fix it himself didn’t feel like a choice. It felt like the only option.

The mirror

Once this leader saw the inner triangle, he began to see it everywhere. The pattern had been running for months. Naming it didn’t create it. Naming it made it visible.

The direct report who “wouldn’t step up” was real. The performance gap was real. But his response to it was being shaped by something other than the situation itself. When he reviewed her work and found errors, his inner Persecutor activated first: You promoted her too early. This reflects on you. The inner Victim followed: You’re going to be the one who pays for this. And the inner Rescuer closed the loop: Just fix it. At least it’ll be right.

By the time he gave her feedback, the frustration had already been filtered through all three roles. What he intended as accountability came out distorted, because the driving force behind the conversation was self-protection.

This is what I want to add to the conversation about the Drama Triangle. The interpersonal version, the one between a leader and their team, gets all the attention. But the interpersonal triangle is often a downstream effect of the internal one. The drama you see in the room is frequently the drama you haven’t addressed in yourself.

A leader who is harsh with a team member is sometimes externalizing their inner critic. A leader who takes over someone’s work is sometimes rescuing themselves from the anxiety of watching someone struggle. A leader who feels helpless about their team’s performance is sometimes letting the inner Victim set the terms.

None of this means the external situation doesn’t matter. The performance problem was real. The complexity of the work was real. But the inner triangle was deciding how this leader responded to all of it, long before strategy or management skill had a chance to show up.

Why the pattern persists

A question I hear from leaders when they first recognize the inner triangle: “Why do I keep doing this?” It’s usually asked with frustration, sometimes with shame. As if awareness alone should have been enough to stop it.

It isn’t, and there’s a reason. Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett’s theory of constructed emotion offers a useful frame here. The brain is a prediction machine. It doesn’t wait for the world to happen and then react. It runs constantly on predictions built from everything it has learned before. Those predictions shape what you notice, how you feel, and which actions seem available to you, often before conscious thought has a chance to intervene.

The inner triangle persists because the brain has learned it as a default sequence. Inner critic fires, collapse follows, soothing behavior resolves. The cycle has run so many times that it operates as a prediction, not a decision. The brain isn’t malfunctioning. It’s doing exactly what it learned to do, based on years of experience.

This matters because it replaces shame with something more useful: understanding. You don’t keep falling into the triangle because you’re weak or insufficiently self-aware. You keep falling into it because your brain is very good at running patterns it has practiced.

What it looks like to see it

This leader didn’t fix his inner triangle in a coaching session. That’s not how this works. What changed was that he started catching the sequence while it was running.

One evening, he found himself opening a team member’s deliverable. He noticed the familiar tightness, the pull to review every line, the certainty that if he didn’t, something would slip through. Instead of starting to edit, he paused. He asked himself: is this about the quality of her work, or is this about what happens inside me if something goes wrong?

The answer wasn’t clean. It was both. The deliverable did have issues. And his nervous system was responding to something older than this particular document. He could hold both of those truths at the same time, which is something he couldn’t have done three months earlier, because three months earlier, he didn’t know there were two things happening.

He sent the deliverable back with notes. It took longer than fixing it himself. His inner critic told him he was wasting time. His inner Victim told him she’d probably get it wrong again anyway. His inner Rescuer offered the familiar exit: just do it yourself. He let all three voices speak, and then he did what he’d decided to do.

That’s not a dramatic transformation story. It’s a Tuesday. And that’s the point. The inner triangle doesn’t require a breakthrough to shift. It requires noticing, over and over, with less self-punishment each time. The leader who starts to see the inner triangle doesn’t become a different person. They become the same person with more information about what’s driving their choices.

And with that information, the choices start to change. Not all at once. Not permanently. But enough to feel the difference.

The triangle you can actually change

You may not be able to control how the people around you show up. You can’t stop a direct report from underperforming or a peer from being difficult. But the inner triangle is yours. It runs on your predictions, your history, and your learned defaults. And because it’s yours, it’s the one you have the most leverage to change.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy. It means it’s possible.

In a companion piece, Stepping Out of the Drama Triangle: What Actually Happens, I wrote about how coaches encounter this same pattern in their own practice. We are professionals who specialize in developmental work, and we are works in progress too. The inner triangle doesn’t spare anyone based on expertise. The difference isn’t avoiding it. It’s learning to see it.

Join the conversation

If this stirred something for you, I’m hosting two free live discussions this month: Stepping Out of the Drama Triangle: The Messy Middle.

We’ll explore the payoff vacuum, the identity wobble, how your nervous system pulls you back into familiar roles, and what it looks like to exit the triangle in the middle of real relationships.

Both sessions have the same structure and agenda. Choose the time that works for your schedule. At least a few participants will leave with a small gift from me, as a thank-you for being willing to sit in the messy middle together.

This space is for executive coaches and corporate leaders who are ready for the honest version of the conversation.

Warmly,

Maria Wade

If you’d like to stay connected, subscribe to my newsletter for reflections on coaching, leadership, and thinking with clarity. You can also join my WhatsApp community channel to hear about upcoming community events.

Flexing the Listening Muscle: The Crucial Role of Engaged Listening in Leadership

In the dynamic realm of leadership, where decisions and directives shape organizational futures, the ability to listen—truly listen—is a skill that sets exceptional leaders apart. Engaged listening is more than just hearing or repeating words; it’s an active, conscious effort to understand and empathize. This nuanced form of listening is an invaluable asset, fostering trust, collaboration, and innovation. In a world where the pace of change is relentless, flexing the listening muscle is never obsolete.

The Benefits of Engaged Listening in Leadership

Engaged listening offers profound benefits to leaders and their teams. By fostering an environment where every voice is valued, leaders can cultivate a culture of trust and mutual respect. Neuroscientific research underscores the importance of this skill. Studies indicate that active listening engages multiple areas of the brain, enhancing emotional regulation and empathy. When leaders listen attentively, they activate the brain’s mirror neuron system, which helps in understanding others’ emotions and intentions, creating stronger interpersonal connections.

