You’ve probably asked this question at least once in your career.

A project goes sideways. A client walks. A decision you made turns out to have a gap no one flagged.

Then you find out people saw it coming.

Someone noticed the risk. Someone had doubts about the timeline. Someone knew the client was unhappy.

So you ask, “Why didn’t anyone say something?”

Here is the uncomfortable answer:

Someone probably did. Once. And they learned not to do it again.

Before We Go Further

This week, I’ve been spending time with people on the other side of that moment.

I’m hosting a free challenge called Own the Moment inside my Be That Girl Network. It’s for women who know what they want to say at work but hesitate because of how it went the last time they said it.

Tomorrow, Thursday, October 29, at 1:00 PM Central (2:00 PM Eastern), I’m going LIVE to work through real situations those women are facing right now.

Ladies, you’re welcome to join even if you haven’t done any of the challenge activities.

Leaders, if there’s a woman on your team you’d like to hear more from, send this to her. It might be the most useful thing you do after reading this.

Join Me LIVE Tomorrow

Now, back to that question.

Silence Is Usually Learned

Most silence on a team isn’t a personality trait. It’s a lesson.

Picture a planning meeting. The plan is mostly set, and the energy in the room is good.

Someone on your team says, “I’m worried we’re underestimating how long the integration will take.”

You don’t mean anything by it, but you sigh. Or glance at the clock. Or say, “Let’s not get into the weeds right now. Take it offline.”

The meeting moves on.

To you, that was ten seconds. To her, it was information.

She learned that raising a risk slows things down, and slowing things down isn’t welcome here. Everyone else in the room learned it too.

Three months later, the integration is six weeks late, and you’re asking why nobody said anything.

You Don’t See What Silence Costs You

That is what makes this so expensive.

When someone pushes back, you see it. When someone holds back, you see nothing at all.

You don’t see the concern that never got raised. The better idea that stayed in someone’s notebook. The problem that got discussed in the parking lot instead of the conference room.

You only see the result, usually after it’s too late to fix cheaply.

And the people most likely to go quiet are often the ones paying the closest attention. They read the room carefully because they’ve learned they have to.

Four Ways to Get People Talking Again

1. Watch your first reaction.

Your team decides whether it’s safe to speak up from your face before they hear your words.

The sigh. The “we’ve already decided.” Even a quick “good point, moving on.” Each one sends a message.

Notice what you do in the first three seconds after someone disagrees with you.

2. Thank the concern, not just the idea.

Most leaders are good at thanking people for ideas they like. Fewer thank people for raising problems.

“I’m glad you raised that. I’d rather hear it now than three months from now.”

That one sentence tells the whole room that bad news is welcome.

3. Ask for the risk before you decide.

Don’t wait for someone to volunteer an objection. Make it part of how you make decisions.

“What would make this fail?” “Who sees this differently?”

When you ask for disagreement directly, no one has to take the risk of offering it on their own.

4. Close the loop.

When someone raises a concern, tell them what happened with it, even if the answer is, “We considered it, and here’s why we’re moving ahead anyway.”

People stop speaking up when their input seems to disappear. Closing the loop shows them it didn’t.

Your Leadership Challenge This Week

Before your next team meeting, write down your answers to these three questions:

• When was the last time someone on my team disagreed with me in a meeting?

• How did I respond in the moment?

• Who used to speak up more than they do now?

Then, in that meeting, ask one direct question that invites disagreement, like “What are we missing?” or “What would make this fail?”

When someone answers, thank them before you respond to what they said.

Do this before you ever have to ask why nobody said anything. Trust comes back the same way it left: one meeting at a time.

If You’re the One Who Stopped Speaking Up

This last part is for the women reading this.

If you recognized yourself here, you’re not imagining it. Holding back after a bad reaction made sense at the time.

But one leader’s sigh in one meeting years ago doesn’t get to decide what you say in every room after that.

That’s what we’re talking about tomorrow. Bring a situation you’re facing right now, or just come and listen.

Save My Spot for Tomorrow

Leaders, when was the last time someone on your team told you something you didn’t want to hear, and how did you respond? Tell me in the comments.

Your Ally,

Stephanie

What does a Formula 1 pit crew have in common with an aviation team?

Both operate under pressure. Both depend on people with different skills working together. And both know that when something goes wrong, there is no time to figure out who is responsible for what.

Now, what do those teams have in common with a sales team at a paper company?

A whole lot more than you might think.

Because whether you are changing tires in a Formula 1 race, preparing to land an aircraft, or trying to close a deal before the end of the quarter, you are dealing with the same fundamental challenge:

How do you get people to perform at their best when the pressure is on?

And leaders, that question is not answered by hiring more talented people.

It starts with understanding what pressure does to the brain.

Your talent does not disappear under pressure, but your access to it can.

I recently sat down with Dr. James Hewitt, a human performance scientist who has worked with Formula 1 teams and Fortune 500 organizations, for an episode of Not Like Me.

One of the most important ideas we discussed was this: pressure can interfere with our ability to access the skills and knowledge we already possess.

Think about that.

You have probably seen a talented employee freeze during a presentation. A normally decisive manager second-guess a decision. Or a team that works beautifully on an ordinary Tuesday suddenly struggle when a major deadline approaches.

Did those people suddenly become less capable?

Of course not.

But under pressure, the brain has more demands competing for its attention. Working memory can become harder to use effectively. That affects how we process information, make decisions, and respond to the people around us.

So when a team struggles under pressure, the question should not automatically be, “Do I have the right people?”

Sometimes the better question is,

“Have I created the right conditions for these people to succeed?”

That is a leadership question.

And it requires a leadership response.

What Formula 1 understands about teamwork

One of my favorite parts of this conversation was James’s discussion of Formula 1 pit crews.

We tend to watch those pit stops and focus on speed.

And yes, the speed is extraordinary.

But James made an important distinction. The objective is not simply to achieve one record-breaking pit stop. It is to perform consistently, race after race.

That requires more than individual talent.

Every person must know their role. They must understand how their work connects to everyone else’s. And they must be able to anticipate what comes next.

They practice until coordination becomes dependable.

Now think about your own team.

Does everyone understand what success looks like?

Do people know who is responsible for each part of the work?

Can they anticipate what their colleagues need, or are they constantly waiting for clarification?

Because here is what I know.

A team full of talented individuals is not automatically a high-performing team.

If people are unclear about their roles, do not trust one another, or have never practiced working through pressure together, individual talent can only take them so far.

And that brings us to aviation.

In aviation, you do not wait for an emergency to start preparing.

I spent years in aviation leadership, so this part of the conversation was especially meaningful to me.

In aviation, preparation is not something you do when you have extra time.

It is part of the job.

Pilots train repeatedly. Crews use checklists and briefings. People rehearse how to respond to situations they hope never happen.

Why?

Because when the unexpected occurs, you do not want your team having its first conversation about what to do.

You want people who have practiced their responsibilities, understand how to communicate, and know how to work together.

James and I talked about the importance of a simple performance cycle:

Plan. Brief. Execute. Debrief.

Notice that last word.

Debrief.

How many teams finish a major project, celebrate or complain about the result, and immediately move on to the next assignment?

No real discussion about what worked.

No examination of what broke down.

No clear decision about what should change.

Then three months later, the same problems show up again.

Leaders, experience alone does not guarantee improvement.

We have to learn from the experience.

And that learning needs to happen before the next high-pressure moment.

Your team needs capacity, not just another assignment

James shared a useful way to think about high performance through three elements:

Capacity. Control. Coordination.

Capacity is having the physical, mental, and emotional resources to perform.

Control is being able to direct your attention and responses.

Coordination is the ability to work effectively with other people.

Now, I want you to think about your calendar.

And then think about your team’s calendar.

How many meetings are taking place because a leader wants an update, when a short written message would do?

How many people leave those meetings with another assignment but no uninterrupted time to complete it?

We talked about this in the episode because leaders sometimes create the very conditions that make performance harder.

We demand focus while interrupting people.

We expect thoughtful decisions while filling every available hour.

We ask for exceptional results while treating recovery like a luxury.

And then we wonder why everyone is exhausted.

James challenged that thinking by explaining the importance of recovery, including something as simple as five deliberate minutes away from your phone and your work.

That is not wasted time.

It is an opportunity to step away from constant demands and give your mind room to recover.

You cannot keep taking capacity from your team and expect performance to remain unchanged.

The leadership lesson: Prepare your people before the pressure arrives

Here is where I want to bring this back to you.