Engaged listening also enhances decision-making. By thoroughly understanding diverse perspectives, leaders can make more informed, balanced decisions. This inclusivity leads to higher employee engagement and retention, as team members feel valued and heard. Furthermore, engaged listening mitigates conflicts, as it promotes open communication and understanding, reducing misunderstandings and fostering a collaborative atmosphere.

Strategies for Improvement

  1. Cultivate Focus: Eliminate distractions during conversations. This means silencing electronic devices and maintaining eye contact. Show genuine interest through body language, nodding, and verbal affirmations.
  2. Develop Self-Awareness: Recognize your biases and preconceptions. Approach conversations with an open mind, ready to understand rather than judge. This self-awareness can prevent premature conclusions and foster more meaningful interactions.
  3. Foster Curiosity: Ask open-ended questions that encourage deeper dialogue. Show genuine curiosity about others’ viewpoints. This not only demonstrates respect but also uncovers valuable insights that might otherwise be missed.
  4. Practice Reflective Listening: Paraphrase and summarize what the other person has said. This confirms your understanding and shows the speaker that you are fully engaged. Reflective listening can also clarify points and ensure mutual understanding.
  5. Empower Others: Create a safe space for team members to express their thoughts without fear of interruption or judgment. Encourage quieter team members to share their ideas, fostering a more inclusive environment.

Real-World Examples

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft: When Satya Nadella became CEO, he emphasized a culture of empathy and listening. His approach transformed Microsoft’s internal culture, promoting collaboration and innovation. Nadella’s engaged listening style has been credited with breaking down silos within the company, leading to a more cohesive and innovative organization.

Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors: Mary Barra is renowned for her leadership style that emphasizes listening and collaboration. When she became CEO, she faced the monumental task of addressing GM’s ignition switch crisis. Instead of dictating solutions, Barra listened to her team, encouraging open communication and transparency. She held town hall meetings and one-on-one sessions to understand employees’ perspectives and concerns. This approach not only helped resolve the crisis but also fostered a culture of trust and accountability within the company. Barra’s commitment to engaged listening has been instrumental in driving GM’s innovation and cultural transformation, making her a respected leader in the automotive industry.

How to Practice Engaged Listening Daily

  1. Schedule “Listening Hours”: Dedicate specific times for one-on-one meetings where you solely focus on listening to team members’ concerns and ideas.
  2. Start Meetings with a Listening Exercise: Begin meetings by inviting team members to share their thoughts on the agenda topics without interruption. This sets a tone of mutual respect and openness.
  3. Implement “Listen-First” Policies: Encourage a culture where listening precedes any decision-making. This ensures all voices are heard and considered.
  4. Start a conversation with the question: “How can I help?” then listen to understand how you can be helpful.

Resources

Articles:

Books:

  1. “Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone” by Mark Goulston This book offers practical advice on how to listen effectively and communicate with impact, crucial for leaders looking to improve their interpersonal skills in a high-stakes environment.
  2. “Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust & Get Extraordinary Results” by Judith E. Glaser This book explores how to harness the power of conversation to build trust and foster a collaborative atmosphere, essential for leaders aiming to create a more inclusive and open communication culture.
  3. “The Trusted Advisor” by David H. Maister, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford Focusing on building trust through effective listening and communication, this book is a valuable resource for leaders who want to strengthen relationships and enhance their influence.
  4. “Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High” by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler This book provides strategies for navigating difficult conversations with confidence and skill, helping leaders to manage high-stakes interactions more effectively.

A Note from the Author

Engaged listening is not a passive activity but an active, intentional practice that can transform leadership effectiveness. By developing this skill, you can foster a more collaborative, innovative, and empathetic organizational culture. In your day-to-day interactions, this means making a conscious effort to be present, understand, and respond thoughtfully. As a leader, practicing engaged listening not only enhances individual relationships but also strengthens the fabric of your entire organization.

I invite you to share your thoughts, ask questions, or provide your perspective on the importance of engaged listening in leadership. Your insights can enrich the conversation and help others learn from your experiences. If you found this article helpful, consider sharing it with colleagues or friends who could benefit from understanding the power of engaged listening. Let’s continue to build a community where every voice is valued and every leader is an exceptional listener.

Warmly, Maria Wade

Beyond Feedback: The Art of Conversations That Grow People

Feedback is a powerful tool for growth, yet it is often approached with hesitation and uncertainty. I want to share two conversations that capture the challenge many leaders face:

Coach: What accountability system do you use with your team?

Leader: Honestly, I'm not sure it's an effective one. I hate yelling at people.

And from a different leader, a different conversation:

Coach: What makes feedback challenging for you?

Leader: I don't want to push the person to the breaking point.

Two leaders, two very different fears. One worries about becoming the aggressor. The other worries about causing harm. And yet both arrive at the same place: avoidance. The feedback does not get delivered. The behavior does not get addressed. The team does not grow.

What strikes me about these conversations is how reasonable both leaders sound. They are not avoiding feedback because they lack courage. They are avoiding it because something about the act of giving feedback feels genuinely dangerous to them, either to the relationship or to the other person. And that instinct is worth taking seriously, because the brain has a reason for it.

Why Feedback Feels Like Threat

Research in social neuroscience suggests that social evaluation can recruit neural networks that overlap with those involved in threat and social pain. When feedback feels like judgment, the amygdala registers it as something to defend against, activating stress responses that can impair access to prefrontal capacities like reasoning, emotional regulation, and learning. In practical terms, poorly delivered feedback can make it neurologically harder for the person to absorb what you are saying.

This is not weakness. It is biology. And it explains both of those opening conversations. The first leader’s brain had learned to associate feedback situations with conflict, so the only model he could access was an adversarial one. The second leader’s brain was running a different calculation but from the same threat circuitry: if I say this, I might break something I cannot repair. Neither leader was avoiding accountability because they were soft. They were avoiding it because their nervous systems had no script for feedback that felt safe.

Understanding this changes the question. The question is not whether to give feedback. It is how to deliver it in a way the brain can actually receive.

Enter SBI: A Structure That Works With the Brain

The Situation-Behavior-Impact model, developed by the Center for Creative Leadership, has been a reliable framework for years, and for good reason. It works because it respects how the brain processes information under pressure.

Situation specifies when and where a particular behavior occurred. Behavior describes the observable action. Impact explains how the behavior affected individuals, team dynamics, or broader results.

By grounding feedback in what happened, when it happened, and what it produced, SBI keeps the conversation anchored in observable facts. This matters neurologically: fact-based feedback is less likely to trigger the amygdala’s alarm system, which means the prefrontal cortex stays engaged. The person can actually think about what you are saying rather than defending against how it feels.

But here is what I have learned through hundreds of coaching conversations: SBI, as useful as it is, often stops one step too short.

From SBI to SBII: The Question Than Makes A Difference

After developing the original model, the Center for Creative Leadership extended it with a fourth step: Intent. The model became SBII, Situation-Behavior-Impact-Intent.

After articulating what you observed and its impact, you pause. And you ask:

“Can you help me understand what you were hoping to accomplish?”

Or: “What was your thinking behind that approach?”

Or simply: “I want to make sure I’m not misreading the situation. What was your intent?”

This one addition transforms the interaction from a one-directional assessment into an actual conversation. It signals that you are not just delivering a verdict. You are genuinely curious about what the other person was trying to do. And that curiosity does something remarkable: it shifts the dynamic from correction to collaboration.

Let me illustrate with a coaching dialogue. A leader I worked with was describing a team member, someone I will call Mike:

Leader: Mike's communication has improved significantly during the last few months. However, he can still come off as abrasive, especially when he's convinced he's right.

Coach: Can you recall the most recent occasion when you observed this type of communication?

Leader: It's hard to pinpoint. Perhaps a few months ago...

Coach: Did you share that observation with Mike at the time?

Leader: No, I didn't.

Two problems surfaced here. First, the feedback lacked the specificity that SBI requires. There was no clear situation, no recent observable behavior, no concrete impact. The leader was working from a general impression rather than from data.

But the second problem is more revealing. The moment the leader noticed came and went without a word. Whatever Mike did that registered as abrasive, Mike never heard about it. He had no chance to reflect on it, no chance to course-correct, no chance to explain what he was trying to do. And now, months later, the leader is carrying a stored impression that has hardened into a generalization: Mike can be abrasive when he’s convinced he’s right. That is no longer feedback. It is a conclusion.

Even if the leader were to name a specific moment now, the conversation would likely end with the manager’s assessment of Mike. There would still be no space for Mike’s perspective, no curiosity about what he was trying to accomplish in that moment.

Consider how the same conversation might have gone with the Intent step in place. The leader describes a specific incident, walks through the situation and behavior, names the impact on the team, and then asks: “Mike, when you pushed back so forcefully, what were you hoping the team would understand?”

Now Mike is a participant in his own development, not just a recipient of someone else’s evaluation. And the leader might discover something unexpected: maybe Mike was trying to protect the team from a decision he saw as premature. Maybe his intent was sound even though his delivery created problems. That distinction between intent and impact is where real coaching conversations live.

There is a practical benefit here, too. One criticism of the original SBI model is that it can feel formulaic: I observed this situation, this behavior, this impact. Done. The structure does the work, but the conversation can feel like a checklist rather than a genuine exchange. The Intent inquiry dissolves that problem. It restores mutuality. It turns a message into a dialogue. The person across from you is no longer receiving feedback. They are co-creating an understanding of what happened and what it means.

SBI Is Not Just for Problems

There is a pattern I see repeatedly with senior leaders: the only time they reach for a feedback framework is when something has gone wrong. Corrective feedback gets all the attention. Reinforcing feedback, the recognition of what is working, gets treated as optional.

This is a missed opportunity, and the data is clear on why. A growing body of research suggests that people are significantly more engaged when their manager’s feedback includes specific recognition of strengths. Generic praise does not produce this effect. Telling someone “great job” activates very little. But telling them exactly what they did, when they did it, and what it made possible does.

Reinforcing feedback through SBI sounds like this: “In this morning’s client presentation, you paused to invite the quieter voices to speak before moving to a decision. It shifted the energy in the room. People leaned in rather than checking out, and we left with real alignment rather than polite compliance.”

The specificity is what makes it land. It tells the person not just that they did well, but what specifically to keep doing and why it matters. And for leaders who default to managing by exception, noticing only what breaks, this practice builds the psychological safety that makes corrective feedback possible in the first place.

When people trust that you see what they do well, they can hear what they need to change.

I sometimes ask leaders to keep a simple log for two weeks: every time they give feedback, note whether it was reinforcing or redirecting. Most are startled by the ratio. They thought they were balanced. The log reveals they are almost entirely corrective. That awareness alone, without any new technique, begins to shift how they show up with their teams.

What This Looks Like Through the Leadership Integrity Framework

In my work developing the Leadership Integrity Framework®, I have come to see feedback as a practice that lives at the intersection of all four dimensions: Purpose, Presence, Partnership, and Perspective.

Purpose asks: Who am I as I step into this conversation? This is not about the business rationale for the feedback. It is about the leader’s inner relationship to the act of giving it. Am I giving this feedback because I genuinely care about this person’s development, or because I am frustrated and want to discharge it? Am I speaking from my values, or from my role? What do I believe about this person that makes me willing to say something hard? A leader who has answered these questions for themselves, even quickly, arrives at the conversation differently. The feedback carries their integrity, not just their authority.

Presence asks: How am I showing up as I deliver this? Am I regulated, curious, and grounded, or am I tense, distancing, and performing a role? The neuroscience is relevant here: if the person delivering feedback is dysregulated, the recipient’s brain will pick up on that signal before a single word is spoken. Emotional contagion is real and fast.

Partnership asks: What are we building together? The SBII Intent inquiry is fundamentally a partnership move. It communicates: I am not here to judge. I am here to understand and grow together. This is relational integrity in action, the willingness to be in a conversation rather than to deliver a message.

Perspective asks: What am I not seeing? Leaders who hold this question understand that feedback is not just about individual performance. It is a cultural signal. When feedback is given and received well, it communicates something about the entire organization: safety here is real, learning is expected, and truth is welcomed. When it is given poorly, or avoided altogether, the signal is equally clear: we do not trust each other enough to be honest. That reading of feedback as a system-level indicator, not just an interpersonal technique, is what separates leaders who give good feedback from leaders who build cultures where feedback flows naturally.