You may not lead a Formula 1 pit crew.

You may never be responsible for landing an aircraft.

Maybe you lead a sales team at a paper company. Maybe you manage a department with twelve people and a budget that keeps getting tighter.

The principles still apply.

You have people with different strengths, experiences, and ways of thinking. You have deadlines. You have unexpected problems. And you have moments when everyone is looking to you for direction.

So what are you doing before those moments arrive?

Are you creating clarity?

Are you helping people understand one another’s roles?

Are you giving them opportunities to practice, communicate honestly, and learn from mistakes?

Are you protecting enough capacity for them to do their best work?

Or are you relying on talented people to figure it out when things get difficult?

Because that is not a performance strategy.

That is a gamble.

High performance is not just about what your people can do. It is about whether your leadership helps them do it when it matters most.

For more on the neuroscience behind this, including James’s insights from Formula 1 and our conversation about aviation, watch my latest episode of Not Like Me.

Watch my conversation with Dr. James Hewitt

Want to put these leadership lessons into practice?

Understanding the neuroscience of high performance is one thing. Knowing how to lead people with different strengths, perspectives, and needs is another.

Grab this Free E.A.R.N. Leadership Field Guide

It gives you four practical leadership moves to help you better support your people and strengthen how your team works together.

Because high performance starts with intentional leadership.

Now ladies, this is just for you. I’ve got something else I want to invite you to.

Starting Monday, October 26, I’m hosting a free four-day challenge called Own the Moment.

During our last Be That Girl series, I heard from women who were leading teams, making important decisions, and carrying a lot of responsibility. But some of those same women shared how one difficult experience had changed the way they spoke up or advocated for themselves.

One woman told us she’d spent 13 years as a CFO and still felt she had to hold back parts of her personality and experience to preserve a professional relationship.

Those are the situations I want us to work through.

We’ll look at how past experiences affect our decisions, practice taking action in real situations, and get together LIVE on Thursday so I can help you work through some of the challenges you’re facing.

It’s free, and the daily activities only take a few minutes.

JOIN THE OWN THE MOMENT CHALLENGE

I’d love to have you with us!

Stephanie Chung
Your Ally in Leadership

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I’ve been on the road quite a bit lately.

Over the last month, I spoke at a corporate event for AT&T, the Prosper Forum in California, and John Maxwell’s Live2Lead in Atlanta.

It’s been tiring, exha…

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Not everyone on your team wants to climb the corporate ladder. And guess what? That does not mean they lack ambition.

I know. For some of you, that might be hard to hear.

Especially if you are the kind of leader who has spent your entire career working toward the next opportunity, the next promotion, the next level of success.

But here is someth…

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Imagine getting a call from a department head and she says she needs you to hear something. Then she hits play…

You hear a recording of your number one sales director on a call with one of her IT people. He is screaming. He is cussing at her. He is threatening her job, because she had a queue of tickets ahead of his and could not fix his laptop that second.

In my recent episode of Not Like Me, I share how this happened to me. How I had to listen to someone who reported to me chewing out someone in another department. I share in the episode about the hard conversation that followed…and the hard conversations that didn’t happen soon enough.

In Our Most Recent Episode of Not Like Me...

What I Had Been Telling Myself

He was my top producer. Every quarter, no drama about the number, he just delivered.

I had been having conversations with him for months. “You need to do better.” “This is not how we treat people.” He would nod, adjust for a couple of weeks, then some pressure would hit and he would go right back to running people over to get what he wanted.

I called those conversations addressing the issue. What they actually were was me doing the bare minimum to address the issue, while avoiding the conversation that would have ended it.

Because the real conversation had consequences attached. Thirty days to change. Written documentation. A clear line and what happens when he crossed it. That version might cost me my best number.

So I kept doing the soft version, and I told myself I was managing him.

The Cost Never Lands Where You Think

Here is what I could not get past after hearing that recording.

The woman in IT had done nothing wrong. She had a job, a queue, and a person losing his mind at her about a laptop. She absorbed all of it. Then she presumably went home and carried it around for a while, the way people do.

She was in that call because of a decision I made months earlier, in a much quieter room, with much lower stakes.

That is the thing about a delayed conversation. You think you are the one absorbing the discomfort by putting it off. The actual bill goes to whoever is standing in that person’s path while you wait. Your quietest team member. The new hire who does not know this is not normal. The peer who stopped raising issues because nothing changed the last three times.

I called him into my office, played the recording for him, and wrote him up that day. Eventually I had to let him go. My number one.

Every bit of that was fixable six months earlier, in a conversation that would have taken forty minutes and made me uncomfortable for one afternoon.

The Excuse Has Creative Vocabulary

Leaders rarely say “I am avoiding this.”

We say we are giving it some time. We say we want to see how it plays out. We say we do not want to make a big thing out of it. We say the timing is bad, quarter close, big client, new hire ramping.

Sometimes those are genuinely good calls. And sometimes they are fear of a harder conversation.

Here is the question that sorts it, and you have to answer it honestly or it does not work: am I waiting because waiting serves the situation, or because waiting serves me?

If the answer is the second one, you already know what to do with it.

Why You Can’t Have the Conversation While You’re at an 8

There is a reason we postpone these, and it has less to do with courage than with what happens to us in the room.

I know this one personally. Executive meeting, entire leadership team present, and I was the only woman there. The CEO said something about women that was beneath him and beneath the room. I felt it land. And instead of pausing, I clapped back. He clapped back. Within about ninety seconds the two of us were going at each other like nobody else was in the building.

Everyone else sat there watching the two most senior people in the room have a playground fight.

To his credit, he apologized afterward, to me and to every person in that room. I apologized too, because I met his energy instead of managing it, and that was mine to own.

Here is what I would do differently now. I felt myself climbing. I was at a 3, then a 4, and I know exactly what a 4 feels like in my body. Instead of waiting until I hit an 8 and then opening my mouth, I would stop at the 4. Not to swallow it. To ask a question instead of firing a comment, which does two things at once: it settles my nervous system and it settles the room.

You cannot lead a hard conversation from an 8. By then you are just defending yourself in a nicer conference room.

Running This Through ALLY

ALLY is Ask, Listen, Learn, You Take Action. Here is what it looks like pointed at the conversation you have been carrying around.

Ask. Who is currently paying for the conversation I have not had yet? Name the actual person, not the situation.

Listen. When I have raised this before, what did I actually hear back, and did anything change after? If the answer is no, I have been having the wrong conversation.

Learn. What is my number, the point where I stop thinking clearly? Learn what a 4 feels like in your body, because that is the only place you still have a choice.

You Take Action. Put it on the calendar today. Not next week, when things calm down. Things will not calm down.

Three Things to Do This Week

1. Have the one you have been avoiding. You thought of it in the first paragraph of this article. Today, not Friday. Before you walk in, take three slow breaths and make the exhale longer than the inhale, because your nervous system listens to that more than it listens to your pep talk.
   

2. Catch yourself at a 4. One meeting this week, watch for the climb. When you feel it, stop and ask a question instead of making a statement. You will settle yourself and the room at the same time.
   

3. Ask your team what they are avoiding with you. One on one, not as a group, because nobody says the true thing in a group. “Is there something you have been wanting to bring up with me that you have not?” Then be quiet long enough for them to actually answer.

The Bottom Line

One of my favorite lines is from Brian Tracy:

“It is not important what you hope, wish, or intend. It is only important what you do.”

You already know which conversation this article was about. You knew by the second paragraph. The only question left is whether somebody else keeps paying for it while you decide you are not quite ready.

Go have it. Today.

Then come tell me how it went. I want to hear it.

Listen to the full episode here →

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If you have not watched it, the show is amazing. It has a great cast, strong women, complicated leadership dynamics, and enough aviation to keep me very happy.

But somewhere between all the action, I realized why I love this show so much.

Every one of these women represents That Girl, each in her own way.

Now, if you are new here, let me explain what I mean by Be That Girl.

Be That Girl is for ambitious women who are ready to stop second-guessing what they already know and start fully using their voice, expertise, and authority. It is about showing up as yourself, speaking when you have something to say, taking action when the moment calls for it, and building the relationships you need as you move into bigger rooms and bigger roles.

It is not about becoming a certain type of woman.

And that is exactly what I see when I watch Lioness.

They are not the same type of woman. They do not lead the same way. They do not have the same strengths. And they certainly do not always agree.

But each one owns who she is and what she brings to the table.

That is what caught my attention.