From Tool to Practice

The SBI model, and its evolution to SBII, offers a structure that respects both the neuroscience of how humans process evaluation and the relational reality of how trust is built. But a model is only as good as the intention behind it. If feedback remains something you do to someone, no framework will save it. If it becomes something you do with someone, grounded in purpose, delivered with presence, offered in partnership, and held in perspective, it stops being a management obligation and starts being a leadership practice.

I think about both leaders from those opening conversations. Neither was wrong. Accountability can damage relationships when it is delivered as judgment. Feedback can push someone toward a breaking point when it lands on a nervous system that is already overwhelmed. But both leaders were missing the same possibility: that feedback, done well, is one of the most generous things a leader can offer. It says: I see you clearly enough to tell you the truth, and I respect you enough to believe you can do something with it.

The question I leave with you is this: What is one feedback conversation you have been avoiding? And what would change if you approached it with curiosity rather than correction?

I write about leadership, coaching, and the practices that help senior leaders lead with integrity. If these ideas resonate, you are welcome to join the conversation through my newsletter or the MW community WhatsApp channel.

Owning Your Expertise: The Power of Balanced Leadership

I’ll never forget the day I walked into my first class at Columbia University’s executive coaching program. The room was full of accomplished professionals—people with decades of experience, impressive credentials, and the kind of presence that fills a space before they even speak.

And me? I felt small.

Not because I lacked experience. I’d spent years leading teams, navigating complex organizational dynamics, and coaching leaders through high-stakes transitions. But in that moment, surrounded by people whose expertise seemed so… established, I found myself shrinking. Apologizing for my perspective before I even shared it. Hedging my insights with phrases like “I might be wrong, but…” or “This is just my experience…”

It took a peer pulling me aside after class to name what I couldn’t see: “Maria, you keep apologizing for knowing what you know. Stop it.”

She was right. I wasn’t owning my expertise. I was performing a version of humility that looked like self-awareness but was actually self-doubt wearing a professional mask.

That moment at Columbia was a turning point. It forced me to confront a pattern I now see in many senior leaders I coach: the cost of not owning your expertise.

Many senior leaders quietly struggle with the same question: How do you own your expertise with confidence without losing humility, curiosity, and connection? Balanced leadership is not about choosing between confidence and humility; it is about integrating both so your executive presence is grounded, credible, and deeply human.​

In the Leadership Integrity Framework, this tension sits at the intersection of Purpose (your inner compass), Presence (how you show up), and Partnership (how others experience you). When leaders over‑correct toward humility, they often unintentionally weaken all three.

When Humility Silences Your Expert Voice

There was a season in my own leadership journey when I became deeply inspired by adult development theory, particularly Robert Kegan’s description of the self‑transforming mind—the capacity to hold multiple perspectives and integrate contradictions. Motivated by intellectual humility, I swung my pendulum decisively away from anything that felt like arrogance.​

It worked—until it didn’t. Feedback from that period described me as “indecisive,” “aloof,” and “hard to read.” In my effort to avoid imposing my perspective, I had effectively abandoned my expert voice. Coaching conversations became open‑ended explorations with endless options but very little direction, and my clients felt the cost of that under‑leadership.​

One coaching engagement with a senior leader in financial services brought this into sharp focus. He valued humility, listening, and empowering his team. Yet his people experienced him as hesitant and over‑cautious. His desire not to dominate the conversation resulted in meetings where no one was quite sure what he actually thought. He was admired as a human being, but his leadership was creating confusion and decision paralysis.​

This is the quiet risk of extreme humility in executive roles: when you over‑rotate into deference, your presence starts to disappear.

The Pitfalls of Over‑Corrected Humility

From an executive presence standpoint, humility becomes problematic when it consistently produces:

  • Chronic indecision and delayed calls, even when you have enough information to act
  • Over‑analysis and perfectionism that stall momentum
  • Vague or overly qualified recommendations that confuse stakeholders
  • Teams that feel under‑led, uncertain, or reluctant to move without your explicit direction​

Neuroscience offers one explanation. When leaders constantly scan for others’ opinions and avoid owning their own, they over‑activate monitoring and threat‑detection circuits instead of creative problem‑solving networks. The result is mental fatigue, slower decisions, and a persistent sense of “I should know, but I don’t want to sound too certain.”​

The paradox is this: the very humility that once made you a thoughtful, collaborative leader can, when taken to an extreme, erode trust in your judgment.

Why Owning Your Expertise Matters for Executive Presence

Owning your expertise is not self‑promotion; it is a leadership responsibility. In senior roles, people look to you for:

  • Clear point‑of‑view: “Given everything we’ve heard, what do you recommend?”
  • Grounded confidence under pressure
  • Visible alignment between your words, decisions, and values (your leadership integrity)​

When you claim your expertise with intention:

  • You broadcast credibility. Teams and stakeholders relax when they sense someone is willing to stand behind a thoughtful, well‑grounded perspective.​
  • You strengthen your leadership brand. Over time, people recognize the signature of your judgment and know what kind of decisions to expect from you.​
  • You model mature confidence—confidence that is rooted not in ego, but in experience, discernment, and a willingness to be accountable for your calls.​

This is Presence in the Leadership Integrity Framework: the observable behaviors through which your inner Purpose becomes visible to others. Owning your expertise is one of the most tangible expressions of that presence.

Balanced Leadership: Integrating Humility and Expertise

Balanced leadership is not a 50/50 compromise between humility and confidence. It is the capacity to move fluidly between:

  • Listening and leading: taking in multiple perspectives, then synthesizing them into a clear direction
  • Questioning and deciding: staying genuinely curious until the decision point, then making a call and owning it
  • Learning and guiding: remaining open to being wrong while still offering your expertise as a resource, not a weapon​

In the context of the Leadership Integrity Framework, this balance draws on three dimensions:​

  • Purpose: being clear about your values and philosophy so you know why you hold a particular view.
  • Presence: communicating that view in a way that is confident, calm, and consistent.
  • Partnership: inviting others into the thinking process so they feel respected, not overruled.