Because Be That Girl has never been about becoming one particular kind of woman. It is about trusting yourself enough to use your voice, own your expertise, stand in your authority, and take action when the moment calls for it.

And the women of Lioness give us some pretty great examples.

Cruz: That Girl Who Knows What She Knows

Cruz is a doer.

There is a scene where a military guy starts explaining how to use a weapon, and she quickly makes it clear that she already knows “how to point and shoot.”

No long explanation. No list of qualifications. No need to prove herself.

She knows what she knows, and she gets the job done.

How many times have you known the answer in a meeting but hesitated before saying it? Maybe you felt like you needed to let your superior explain something to you instead of interrupting with your experience on that topic.

One of the things we talk about inside my new Be That Girl community is learning to own what you bring into the room.

You do not need to know everything. None of us does.

But you do need to stop treating the things you do know as though they require someone else’s permission to own.

Joe: That Girl Who Owns Her Authority

Joe is clear about who she is and the authority she carries.

She creates her own team. She makes difficult decisions. She stands up for herself when she is challenged, and she does not make herself smaller simply because someone else might be uncomfortable with her power.

And if that’s not enough, there is something else I love about Joe.

She tells the truth.

She does not confuse leadership with making everyone feel good all the time.

Seems super simple but to me, that’s worth pointing out because I hear accomplished women ask versions of the same questions constantly:

Will they think I am difficult?
Am I coming across too strong?
What if they do not like what I have to say?

I want us asking a different question: What does this moment need from me?

Sometimes the moment needs you to listen. Sometimes it needs you to ask another question. And sometimes it needs you to say the thing everyone else in the room is dancing around.

That is a Be That Girl moment that Joe owns often in the show.

Kaitlyn: That Girl Who Does Not Apologize for Her Power

Then there is Kaitlyn.

There is a scene where she is sitting in a room full of male leaders who are challenging her. The conversation gets heated, but she does not retreat, overexplain herself, or try to make her authority more palatable.

She knows exactly who she is in that room.

And I LOVE that.

Because how much energy do we sometimes spend as women trying to make our competence easier for other people to swallow?

You can be confident without being arrogant. You can be direct without being disrespectful. You can have power without pretending that you do not.

Being That Girl does not require you to become somebody else. It requires you to stop apologizing for the woman you already are.

The Team: That Girl Who Can Lead and Be Led

One of the other things I love about Lioness is that these women are not operating in some female-only universe.

They work alongside strong men. They lead strong men. They rely on strong men.

And the secure men on the team respect their leadership.

Nobody has to become less powerful so somebody else can be powerful.

That is an important leadership lesson.

The team is full of people with different backgrounds, experiences, personalities, strengths, and frequencies. Their success depends on knowing how to use those differences rather than fighting them.

The higher you move in leadership, the less your success is about how well you perform by yourself. It becomes about how well you can lead the people in front of you.

That is another part of Be That Girl.

Own your authority, but also become the kind of leader who can bring out the best in people who are nothing like you.

Be That Girl Who Has Other Women in Her Corner

Joe and Kaitlyn are two incredibly strong women operating in an incredibly difficult environment.

They do not need to be identical to understand one another.

They understand the stakes. They understand the pressure. And they understand what the other woman is navigating.

But we do not talk enough about this question:

Who is in your corner while you are doing all of it?

There is an interesting parallel with actual lionesses. They hunt cooperatively, coordinating and using the strengths of the group.

The leadership lesson here is simple: strong women do not have to navigate everything by themselves.

They need people they trust. Women who will tell them the truth, understand the rooms they are navigating, challenge them when they are playing small, and remind them what they are capable of when they temporarily forget.

And that is why I want Be That Girl to become a movement.

Because when I look at the women of Lioness, I see different versions of what it means to Be That Girl.

Cruz is That Girl.

Joe is That Girl.

Kaitlyn is That Girl.

I am That Girl.

And YOU are That Girl.

We are completely different women. We have different strengths, different experiences, and different ways of showing up.

That is the point.

There is no single way to Be That Girl.

The common thread in the women I created Be That Girl for is that they tend to have their stuff together. They are capable. They are accomplished. They are the women other people turn to when something needs to get done.

But when you consistently show up that way, something interesting happens.

People start assuming you are fine.

From the outside, it looks like you have it all together, so people assume you do not need support, encouragement, advice, or someone checking in on you.

But being capable does not mean you should have to carry everything by yourself.

Everyone needs a room where they know someone is in their corner. A room where you can say, “Here is what I am dealing with,” without having to explain the whole backstory. A room where someone will tell you the truth, challenge you when you need it, celebrate the wins with you, and remind you of what you already know when you start second-guessing yourself.

That is the kind of room I created the Be That Girl Collective to be.

It is for women who are already doing big things and are ready for what is next. It is a place to have the conversations that come with getting to the next level: using your voice when the stakes are high, owning your authority, navigating difficult people and situations, making intentional career moves, and building relationships with women who understand what you are navigating.

Because you do not need another room telling you how impressive you are.

You need a room where you can be honest about what it takes to keep becoming the woman you know you can be.

So if you saw a little of yourself in Cruz, Joe, Kaitlyn, or anywhere else in this article, I want you to remember something:

You do not need to become louder, tougher, or more like somebody else to Be That Girl.

You already have the expertise. You already have the perspective. You already have the authority. You already have the voice.

The question is whether you are fully using them.

And you do not have to figure that out alone.

Come join us inside the Be That Girl Collective →

Bring your ambition. Bring the thing you are trying to figure out. Bring the version of you who has it together and the version who sometimes does not.

There is room for both.

You are already That Girl. Now come find the women who will be in your corner while you become what is next.

The meeting gets tense.

Someone says something that hits you the wrong way.

Your body reacts before you have fully processed what they said.

And suddenly you are not deciding how you want to respond. You are reacting.

That is where leadership gets interesting.

Because leadership is easy when everybody agrees with you.

What happens when they do not?

In Our Most Recent Episode of Not Like Me...

I sat down with Annie Lalla, a philosopher and conflict resolution expert known for her work around “The Art of Fighting.”

And we talked about something I do not think leaders spend enough time thinking about:

What happens to you when conflict enters the room?

Not just what you say.

Not just how the other person responds.

What happens in you.

Because sometimes the intensity of our reaction has very little to do with the conversation in front of us.

And if you do not recognize what is happening, that reaction can start leading the conversation for you.

Conflict Is Information

We tend to treat conflict as evidence that something has gone wrong.

But disagreement can tell you a lot.

It can show you where expectations are unclear.
It can expose something nobody has been willing to say.
It can reveal where trust is strong and where it is not.

And it can teach you something about yourself.

Because your job as a leader is not to eliminate every uncomfortable reaction.

It is to recognize what is happening early enough that you can choose what you do next.

The question is not:

“How do I eliminate conflict?”

A better question is:

“How do I become the kind of leader who can handle disagreement without making the room less safe?”

Put A.L.L.Y. to Work This Week

Knowing what happens when you get triggered is useful.

Knowing what to do with that information is leadership.

So this week, think about one conversation you know you need to have.

Not five. Just one.

Then run it through A.L.L.Y.: Ask, Listen, Learn, You taking action.

Ask. What is actually happening here?

Before you respond, get curious.

What are you reacting to? What assumptions are you making? What might you be missing?

And ask yourself one more question:

Am I responding to what is happening right now, or to what this situation is bringing up in me?

Listen. Pay attention to more than their words.

Listen to the other person, but pay attention to yourself too.

What happens when the tension rises?

Maybe you start interrupting. Maybe you shut down. Maybe you stop listening and start preparing your defense.

Learn to catch it early.

Because once your only goal is to win the argument, you are probably not doing much listening.

Learn. Take the accusation out without taking the truth out.

Before you say the thing you really want to say, look at it.

Is there blame in it? Judgment? An assumption about the other person’s intentions?

Strip that away.

You can be direct without being demeaning.

You can hold someone accountable without making them smaller.

The goal is not to make the conversation easier.

The goal is to make the truth easier to hear.

You taking action. Have the conversation.

This is the part we cannot skip.

Stop waiting for the perfect moment.

Have the conversation.

Say what needs to be said. Listen to what needs to be heard. And remember that disagreement does not have to damage the relationship.

Before you walk into that conversation, ask yourself:

What do I need to manage in myself so I can lead this conversation well?

You cannot regulate the entire room.

But you can start with you.

And if you want to go deeper, Annie and I get into what happens when conflict triggers something bigger than the conversation in front of you, and what you can do about it.