From a vertical development perspective, this is a move from either/or thinking (“Either I’m humble or I’m confident”) to both/and capacity (“I can be deeply humble and own my expertise in service of the system”).​

Practical Ways to Own Your Expertise Without Losing Humility

To make this balance real in daily leadership, you can experiment with a few simple practices:

  • Name your stance out loud: After listening to your team, say, “Here’s how I’m currently seeing this, and why,” then invite critique. This signals both clarity and openness.
  • Turn questions into POV plus curiosity: Instead of only asking, “What do you all think?”, add, “My current view is X because Y; what am I missing?”
  • Set decision thresholds: For recurring issues, define in advance what “enough information” looks like so you don’t keep deferring decisions under the banner of humility.
  • Use your expertise as a scaffold, not a script: Offer frameworks, patterns, and risks you see, then ask others to build on them rather than trying to replace them.​

These habits reinforce a form of executive presence that is neither domineering nor diffuse. You remain deeply teachable, but you no longer hide behind questions when what your context needs is a view.

Owning Your Expertise Responsibly

Responsible expertise is always in service of something larger than personal validation. It is anchored in Purpose, expressed through Presence, and experienced through Partnership.​

That means:

  • You use your voice to clarify, not to close down.
  • You share your experience to grow others, not to prove you are right.
  • You remain willing to update your perspective as new information emerges, without apologizing for what you already know.​

If you recognize yourself in this tension—high humility, strong competence, and a nagging sense that you might be under‑using your own expertise—this is often a sign that your next development edge lies in Presence and Partnership, not more technical skill.​

A useful starting question is:
Where am I consistently softening or silencing my expert voice, and what is that costing my team, my organization, and my own integrity as a leader?​

Owning your expertise is not a destination; it is an ongoing practice of integration—bringing who you are, what you know, and how you lead into alignment. When you do, your leadership stops feeling like a performance and starts feeling like a coherent expression of your best judgment in service of something that truly matters.

Redefining Leadership Success: Building a Personal Brand that Matters

Hello, emerging luminaries and seasoned leaders alike! Today, we’re redefining success in leadership by unveiling an essential element often overlooked in the climb to the top: Your Personal Leadership Brand.

You might assume that crafting a leadership brand is an exercise best suited to the early stages of a career. However, the reality can be quite different. As an emerging leader, you’re often engrossed in scaling the heights of your career ladder, with little time to pause and ponder the significance of your leadership image and the perception you’re building among peers and subordinates. And as you ascend to senior executive or C-suite positions, the need for a well-defined, impactful leadership brand becomes even more pressing.

Your Leadership Brand is not just a catchy phrase or a superficial label. It’s an embodiment of your uniqueness as a leader, the distinctive value you provide, and the promise you make to your audience, whether that’s your team, your organization, or the wider industry. It has the power to transform your leadership trajectory and create a profound impact that resonates far beyond your immediate role.

In this post, I’ll walk you through simple yet powerful exercises designed to help you articulate and shape a leadership brand that truly matters – one that reflects your unique leadership journey and amplifies your influence. It’s a brand that not only communicates who you are as a leader but also the leader you aspire to be.

Finding Your Unique Leadership Value

Embarking on the path to personal brand creation is a journey inward. It’s about understanding who you are as a leader and the unique value you bring to the table. Start with these guiding questions:

  • Who are my key stakeholders and what are their expectations?
  • What unique value do I offer as a leader?
  • What kind of impact do I aspire to make with my leadership?
  • What do I want to be known for?
  • What traits should a leader in my current or desired role exhibit?
  • How do I describe my leadership identity?

Also pose these questions to your stakeholders and welcome their feedback. Their perspectives often reveal aspects of your leadership that you might not see yourself. This journey of self-discovery equips you to create your Leadership Brand Statement:

“I want to be known for being __________ so that I can ________.”

Although simple, this statement is transformative. It guides you towards consistent, authentic leadership that resonates with those around you.

Understanding Your Leadership Brand: Internal and External Perspectives

Your leadership brand has two equally important dimensions: an internal and an external one.

The internal brand is nurtured within your organization and is closely tied to your company’s values and the relationships you nurture within it. It’s expressed through your actions, your decision-making style, problem-solving approach, and the way you inspire and support your team.

The external brand is your image in the broader professional world, including clients, potential employers, or industry peers. It’s about maintaining authenticity while tailoring your image to resonate with different audiences. This often involves online interactions, public speaking, thought leadership articles, or networking events.

Navigating the Challenges

As with any personal and professional endeavor, you’ll face challenges in building your leadership brand. Here are some common ones, along with strategies to overcome them:

  • Inconsistency between perceived and desired brand: There might be a gap between how you perceive your brand and how others do. Regular feedback and self-reflection can help bridge this gap.
  • Difficulty maintaining authenticity: Don’t try to construct a brand that doesn’t align with your true self. Authenticity is crucial in leadership; people trust leaders who are genuine.
  • Resistance to change: You might face resistance, especially if your brand challenges the status quo. Stay resilient, uphold your values, and lead by example.

A Continuous Journey: Your Evolving Leadership Brand

Remember, your leadership brand isn’t static; it evolves with you. Recognizing when and how to adapt your brand is a crucial leadership skill. But how do you identify the need for change? How can you implement these changes effectively?

Embrace the challenges this journey will inevitably bring. You might need to reassess your self-image, take risks, or step outside your comfort zone. But remember, every experience, every stumble, and every victory shapes your evolution as a successful leader.

So, dear leaders, it’s time to redefine your leadership success by crafting your leadership brand. Reflect, interact, learn, grow, and most importantly, enjoy the process (Download a one-page Guide to Building a Personal Leadership Brand).

Your brand is a testament to your unique leadership journey, let it shine authentically!

These questions pave the way for deeper discussions and insights. As a leadership coach, I’m here to facilitate these conversations. Let’s dive into these topics together, explore your unique leadership journey, and work on a brand that truly matters. Contact me for a one-on-one discussion where we can unpack your leadership evolution and build a brand that resonates with your continuous growth.

Leave your comments, ask questions!

Signing off now, wishing you transformative experiences on your journey to a resonant leadership brand.

Postpone Your Funeral. Get Your Prize

One of my clients uses the practices in Stephen R. Covey’s book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” as an additional assignment that she defined for herself. I’m happy to support her on this undertaking because I still remember the impact of this book on my life and the lives of many people I’ve been working with throughout the last six years. Needless to say that I deeply respect Stephen Covey and see his work as brilliant, and his humble personality as extremely admirable.

My client (let’s call her Linda) came to one of our sessions with a speech she penned that people “made” at her funeral. If you’re not familiar with Covey’s book, in it he suggested beginning every day with the image of the end of your life, the point at which you examine and evaluate your life experience. The idea is to measure each day in terms of what really matters most to you. It means that you start with a clear understanding of what you want to accomplish; what is your “end in mind”.

Covey promised that if you figure out what you want to be said at your own funeral, “you will find your definition of success”. So, Covey offered an exercise in which you can imagine your own funeral three years from now and what your loved ones, friends, and colleagues will say about you and your role in their lives.

I recall did this exercise when I read the book. But, since then, I’ve never come back to that experience. Interestingly, I’d loved the idea of the exercise…

Until that session with Linda.

Linda is a leader who cares a lot about her team members’ performance, feelings, and wellbeing. She invests a lot of time and energy into the development of her team and each team member as an individual. She gets tremendously upset if any of the team members perform poorly or expresses dissatisfaction or a lack of motivation. She sees these occurrences as her personal failures.

Linda had an insight into a probable reason for considering herself as a failure in spite of all her accomplishments. She noticed that — similar to many people — she measured her success as a leader and a person against other people’s satisfaction or approval of her work and actions. We decided that this hypothesis was worth exploration.

Referring to Covey’s idea of imagining words that could be shared at Linda’s funeral was an attempt to find her own definition of success; Linda, excited to explore this idea of what would be said upon her departure, prepared the speech for her own funeral by our next session.

The speech, it must be said, was beautiful. In it, people said that Linda added value, did a lot for other people, sacrificed her own interests to make others happy and content with their lives and work experiences.She was a pleasure to deal with, and she impacted their lives and inspired them to change. At some point I realized that I had already heard this speech before, though, and that Linda had fallen back into her old habit of evaluating herself by other people’s experiences.

The very exercise intended to provide greater insight into Linda’s perception of herself had, by its very nature, created the same exact narrative: Linda through the eyes of others.

The format of the funeral speech definitely didn’t work for her. I wanted to hear her own voice, but dead people normally have no voice at all. We needed something else… But what? Inauguration? Oscar Ceremony? Nobel Prize? Prize!

That day, we established a prize for the Unstoppable Search for Meaning.

The results of this exercise proved that this format worked better for the purpose of finding a definition of success:

  1. You speak for yourself
  2. You evaluate yourself in accordance with your own value system, against your own standards
  3. Even at that point when you deliver your speech, your “end in mind”, it’s not the end. Nothing is too late. You still have a chance for change.

For our next session, Linda came with her old values, but what was new was how she measured her success.

Linda started: I’m a good leader if:

● I make sure that each member of my team is heard and encouraged to express their opinion in way that works best for the member;

● I guarantee psychological safety and inclusion for everyone on my team;

● I’m honest, and honesty is a desirable and valuable asset for me and my team;

● I invite my people to express disagreement because again it’s safe to do;

● I communicate clearly and have evidence that the members understand me.

“Now, I feel good,” finished Linda.

This is just a part of Linda’s measurement system. And I found it beautiful because Linda sees it this way, because Linda is shining.

What is the lesson learned for me? Don’t rush yourself to your own funeral. You may already be caught up in the perception of others. First, stop to get your prize for Unstoppable Search for Meaning.

As always, I invite you to comment and share your opinion and thoughts, as I appreciate your perspective. Though, with all respect to you, my dear reader, like Linda, I will go back to my values and measure the quality of this writing in a different way; not by the reactions or perceptions of others, but rather, by my level of honesty, writing about things and ideas I am passionate about, and through sharing something that makes my life, and perhaps the lives of others, a little easier and lighter.

Photo by Peony Beatrice on Unsplash

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Is Certainty Always a Good Thing?

My mission is to help people thrive through complexity and uncertainty. I’ve been thinking about this concept lately. The opposite of uncertainty is obvious: certainty.

But, is certainty always a good thing?

There are so many factors that lead to our sense of certainty and, we can all agree, that if nothing else, the last 2 years of a global pandemic have thrown our ability to declare anything as a “safe bet” out of the window.

So here’s the nuance. While I can’t provide certainty, what I can provide is getting you more comfortable with the unknown.

It might surprise you, but I don’t want you to become certain. I want to encourage you to stay open-minded instead. Why? Because we just never know. We never know what is truly good or bad for us. We never know what is just around the corner. We can collect information and examine many sources, but I know, for me, that the moment I am certain, I stop.

I freeze in this certainty.

I could promise you that getting more and more certain would improve your decision making process. After all, a sense of certainty calms you down. You’re certain. You’re relaxed. You’re calm.

But the key words here are “a sense of…”

Certainty can look so real. You can fool your brain and rationalize everything. By trying to create certainty, we establish our assumption as something true. This is why I believe that certainty eventually makes you a prisoner of your own illusions.

This is why I cannot help people get to certainty.

What Kind of Circus Performer Are You?

This is like working in the circus.

Just hear me out on this.

You are juggling with one ball and you believe you are so good, flawless, great, no mistakes. You can do this endlessly (in fact, you’re CERTAIN you can) but it’s so… Well, it is just so boring.

And, you look at the performer who can do this with 10, 20, 30 balls.

Who are you? This is your choice. Whether you want to juggle with 1 ball and enjoy and be proud OR do you want to reach some mastery in accepting many things. Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re not the complacent type. You want to improve and strive and develop.

You want to try for another.

Guess what? The minute you get certain is the minute someone comes and throws a second ball into the mix.

How do we keep ourselves from the “trap” of certainty?