Listen to the full conversation with Annie Lalla here →

Want to keep putting this into practice?

Handling conflict well is one part of becoming a stronger leader. The Modern Leader’s Toolkit gives you five practical disciplines to help you understand how your leadership lands, communicate with more intention, build trust, and become someone people can count on.

Download the free Modern Leader’s Toolkit and start putting the five disciplines to work →

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The colleague next to me starts tugging on my shirt. Not subtly. He’s mouthing at me: Sit down. Just agree and sit down.

I didn’t agree. So I didn’t sit down.

Here’s what I said instead, and it’s the most useful sentence I’ve ever learned in corporate:

I hear you. I understand your point. I just don’t agree with it, and here’s why.

That CEO turned out to be one of my favorite leaders I’ve ever worked for, precisely because he could take it. Everyone else in that room thought I was about to get fired, or get all of them fired. What he actually wanted was one person in the room who wouldn’t just smile and nod him toward a decision he hadn’t pressure-tested yet.

In Our Most Recent Episode of Not Like Me…

Listen to the full conversation here →

Having a Voice Is Not the Same as Owning It

Having a voice means people ask your opinion and you give it. You’re in the meeting, someone turns to you, you say what you think. Agreeable. Reasonable. Safe.

Owning your voice means you say the thing without being asked. Even when it cuts against where the room is heading. Even when nodding along would get everyone to lunch faster.

Most professionals spend an entire career having a voice but never owning it. They get invited into rooms specifically because they’re safe, which is not the compliment it sounds like. If a leader already knows what you’re going to say before they ask, your presence in that room is decoration.

A 2026 Radical Candor survey found 6 in 10 employees are hesitant to speak up at work at all. That’s most of the room, most of the time, sitting on something they won’t say.

Why That Half Second Feels So Expensive

The hesitation before you push back isn’t a character flaw. It’s your brain running the software it came with.

Your amygdala, the built-in alarm system, fires on criticism, social rejection, and the possibility of being judged the same way it fires on physical danger. It comes down to this: your amygdala cannot tell the difference between a predator and your VP pushing back on something you just said. It narrows your focus, pulls resources away from the part of your brain doing the clear thinking, and votes for quiet. Most people go with the vote.

Underneath that, the reasons hold steady. The Institute for Public Relations has studied workplace silence for years, and it keeps landing on the same two: fear of being labeled negatively, and a belief that speaking up won’t change anything anyway.

Read those again, because they’re both predictions. Neither one is a fact. You are making a forecast about what would happen if you said the true thing, and then treating your own forecast as a reason not to test it.

The Part Nobody Tells You About Being Agreeable

Every time you soften a real disagreement into a polite maybe, you’re not being diplomatic. You’re teaching your own brain that your read on the situation wasn’t worth the risk of saying it out loud.

Do that enough times and you don’t just lose the room. You start to believe the forecast.

Meanwhile, the leaders worth working for are looking for the opposite. When a CEO asks his direct reports where the flaw is, agreement is worth nothing to him. He can get agreement from a wall. What he needs is the one person willing to say here’s where this breaks, here’s what I’d protect against, and here’s what I’d do instead.

How You Actually Own It

Owning your voice is not being the loudest thing in the room, and it is definitely not disagreeing as a personality. Two things make it work.

First, ask the question everyone is already thinking, then say why you asked it. You’ll know the question because the room goes quiet and people start glancing at each other. Ask it, then immediately show your reasoning. Questions without reasoning just make you the person who slows meetings down, and everyone has met that person. Reasoning is what turns a challenge into a contribution.

Second, do the work before you’re in the room. If you know you’re going to be the one seeing it differently, go talk to the people most likely to derail it, before the meeting. Not to soften your position but to make sure nobody hears it for the first time with an audience watching. You’re not lobbying. You’re removing the surprise, because surprise is what makes people defensive and dig in.

Then if it still goes sideways in the room, stand there and hold your position. Ten toes down. After all, that’s the job.

Three Moves This Week

See it. Catch yourself in the act once. One meeting this week, notice the moment you edit something down before it leaves your mouth. Don’t fix it yet. Just count how many times it happens, because most people don’t realize they are doing it.

Own it. Say one true thing you would normally soften. Use the sentence: I hear you, I understand your point, I don’t agree, and here’s why. That last clause is not optional. That’s the part that makes it credible instead of combative.

Use it. Before your next high-stakes meeting, have one two-minute conversation with the person most likely to push back. Tell them what you’re bringing and ask what they think. Then walk in and say it anyway.

The Bottom Line

You were not hired to be the version of yourself that keeps meetings comfortable. If you’re editing who you are every day to survive the room you’re in, that is worth sitting with, and so is the question of whether the room is actually the problem or whether you’ve just never tested it.

And if you lead people, the harder question is whether anyone on your team is doing that math about you right now.

I’d rather be the person who says the inconvenient thing and gets called difficult than the person nobody remembers because they never said anything at all. I dare you to try it once this week.

Then come tell me what happened. I want to hear it.

Listen to the full episode here →

Speaking of owning your voice…

I’d like to see more women out there owning their voice. So I’m putting together a cohort of women to be a part of a free live call series, and it’s called Be That Girl. Three live hours with me, September 14, 16, and 18. Together, we’re going to see It, own It, use It. This is for any woman who knows she’s carrying more authority than she’s currently using, whether she’s an individual contributor, a manager, a director, or running the whole thing.

This is not a webinar. This is a 1-week cohort, with 3 scheduled calls blocked for real conversation.

Register free here →

The rest of this article is for paid subscribers, including the exact sentence structure that lets you disagree with someone senior without it costing you, and what to do when you get pushback anyway.

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I speak at a lot of corporate events. Businesses bring me in to talk to their teams, shift culture, rally-the-troops, etc. The part that stays with me is never the stage.

At an event a few weeks back, I noticed a woman standing off to the side.

Not in the line, not holding a book to sign. She stood off to the side and let the last few people dr…

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You are at the table. SVPs on one side, VPs on the other. A good idea crosses your mind, and for half a second you hesitate before deciding whether to say it out loud.

That hesitation is not a confidence problem. It is your amygdala doing its job, treating an uncertain room the same way it treats a threat. Your brain does not know the difference between physical danger and the risk of being wrong in front of people who outrank you.

My guest this week, Ebony Russ, twenty years deep in HR, told me she still feels this in rooms where she is the only woman at the table. She is not the exception.

About half of professionals have felt this at some point. Higher for women. Higher still for anyone early in their career. If it is still happening to her, my bet is it is happening to your best people too. Most of them are just staying quiet about it.

In Our Most Recent Episode of Not Like Me...

The Cost Nobody Puts on a P&L

Imposter syndrome is not just a personal struggle. It is a line item leadership never sees, because it hides inside decisions that never get made.

When people do not believe they belong in the room, they stop applying for the stretch role.

Nearly half of people who experience imposter syndrome avoid pursuing promotions because of it.

Zoom out, and Gallup puts the global cost of disengagement at 8.8 trillion dollars a year in lost productivity.

Somewhere, a CFO is combing through the budget for waste and walking right past the actual problem: Jess in product talked herself out of raising her hand again. That number is not people quitting loudly. It is people staying quiet.

Ebony put it plainly: this is not just a “you” problem. It is a leadership problem the moment it goes unaddressed.

Having a Voice Is Not the Same as Owning It

Having a voice means you answer when someone asks what you think. Owning your voice means you say what you think without being asked, especially when it is inconvenient.

Most people spend their entire career stuck on step one. Owning your voice sounds like “I hear what you are saying, but I do not agree,” not nodding along to keep the room comfortable. The corporate version of a golden retriever, agreeable, eager to please, and somehow still surprised when nobody remembers what you actually think. There is a name for the gap between those two things. Psychological safety, the belief that speaking up will not cost you something. Most workplaces have far less of it than leadership assumes.

If you have ever softened your opinion on an idea because you were worried about being labeled difficult, that was not diplomacy. That was you handing away your own voice before anyone even asked for it.

What Gets Said About You When You Leave the Room

I asked Ebony what leadership actually discusses behind closed doors. Her answer should change how you show up in your next team meeting.

It is not just your KPIs. It is how you show up. Your energy in meetings. Whether people can picture you two or three levels up from where you sit today.

Are you a good peer mentor?
Are you raising your hand?
Are you showing up as if you are already in the role you are aiming to be in?

Competence gets you in the conversation. It does not automatically get your name mentioned when the room is deciding who moves next.

Three Moves You Can Make This Week

Ask your leader directly what is standing between you and the next opportunity. Not “am I doing okay?” but specifically…

“what skill or competency should I be building right now?”

If you are being consistently talked over, address it privately and with grace. Something like…

“I know it was not intentional, but this happened a few times, and I want to make sure my ideas get heard too.”

Never in front of the room. That only adds fuel.

Before your next high-stakes meeting, do the meeting before the meeting.

A short pre-read or a two-minute conversation with your key stakeholders means you walk in prepared instead of ambushed.

Running This Through the ALLY Framework

Ask. Who on your team is hesitating in that half second before they speak, and what would it take for you to actually notice it.

Listen. When someone finally does speak up, are you hearing them, or waiting for your turn to respond.

Learn. Confidence is not a personality trait. It is a track record your brain keeps score of, one small result at a time.

You Take Action. Give one person on your team the floor this week, on purpose, before they have to fight for it.

Owning your voice is not about being the loudest person in the room. It is about being willing to say the true thing instead of the safe thing, even when it is inconvenient.

You were not hired to be a smaller version of yourself. If you are editing who you are just to survive the culture around you, that is worth examining. And if you are the leader, ask yourself if you are building a culture where people can actually thrive, or just one where they have learned how to cope.

That gap, between having a voice and actually using it, is exactly what the Modern Leaders Toolkit is built to close. Five disciplines, five moves, starting with whichever one you need most this week.

Listen to the full conversation with Ebony Russ here →

Download the Modern Leaders Toolkit here →

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You get the promotion or the project you’ve been waiting for. Monday morning you walk in eager, still riding the high of finally being trusted.

And that eagerness turns into a desire to prove yourself. To show up and perform to make up for your newness. You tell people how it is going to work now, because that is what leaders do, or so you think. You skip the part where you actually learn the ground you are standing on.

When this happens, you miss the opportunity to ask questions like “who usually owns this,” “what didn’t work well last time,” and to fill the gaps where everyone else already knows the answers that you do not, because you were too busy proving you belonged to notice you had not learned the terrain yet.

Clint Bruce said something in our last conversation that named exactly what gets skipped in moments like this. His favorite weapon was never a gun. It was a map. Because with a map, the worst you will ever be is wrong. You will never be lost.

You cannot draw a map of terrain you refused to learn because you were too eager to prove yourself in it.

Most leaders in corporate America right now are not wrong. They are lost. And the reason they cannot tell the difference is that lost has learned to disguise itself as busy.

Are You Wrong or Lost?

Wrong means you made a call with the information you had. You can course correct from wrong.

Lost means there is no map underneath you at all. No clear direction, no clear owner, no answer to the basic questions. Where are we going? Why are we going there? How are we getting there? Who is in charge of getting us there?

And we always seem to think that “lost” can’t look like standing still. A leader who knows where they are going is in motion. Right?

So the leader who skipped learning the terrain thinking they have to look like they know what they are doing, so they fill the space with activity instead of direction. And what does that look like?

→ Back to back calendars
→ Constant firefighting
→ More projects than they can handle
→ Always, busy

Busy is not a direction. It is a disguise.

And most leaders would rather stay busy than sit still long enough to admit the map they are following does not exist. (There is a story in this episode about what happens when you inherit a team with no map at all. It involves turning over rocks and watching what scatters. I will let you hear that one instead of reading it here.)

Listen to the newest episode here →

The Fastest Way to Build a Map Is Not the One You Think

Here is where the eagerness actually gets you into trouble. The decisions new leaders make when walking into a new position eager to prove themselves does not feel like recklessness. It feels like confidence. You did the work, you climbed the ladder, and you have decided you already know enough to lead this team before spending a single hour learning what makes them different from the last one. The fix is saying the three words most leaders refuse to say out loud.

My favorite three words (not “I love you”): “I don’t know.”

That admission is not weakness. It is what buys you the time to actually learn the terrain instead of guessing at it in front of everyone. People do not rally around a leader who claims to already have every answer. They rally around one honest enough to ask.

Confidence without curiosity is just arrogance with better posture.

A Map Has to Account for What Your People Actually Value

You cannot build an accurate map of a team without knowing what each person on it is actually navigating toward… and where they’ve already been.

That second part gets skipped constantly. You inherit someone’s resume, their title, maybe a sentence from their last manager, and you get your read on them from that. But the terrain someone has already crossed shapes what they need from you now. The person who spent three years under-appreciated on a team that took credit for their work is navigating toward being seen. The person who got burned by a leader who promised growth and never delivered is navigating toward proof, not promises. You cannot map where someone is headed if you have not asked where they have already been.

I call understanding what your team values in their role, currency. And it has nothing to do with a paycheck. It is the value proposition a person is actually making decisions on.

And while we’re at it, there is a second currency worth mapping too. Relationship currency. You are not accomplishing anything magnificent by yourself, so understanding what your people actually value, and whether you are depositing into that or quietly withdrawing from it, is part of the map you’re leading from, not separate from it.

Look at your own team. How many people are you handing the wrong currency to?

Recognition to someone who wants flexibility.
A bonus to someone who wants to feel heard.
You would not hand someone a gift they clearly do not want and call it generosity. Stop doing the corporate version of that to your own people.

A Team That Thinks Alike Will Never Tell You the Map Is Wrong

If everyone on your team thinks the way you think, agrees with everything you say, and processes problems the same way you do, nobody on that team is equipped to tell you when your map is wrong.

Monocultures are easy to beat, because everyone already knows what you are going to do next. The best teams I have ever been part of were the ones where meetings got genuinely uncomfortable, where people shot holes in my idea and I had to stand and defend it.

Think about the Dream Team versus the Redeem Team. Same level of talent. The Dream Team had every superstar in basketball and still got beat, because it was every man for himself. The Redeem Team won, because they built something out of real differences instead of matching egos.

Ask yourself honestly. How much real difference is on your team?

Not the differences you can see walking past a conference room window. Differences in communication style, in how people process a problem, in lived experience. Your competitive advantage is directly tied to how much of that you actually have, and whether anyone on your team feels safe enough to tell you the map is off.

Two Things To Do This Week

One. Go talk to one to three people on your team. No deliverable attached. Just get to know them. What motivates them. What they are excited about right now, work related or not. You cannot map what you have never asked about.

Two. Pull up your quarterly goals. Are you actually on track. Ask your team how they define winning, and see if it matches what you had in mind. If it does not match, that gap is the map problem, not a motivation problem.

Bonus. Retire one assumption you have been carrying about someone on your team. Pick the person whose behavior you think you already have figured out. Ask them one real question this week, and let them finish talking before you respond. You might find out the map you had for them was never accurate to begin with.

Clint and I have almost nothing in common on paper. Here is what we share. The map matters more than the muscle. Leading people who are not like you is not a soft skill. It is the whole job.

You can be technically brilliant and still lose people. You can have the right strategy and still build the wrong team. You can mean well and still leave people feeling like they do not belong in the room you built.

Clint left me with a question I have not stopped turning over. Is your team performing because of your leadership, or in spite of it?

I want to add one more layer. Do you even know how to find out?

Listen to the newest episode to dive deeper here →

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I didn’t start in the boardroom. I started in the baggage room.

Loading luggage. Parking planes at Boston Logan.

Some days I’d even pick up a shift behind the ticket counter, checking people in for the…

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Most leaders build trust the slow way. Show up. Perform. Wait for the next review cycle. Hope it adds up eventually.

Clint Bruce never had that kind of time. He led counterterrorism missions in countries where he did not speak the language, working alongside people who had met him an hour earlier and had every reason not to trust a stranger with their lives. If trust took a quarter to build, people got hurt waiting.

So he built it differently. Fast, on purpose, using a method he now teaches to the corporate leaders he trains. And it has nothing to do with walking in as the smartest person in the room.

In Our Most Recent Episode: The Navy SEAL Trust-Building Method Every Leader Should Know

I sit down with Clint Bruce, a Naval Academy graduate, former NFL linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens and New Orleans Saints, decorated Navy SEAL, and founder of TRG and Hold Fast, which transitions veterans and elite athletes into corporate leadership.

We are about as opposite as two people can get. I built my career in corporate America. He left the NFL to go blow things up with the Navy SEALs. And that contrast is exactly why this conversation works.

We get into…

→ What the battlefield actually teaches you about leading people who do not think, communicate, or process the way you do.