It may seem straightforward, but one of the best ways I have found to avoid falling into the “trap” of certainty is welcoming variety, challenge and potential discomfort (this is all a part of growth). If we keep an arsenal of information, opinions, and learning around ourselves, we will always have something to choose.

[As an aside, this is what makes me desperate and hungry for learning as a coach. I don’t have a signature approach or a “one size fits all” for my clients. I know I can’t come to you with certainty of any one outcome so my only signature is that I will be a good partner and be able to respond to the complexity of your world and your request.]

Of course, when it comes to many decisions you need to make, it is not about throwing caution to the wind. You have prior experience and information. You will want to base your decisions on something you believe is reliable. But also, you will create Plan B and C and D, and you will always have something to experiment and try again.

Ultimately what it comes down to is resilience, but not just any resilience; this is a very well-informed (and earned) resilience.

Keep focusing on your goal and keeping your mind open. You are receiving tons of information all the time, processing it and creating multiple solutions. You are constantly asking yourself questions: what if? What if? What if? You will come back again and again.

So, is certainty a good thing?

If it wasn’t all just an illusion, maybe it would be.

As for me, I’ll take uncertainty with a side of heavy resilience any day.

Photo by Matt Bero on Unsplash

When the Pie is only so Big

I recently asked members within my community to share topics that were on their minds. The challenges of work/life integration came up multiple times, and this encouraged me to research and dig deeper… to look for possible solutions.

The area I want to focus on today is around how we manage ALL of the various roles that we play.

What is the first thing on your mind when you open your eyes in the morning? For one of my clients, it is “I’m late…”

She begins her day with a sense of already being behind, feeling guilty and feeling unable to keep up with the various demands of each of her roles. We often think of our “role” at work, but we wear so many hats throughout our day and navigate – sometimes seemingly seamlessly – back and forth between them all. We don’t usually see ourselves as taking on these different personas. After all, you might think, I’m just ME. But, there is an energy and an effort to these many roles, and it can lead to many of the feelings my client expressed.

The one that bothered her the most: the feeling that she is not paying attention to her family and the people she loves.

You may wonder, if I am an executive coach, why are her feelings about her waking hours and family and – gasp – love, an area of her life I want to address? The reality is, when I coach someone, I am coaching them as a whole person. We cannot face the professional without the personal coming along for the ride.

I decided to try an exercise with her, and I encourage you to try this, too.

Make a list of all the roles that you play. And, be specific.

Your role can be a wife.

A mother.

A mother to a child with a disability.

A daughter.

A daughter to parents that live in two different cities.

A friend.

A friend of Jane who is going through an illness.

An athlete.

A sister.

A professional.

Now, did you make your list?

First, do not judge the list; simply reflect.

● How many roles do you have?

● What roles are dominant (perhaps not due to importance, but maybe burden)

● How do you feel about these roles?

Remember, this list is the whole you… it is YOU who will play these roles.

Now, go deeper in your reflection:

● Why do I play this role? (Compulsion? Interest? Expectation? Requirement?)

● Who made the decision that you will play this role? (Was it you?)

● To what extent do you enjoy this role?

● What is in it for you?

● Ask yourself: How does this role impact me progress on my way to be a better me, future me, progress? How does this role contribute to your development and growth?

● Which roles do you prefer to get rid of and why?

Some roles we are born into. Some roles we choose. Take an opportunity to analyze and reflect.

What do you observe?

Perhaps you have several roles you enjoy and some you don’t. What does this bring up for you?

For the roles that you have chosen, is there anything you have found you can take off of your plate that you hadn’t even considered? For example, perhaps you have several volunteering commitments. You see this as a big part of your life and an important role: that of a giver. You like to be active, but did you take on more and more without pausing?

Time to take action…

Now, to be honest, if I’m lucky enough, you read this article to the end and now you’re reading these words. (hi, by the way!)

This is a win for me and a win for you.

However, reading motivational content creates an illusion of change. To overcome this illusion, and make real progress, take the time to do the exercises above and reflect. One of the biggest gifts you can give to yourself is the gift of your own time, self-reflection, and self-care. Give yourself that gift now.

The people who propel themselves forward are the ones who practice and take action. They are open to failing (and “failing fast”), studying what happened and then getting back up again and doing something different.

Dig deep. Experiment. Reflect. Enjoy the process. What are the roles you play? What does your pie look like?

And, maybe most importantly: What are you ready to change?

Photo with a pie by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash, Photo with a woman with kids by Alexander Dummer on Unsplash

It’s time to talk: The Conversations You Keep Postponing

A leader I coach had been carrying a conversation for three months. A senior member of her team was underperforming, and everyone could see it, but she insisted the moment was never right. Each week, she planned to raise it. Each week, she found a reason not to. When we finally looked at why, she didn’t describe the other person at all. She described herself: “If I say it wrong, I’ll damage the relationship. And if I damage the relationship, what kind of leader does that make me?”

That is the part of difficult conversations we rarely name. We treat them as a problem of skill, a matter of what to say and how to say it. But the thing that keeps a conversation in the drawer for months is almost never a missing script. It’s what the conversation threatens to stir up in us.

I’ve written before about preparing for tough conversations as a matter of strategy and planning, and I still believe in that work. But I’ve come to think the preparation that matters most happens somewhere less obvious. It happens in the negotiation between you and your own nervous system, in the moments before you say a single word.

Why the conversation feels harder than the facts justify

We tell ourselves we avoid these conversations because the outcome is uncertain. That’s true, but it’s only the surface. Underneath, the brain is doing something more interesting.

The neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett describes the brain not as a machine that reacts to the world, but as one that constantly predicts it. Long before you walk into the room, your brain has already run this scenario, drawing on every difficult conversation you’ve ever had, and it has decided what to expect and how to feel. Those predictions shape what you notice and which actions seem available to you, and they do it before conscious thought has a chance to arrive.

This changes what avoidance actually is. When you keep postponing a conversation, it isn’t a character flaw or a failure of nerve. It’s a learned prediction. Your brain has rehearsed the discomfort so many times that staying silent feels like the only safe option. Understanding this replaces shame, a familiar and useless feeling, with information you can use. You’re not weak. You’re running a pattern. And patterns, once seen, can change.