→ Why your brain is wired to treat uncertainty as doom, and what to do about it before it starts making your decisions for you.

→ The difference between being busy, being productive, and being fruitful, and why most leaders never make it past level one.

→And the operating system Clint built on a three-by-five card in eighth grade and later handed down to his own daughters.

We also discovered that a man who has spent his career under live fire is somehow more patient with his team than most leaders are in a Monday morning standup.

Listen to the full conversation here →

Clint’s Not Asking What Your Favorite Gun Is. He’s Asking What Your Favorite Weapon Is.

Clint gets asked the same question everywhere he goes. What is your favorite gun? And every single time he stops the room and reframes it. A gun is a tool. A weapon is what you use to win. And his favorite weapon has always been a map.

Because with a map you know where the threat is, where to come in, what to bring, what to leave, and how to get home. With a map, the worst you can ever be is wrong. But you will never be lost.

And in over 25 years of leading teams across some of the most competitive industries in the world, from private aviation to global sales organizations, I have seen what happens when leaders show up without a map. They are not just wrong. They are lost. And wrong and lost are very different animals.

Most leaders in corporate America right now are lost and calling it strategy.

The Data Is Not New. The Application Is What Is Missing.

On the ball field Clint got feedback on his performance every seven seconds. On the battlefield, every few minutes. In the boardroom it could take a full year to find out if what he did last Tuesday was even right. Most leaders have never stopped to think about what that does to a brain. What it does to a team. What it does to the decisions being made in the silence between actions and outcomes.

Corporate America has been ignoring this data longer than it has been ignoring its own turnover problem. Which is saying something.

We’ve dumbed diversity down to just race and gender when in reality, it’s diversity of thought, communication, lived experience, so on and so forth. Diverse teams outperform traditional teams 87% of the time in business decision making.

Organizations with people from different cultures, age groups, genders, and ethnic backgrounds show 11% higher revenue growth than teams built from similar backgrounds. McKinsey, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and SHRM have been publishing this data for years. And still, most leaders are building teams in their own image, wondering why the results are not coming, and calling it a talent problem.

It is not a talent problem. It is a leadership environment problem.

And I have walked into enough boardrooms, enough off-sites, and enough executive strategy sessions to know that the gap is not knowledge. It is application.

You Cannot Lead Every Map the Same Way.

Clint described every environment he has ever led in as a map. The ball field is a map. The battlefield is a map. The boardroom is a map. Every map has its own legend, its own lexicon, its own boundaries, and its own X that marks where you think you need to go.

The problem is most leaders walk into new environments using the map they built somewhere else. They are reading yesterday’s terrain and making today’s decisions from it. And the people on their team who think, communicate, and process differently are the ones paying the price for it.

Here is what that looks like in real time → You have a team member who goes quiet in meetings. You label them disengaged. You have someone who takes longer to deliver. You label them slow. You have someone who pushes back on the process. You label them difficult.

You labeled them while Clint would have given them a map and a mission. Guess whose team is winning.

Because what if none of those labels are accurate? What if you are just reading the wrong map? I work with leaders every day who are making high stakes decisions about people based on a framework that was never built for those people. That is not a people problem. That is a map problem. And it is one you can actually fix.

The Framework He Built for His Daughters (And Every Leader Needs)

Clint wrote it on a three-by-five card in eighth grade, right after his football coach told him to quit and go do theater instead.

Angles + Allies + Advantages = Achievements

He was the fifth-string fullback on a team that had already run out of fullbacks. He needed an operating system. So he built one at thirteen years old, which is either impressive or slightly concerning, depending on how your eighth grader spent their afternoons.

Angles are your craft. Getting better, faster, smarter, stronger at the actual work in front of you.

Allies are the people running with you, and here is the part most leaders skip: allies have to be aligned, but they should never be alike. Monocultures are easy to defeat. There is no resilience in a room where everyone thinks the same way, because the same preferences built the whole plan.

Advantages are your talent and your treasure, and Clint is direct about this part. You did not create either one. You inherited it. You are not the source. You are the steward.

Years later, his daughter told him she could not do something. He stopped her right there. Told her that saying “I can’t” with confidence is not humility. It is arrogance wearing humility’s clothes, because to say it and mean it, you would have to already know everything about yourself and everything about the task. That is a bold claim from someone who has not tried yet.

So he walked her through the same equation he built for himself. What are your angles here. Who are your allies. What advantages do you already have, and are you actually using them.

Most leaders are carrying some version of this operating system inside them and have never written it down, let alone handed it to the people they lead.

The next time someone on your team tells you they cannot do something, that is not a performance conversation. That is a map conversation.

Wrong You Can Work With. Lost Is the Real Problem.

Most leaders judge themselves by what they intend. Their teams judge them by what they experienced. And that gap between intention and impact is exactly where trust either gets built or quietly falls apart.

Your amygdala has been running your leadership decisions this whole time and nobody told you. You are welcome.

Your brain, specifically the amygdala, the fear center, processes uncertainty as doom. Not as a challenge. Not as a signal to adjust. Doom.

So when the feedback loop is slow and the results are unclear, your brain starts making noise. And leaders who have not learned to manage that noise start making decisions from fear and calling it urgency. I have coached enough senior leaders to know that what looks like a bold strategic move is sometimes just an amygdala that has not been managed.

Wrong you can correct. Wrong you can learn from. Wrong you can communicate about and get back on course. But a leader who does not know where they are cannot course correct.

They cannot even see that they are off track. That is not a strategy problem. That is a leadership problem. And it starts with getting honest about which map you are actually on.

What the Boardroom Never Told You About Trust.

Clint has built trust in some of the most high stakes environments on the planet. Foreign countries. Combat missions. Rooms full of people who did not speak his language and whose lives depended on whether they believed him. And he did not do it slowly.

Here is what he learned → You do not build trust by being perfect. You build it by being authentic. By being vulnerable. By being willing to say I do not know how to do this, and meaning it. The leaders who walk into every room as the subject matter expert in everything are not earning trust. They are quietly signaling that they cannot be trusted with the truth. And the people around them know it before they do.

Clint also shared this, and I want every leader reading this to write it down.

Currency is not money. Currency is the value proposition upon which people make decisions.

When you understand what someone’s currency actually is, you know how to lead them. Not manage them. Lead them.

This is one of the core principles I teach in my work with executive teams, and it is one of the fastest ways to shift how a leader shows up for the people around them. There is a real difference between managing someone and leading them. And most leaders have never stopped long enough to ask which one they are actually doing.

The Bottom Line

Clint survived the NFL, the SEAL teams, and corporate America. The only thing that almost got him was the boardroom. Make of that what you will.

Clint Bruce left the NFL because it was easier to become a Navy SEAL than beat out Ray Lewis. He survived counterterrorism deployments, built multiple companies, and has spent his career helping people realize they are more capable than they ever imagined. And the one thing that has carried him across every single map he has ever been on is this: know where you are, know who is with you, and never confuse being wrong with being lost.

Your team is not underperforming because they lack talent. They are underperforming because they are being led by someone who has not yet learned how to read the map they are actually on.

I have seen this in boardrooms across industries, from aviation to finance to healthcare. The gap is almost never the team. It is almost always the leadership environment the team is operating in.

The return on getting this right is real. The investment is justified. But you cannot lead people you do not understand. And you cannot understand them if you are still using yesterday’s map.

If this conversation opened something up for you, I want you to keep it going. This is exactly what we dig into inside my ALLY Leadership work, on stages, in executive sessions, and in the rooms where real decisions get made.

Dive into the full conversation with me, let me know your thoughts here in the comments, I want to know!

→ Listen to the full episode here

→ Become the Leader Companies Keep, Promote and Bet On

The rest of this article is for paid subscribers, it includes the one leadership behavior that determines whether your team ever trusts you with the truth and what the research says it costs when they do not.

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Mine is full of good ideas. Conference takeaways. Books with cracked spines and highlighted margins. Trainings my company paid real money for.

Each one left me convinced I was about to lead differently, and each one is buried under the way I actually ran my week.

We usually call this a discipline problem. Or a motivatio…

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Grown men came into my office shaking.

One employee on my team was bipolar. When she was on her medication, she was sharp and capable, one of the best in the building. When she was not, people who outranked her walked in rattled because she had threatened them.

Nobody hands you a protocol for that.

Most leadership training on neurodiversity stops at the comfortable part. Build the environment. Recognize that brains process differently. Create psychological safety. All of that is right. None of it prepares you for the day the situation is already on fire and the person you are trying to support is the reason why.