Before the conversation: prepare yourself, not just your points

Most preparation advice stops at content. Clarify your intent, anticipate objections, make a list. All useful, and worth doing. But I’d add a deeper layer underneath it.

Start with your intent, honestly. What is this conversation actually for? Not the official reason, but the real one. When you get clear on your purpose, you often surface a hidden agenda: a need to be right, to be liked, to be proven correct, that would otherwise steer the whole exchange without your permission. Naming it gives the choice back to you.

Get curious about the other person, not strategic about them. It’s tempting to study your counterpart the way you’d study an opponent, cataloging what sets them off and how to manage them. I’d invite the opposite. Approach them as a whole person carrying their own fears and pressures. And ask one question the usual advice skips: what part of their sense of themselves might this conversation threaten? In their book Difficult Conversations, Stone, Patton, and Heen note that every hard exchange carries a hidden identity conversation beneath it. Underneath the topic runs a private question: am I competent, am I good, do I still belong? When you can see the identity at stake for the other person, you can deliver even hard truths without stripping their dignity.

Then turn that same lens on yourself. What does this conversation threaten in you? My client wasn’t afraid of the words. She was afraid of what saying them might mean about her as a leader. The triggers you can name in advance are the ones least likely to ambush you mid-sentence. For me, they are the urge to over-explain, to soften everything into mush, to go cold and clipped.

Prepare your body, not just your talking points. This is the step I’d most want to add to anything I’ve written before. Before the conversation, notice what happens when you imagine it. A tightening in the chest. Heat in the neck. The pull to just get it over with. That sensation is not a verdict. It’s information. Your nervous system is doing its job, scanning for risk. The practice is to read the signal rather than obey it. A slower exhale, your feet on the floor, a moment to settle. These aren’t soft add-ons. They tell your brain it’s safe enough to bring your full intelligence into the room.

From there, the practical scaffolding still holds. Make a short list of what you must cover, because stress shrinks memory. Picture the best case to stay motivated, and the worst case to size up the real risk. You may find there is far less to fear than you assumed, or that this isn’t the moment after all. And rehearse, out loud, with someone you trust, until your intent and your words finally point in the same direction.

During the conversation: presence over performance

Once you’re in it, the goal isn’t to execute your plan flawlessly. It’s to stay present enough to respond to what’s actually happening in front of you.

The signal you noticed in preparation will return, right on schedule. The chest tightens. The urge to interrupt arrives. Recognition won’t switch it off, but it buys you a fraction of a second between feeling and acting, and that fraction is enough. If you need more, take it. There is nothing weak about saying, “Let me sit with that for a moment.” It models exactly what you’re asking of the other person.

From there, the older wisdom is still the best wisdom. As Stephen Covey wrote, seek first to understand, then to be understood. Listen to understand, not to reply, and paraphrase what you heard in their words so they know they’ve landed. Don’t assume. Ask. Assumption is the fastest way to kill a conversation. Stay curious rather than right. As Brené Brown puts it in Dare to Lead, leaders need “the grounded confidence to stay tethered to their values, respond rather than react emotionally, and operate from self-awareness, not self-protection.” That last phrase is the whole game. Most conversations go sideways the moment we slip from connection into self-protection. If you get stuck, brainstorm together toward something that works for both of you. Breathe. And yes, smile. People tend to reflect what we bring.

When it doesn’t go as planned

You can prepare completely and still not control the outcome. Something will go differently than you hoped.

Don’t take a rejection or a sharp word personally. As one of my teachers told me: it’s not about you. And don’t burn the bridge, even when everything seems greased for it. Give everyone room to cool down and think again. The relationship almost always matters more than winning this round, and there is almost always a next conversation.

After the conversation: it ends, but you don’t

This is the part almost no one prepares for. The conversation finishes, and your nervous system keeps going. Did I say too much? Did they really hear me? The replay begins.

A few things help. Before you part, briefly confirm what you actually decided or agreed. Even one sentence prevents a week of mismatched memories. Acknowledge that the conversation happened. A short note afterward (“thank you for being open with me in that”) is itself an act of repair. Then process it deliberately rather than letting it loop. Write down what was said, what you felt, and what comes next. Watch for the line between reflection and rumination by asking whether you are learning something here or just replaying the same moment. If there’s a lesson, take it and let the rest go. A brief check-in a day or two later turns a single hard conversation into the start of real trust.

Why this is the work

It would be easy to file all of this under soft skills. It isn’t. In a 2026 essay on courageous conversations, McKinsey’s authors report that 75 percent of employees say their boss is the most stressful part of their workday, and only a quarter feel inspired by their leadership culture. Their conclusion is blunt: for leaders, these conversations “are not side work; they are the work.” One line in particular has stayed with me. Clarity is a kindness, and ambiguity is a burden. We avoid hard conversations to spare people discomfort. More often, we hand them the heavier burden of not knowing where they stand.

This is also where my own framework lives. Preparing your inner state is Presence. Holding the other person’s dignity is Partnership. Getting honest about your real intent is Purpose. Seeing the identity and the system beneath the words is Perspective. A difficult conversation is one of the few places all four are tested at once.

A friend once told me it sounded like the preparation takes longer than the conversation itself. Yes, it does. Richard Branson spent nearly seventeen years building Virgin Galactic to reach space. The flight itself lasted ninety minutes. The conversations that change things are the same. The few minutes of honest talk rest on everything you did to become someone who could stay grounded inside them.

So don’t wait for “someday.” Someday is a prediction too, and not a kind one. Carpe diem.

If this resonated, subscribe to my monthly newsletter. Tell me what you’re drawn to, whether that’s coaching, leadership, or the research I’m following, and I’ll send you what fits.

Warmly, Maria Wade

Further reading

Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton & Sheila Heen, Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most (1999)

Brené Brown, Dare to Lead (2018) Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989)

Kurt Strovink, Meagan Hill, Mike Carson & Eric Sherman, “Courageous Conversations: How to Lead with Heart”, McKinsey (2026)

Mark Goulston, Talking to Crazy (2018);

Nicole Unice, The Miracle Moment (2021)