That is where real leadership lives. And most training never goes there.

Most neurodiversity in the workplace looks nothing like what I just described. Most of it is quiet. The employee who needs more processing time. The one who shuts down in a large meeting not out of disengagement but because their nervous system is already at capacity just being in the room. The one whose best thinking happens independently and never gets surfaced in the meeting structure you built without realizing who it excluded.

That is the majority of what you are managing. But the extreme exists, and if you are trained only on the comfortable version of this, you will get caught unprepared when it shows up.

We can’t skip the chapter where you have to be the villain in someone else’s story.

When I had grown men coming into my office shaking, I had to react. I was not a mental health specialist. Nobody handed me a protocol. What I had was a decision only I could make, and a team of people walking on pins and needles every single day whose safety was my responsibility too.

Listen to the full story and episode here

Accommodation has limits. Your accountability does not.

Not every situation announces itself the way mine did. Most don’t. Most look like someone going quiet in meetings, or missing a deadlines, or needing something adjusted that never gets said out loud. Quiet does not mean unimportant. It means the same principle applies, just without an audience.

There is a version of the inclusion conversation that treats leader responsibility as the only variable. That version is incomplete, and it is not honest.

The better question: what does the leader owe the neurodivergent employee, and what does that employee owe the organization in return?

Leaders owe a thoughtful environment. Advance communication. Reasonable accommodation. That is not optional. It is the job.

But the individual also carries responsibility. When an unmanaged condition creates an unsafe environment for colleagues, the obligation to one person does not cancel the obligation to everyone else in the room. Whether that shows up as a loud crisis or a pattern nobody has named out loud, holding both truths at once is what leadership actually looks like. The discomfort of that is not a reason to avoid the conversation. It is the reason to have it.

Now for the situations that are not a crisis, which is most of what you are actually managing day to day...I have a theory of where the biggest fault line in our teams’ foundations comes from:

Your meeting calendar.

The prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for decision-making and focus, degrades under sustained cognitive load with no recovery time. Stack meetings wall to wall and you are not generating productivity. You are systematically depleting the exact cognitive resources your team needs to do the actual work. For neurodivergent employees that depletion is faster and deeper. No brain escapes it entirely.

A calendar with zero white space isn’t a badge of honor. It’s a cry for help, wearing a blazer. You are not running a productive team. You are running a tired one that is very busy talking about work instead of doing it.

I have not taken meetings on Mondays or Fridays in years. Tuesday through Thursday is where I work. The rest is thinking time, the space to stop working in the business and start thinking about where it is going. When I model it, my team learns they are allowed to have a brain too.

Instead of complaining about the workforce that showed up, are you willing to look honestly at the environment you built for them?

I wrote a piece years ago defending millennials when everyone else blamed them. My point was simple. We over-scheduled that generation from the time they could talk. We had them in dance, soccer, piano, football, you name it…we signed them up for it, we gave them no white space, and then acted surprised when sustained focus did not come naturally. We are doing the same thing to Gen Z now. At some point the question has to shift from why is this generation different to what environment are we building, and is it designed for how people actually perform?

Three Things You Can Do This Week

Audit your meeting calendar. Count every meeting your team sits in this week. How many produce decisions? How many just produce conversations about decisions? I am a champion of the fifteen-minute standup. Most meetings do not need to be an hour. Many do not need to exist at all.

Send the agenda before the meeting. Not as a courtesy. As a structural accommodation that costs nothing. When people know what is coming, they can prepare. For neurodivergent employees, advance context is the difference between contributing and spending the meeting just trying to keep up.

Model rest out loud. Block time on your calendar and say it in a meeting. Tell your team you are offline and trust them to handle it. A leader who brags about never sleeping is not impressing anyone. They are just the office’s saddest flex. That signal travels fast and it is expensive.

How the ALLY Framework applies here.

Ask. What does my meeting structure say about who I designed this environment for? Am I building for the loudest, fastest processors, or for everyone?

Listen. Before your next one-on-one, ask one question you do not usually ask: is there anything about how we work together that makes your job harder than it needs to be? Then be quiet.

Learn. The employee who underdelivers in group settings but produces strong independent work is not inconsistent. They are showing you something about conditions. Pay attention before you label it a performance problem.

You Take Action. Pick one structural change this week. Send the agenda early. Block one afternoon from meetings. Say out loud that you are logging off, and mean it. Small structural shifts compound. That is also neuroscience.

The Bottom Line

According to the City & Guilds Neurodiversity Index, seventy-six percent of employees choose not to fully disclose their neurodivergence at work. That number is not about stigma in the abstract. It is a calculation people run before they trust you with anything real.

A JPMorgan Chase report on its Autism at Work program found that participating professionals made fewer errors and were 90 to 140 percent more productive than their neurotypical peers. The return on building a better environment is real.

But you cannot unlock that return from people who are spending their energy managing how they appear to you instead of solving your business problems.

The hard part is not the information. It is deciding that the people on your team who move through the world differently deserve a leader willing to understand them. Not manage them. Not tolerate them. Understand them.

Nothing changes if nothing changes.

→ Listen to the newest Not Like Me episode here

→ Grab my Modern Leader’s Toolkit to learn five disciplines built around ALLY

The rest of this article is for paid subscribers, including the exact phrases that tell a neurodivergent employee it is safe to bring you their real performance, and the manager habits that quietly do the opposite.

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You may have heard me share these numbers before….

76.5% of the US workforce is white

18.8% is Hispanic or Latino

12.8% is Black or African American

Women make up nearly half the civilian labor force but hold just 11% of Fortune 500 CEO seats.

There are six generations working side by side right now, ranging from their late teens to their late seventies. (Feel free to cite me, here)

And yes, this means someone on your team is using TikTok and someone else still prints out emails. Both are your problem.

These are the differences most leaders think about. The visible ones. The ones that have driven workplace conversations, training programs, and inclusion initiatives for two decades.

And while we have been focused on those, something else has been sitting quietly in the room. Unrecognized. Misread. And in too many cases, completely mismanaged.

The differences you cannot see.

In Our Most Recent Episode of Not Like Me

I sat down with Sarah McFarland, a board certified behavior analyst with over 13 years of experience training teams to respond with skill instead of emotion, and Dr. Alicia Hodge, a clinical psychologist specializing in cognitive behavioral therapy and what actually happens in the brain under pressure.

We talk about the people on your team who are not like you, even if you cannot tell from the outside. The employee who processes a deadline differently. The one who goes quiet in a meeting you thought went well. The one you have quietly labeled a performance problem. The one who stopped bringing their best thinking to the room and you are still not sure why.

Listen to the full conversation here

The Numbers Most Leaders Have Not Seen

Between 15 and 20 percent of the global population is neurodivergent, including ADHD, autism spectrum conditions, dyslexia, and other cognitive differences. Researchers estimate as many as 67 million neurodivergent Americans are in the US workforce.

What that means in practice: a significant portion of your team is spending cognitive energy every day managing how they appear to you rather than solving your business problems. That is not a people problem. That is a leadership environment problem.

And before you assume this does not apply to your team: 76% of neurodivergent employees choose not to fully disclose. You may not know what you are working with. That does not mean it is not there. (Go ahead, cite me!)

What Gets Misread as a Performance Problem

High-functioning anxiety does not (always) look like a breakdown in the break room. It can look like an employee slow to start on projects because the dread of getting it wrong is genuinely paralyzing.

Someone who avoids a conversation or delays an email not out of disrespect but out of overwhelm.

A person in a meeting who seems checked out but is actually stuck in a loop of worry they cannot break.

The brain under chronic anxiety is not underperforming. It is hijacked. The amygdala does not distinguish between a physical threat and a high-stakes email. You know that feeling, when your brain treats a passive-aggressive Slack message the same way it treats being chased by a bear. When that response fires consistently, concentration narrows, decision-making deteriorates, and what follows looks a lot like disengagement, inconsistency, or low performance.

Perfectionism follows a similar pattern. It is not attention to detail. It is unrelenting high standards tied to a fear of not meeting them.

The perfectionist leader raises the bar the moment you reach it. Accepts praise for thirty seconds before cataloguing what could have been better. Sends a team into a quiet spiral of wondering whether anything will ever be enough.

The question Dr. Alicia put on the table that every leader should be sitting with: what is good enough here? Not what is perfect. What is good enough. Define it in advance and hold the line. That is not lowering your standards. That is leading with clarity instead of anxiety.

The Systems Gap Nobody Is Talking About

I shared a story in this episode from my own career involving a bipolar employee and a situation that escalated in real time with no warning, no context, and no plan. That experience made something undeniable…

Most companies have detailed procedures for fires, injuries, and physical threats. Almost none have a documented response for a mental health escalation. As Sarah put it: there are eye washing stations for every physical emergency. Nothing for the mental health ones.

That is a systems failure. And it is one you can actually close.

An Example of Good Leadership in These Moments

Nearly 1 in 4 employed mothers are back at work within two weeks of giving birth. Postpartum anxiety affects approximately 1 in 4 women. Do the math. They are in your building. They are in your meetings. And most of them are not saying a word about what they are going through.

I started looking into these numbers after someone in my community shared her story with me.

She was postpartum. Quietly navigating anxiety, depression, and burnout all at once. Her boss did not know. What he did know was that something was off. They had worked together long enough that he could feel it, he saw the red flags of overwhelm and didn’t ignore it.

So he went to her. Not with a performance conversation. Not with an HR checklist. He asked if she was okay and how he could support her.

She told him she felt like she was having trouble adjusting and was drowning, even though she’d just gotten back from maternity leave. And then she apologized for it.

He stopped her immediately. Told her there was nothing to apologize for. And told her to take the week.

When she came back, he checked in consistently and intentionally. Not in a way that hovered or reduced her. In a way that said you matter here and I want to make sure this role is working for you. He was not coddling her. He was leading her. There is a real difference here.

And if this approach sounds too soft to you, let me tell you what the alternative costs.

Employees who experience burnout are 2.6 times more likely to be actively seeking another job. When they leave, replacing them costs between 50% and 200% of their annual salary, according to SHRM, before you factor in the time the role sits open, the productivity lost while someone ramps up, and the institutional knowledge that walks out and does not come back. US businesses lose between $125 billion and $190 billion annually in healthcare costs alone due to workplace stress.

So that leader wasn’t soft. He saved a high performer, protected institutional knowledge, and reduced turnover risk.

Turns out “asking if someone is okay” has a pretty solid ROI. Who knew!

That is what ALLY leadership looks like.

3 Things You Can Do This Week

Check in with one person on your team with no agenda. Not about a project. Not about a deadline. Just ask them how you are doing and mean it. Then remember what they say and bring it back next week. Bonus points if you do not immediately follow it up with “So anyway, about that deliverable…”

Send your agenda before the meeting. It takes two minutes and it changes everything for someone who needs time to process before they can contribute.

Model rest out loud. Say it in a meeting. “I am taking Friday afternoon off and I am not checking email.” When leaders name it, it gives everyone else permission to do the same. And before you tell me you cannot do that, I promise the company will still be standing on Monday if you take a half day on Friday.

How to Apply The ALLY Framework Here

Ask. Who on my team might be navigating something I cannot see? Am I designing this environment for the loudest voices or for all of them?

Listen. Build rapport deliberately. Not as a tactic. As a genuine investment in understanding who is actually in the room with you.

Learn. Neurodiversity, anxiety, perfectionism. These are not fringe topics. They are showing up in your team every day. Knowing the basics changes how you interpret behavior and how you respond to it.

You Take Action. Reframe rest as a strategy, not a reward you grant when everything else is done. Model it. Encourage it. A restored team is not a soft outcome. It shows up in your numbers.

The Bottom Line

JPMorgan Chase found that professionals in its Autism at Work initiative made fewer errors and were 90 to 140 percent more productive than neurotypical employees.

The return on neuro-inclusion is real. The investment is justified.

But you cannot unlock that return from people you cannot see.

Dive into the full conversation with me, let me know your thoughts here in the comments, I want to know!

First, listen to the full episode here

Then, grab my Modern Leader’s Toolkit to learn five disciplines built around ALLY

The rest of this article is for paid subscribers, including the one leadership behavior that determines whether your team ever trusts you with the truth and what the research says it costs when they do not.

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The 2026 SHRM State of the Workplace report dropped earlier this year, and one finding stood out above everything else.

Not AI. Not hybrid work. Not compensation.

Employers identified effective leadership and management as their single greatest workplace need heading into 2026.

Not strategy. Not technology.

Leadership.

That should get every serious leader’s attention.

Because this does not mean organizations are struggling because their leaders are lazy, careless, or lacking ambition. It means many capable leaders are using a playbook that was not built for the workplace they are actually leading now.

And the gap between the leadership most organizations have and the leadership they need is getting more expensive by the quarter.

What This Data Is Actually Telling Us

Here is the part most leaders miss when they see a finding like that.

It is easy to read “effective leadership is the number one need” and think, that is someone else’s problem.

My team is performing. My reviews are solid. I am delivering.

And you probably are.

But here is the question worth sitting with:

Is the way you are leading right now going to be enough for the room you are being asked to lead next?

Because the SHRM data is not only describing struggling leaders. It is describing capable leaders who have not been given the tools to lead today’s workforce. Teams that are more diverse, more complex, more skeptical, and less willing to give trust automatically than any workforce in recent history.

Employees are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work when their voice is heard.

That is not a soft finding. That is a performance multiplier.

And it lives inside the quality of your leadership. Specifically, whether the people on your team believe it is safe to bring you the real version of what they are thinking.

That is where many leaders are operating with less information than they realize.

So What Stays The Same If You Do Nothing

Insight without a system does not produce different behavior. It produces better intentions that look exactly the same in practice.

So if you read the SHRM report, nod along, and go back to leading the same way, you are not solving the problem. You are becoming part of the pattern.

I have watched this happen to capable leaders for forty years.

They consume the right content. They attend the right trainings. They agree with all of it.

And then they walk back into the room and rely on instinct, familiarity, and good intentions in situations that require something more.

That is when the cost becomes real.

The opportunity that goes to someone else because the decision-makers above you were not convinced you could handle the complexity.

The top performer who updates their LinkedIn without a word, and then you find out why in the exit interview, after there is nothing left to do.

The decision you made on the safe version of the truth because nobody on your team felt secure enough to give you the real one.

None of it announces itself.

It just adds up.

That is why timing matters. Not because a deadline is magical. Because a deadline forces a decision. You either keep collecting insight, or you step into a structure that helps you change how you lead.

If you already know this is the leadership gap you need to close, the A.L.L.Y. Leadership Framework course is open now. Enrollment closes tonight at midnight.

Enroll in A.L.L.Y. Leadership Framework

If you are still working through the decision, keep reading. I want you to understand the framework behind the fix.

The Framework Behind The Fix

The A.L.L.Y. framework is the practical system I built from four decades of leading in rooms that were not built for someone like me.

It is not a philosophy. It is a repeatable practice you return to in the exact moments the old playbook runs out.

Ask: Stop assuming. Ask better questions of yourself before you ask anything of your team. Who am I instinctively trusting, and why? What am I missing because this situation feels unfamiliar?

Listen: When people do not feel safe telling you the truth, they tell you the version they think you want to hear. That means you are making decisions on edited information.

Learn: The perspective you have been overlooking may be the very information your team needs to perform at the highest level. Most leaders walk past this every day because they are moving too fast to notice what the room is already telling them.

You Take Action: Awareness without action is just expensive self-reflection. This is where insight becomes behavior your team can count on, especially when pressure rises.

When you lead this way, something shifts.

Your team stops editing before they speak. You stop solving the wrong version of the problem. The people above you start to notice, not because you announced that you changed, but because your team started performing differently.

That result has your name on it.

That is not softer leadership. That is sharper leadership.

The Question Worth Sitting With

If the people above you had to describe your leadership in one sentence right now, would that sentence get you the next opportunity?

Or would it explain why the opportunity went to someone else?

The leaders who close this gap are not the ones who plan to get around to it eventually.

They are the ones who recognize the pattern while the information is still in front of them.

That information is in front of you right now.

The question is whether you are going to do something with it.

Where To Go From Here

If you are ready to stop collecting leadership insight and start practicing a real framework, this is the next step.

My A.L.L.Y. Leadership Framework course is where this becomes a complete leadership practice.

Inside the course, we take this out of theory and into the leadership moments already in front of you. You will establish your leadership baseline, learn how to ask better questions, listen for what is not being said, recognize where comfort is shaping your decisions, and build a 30-day action plan you can apply immediately.

This is not about becoming a different person.

It is about becoming a more trusted, more effective, more intentional version of the leader you already are.

The first release is open now at the lowest price it will ever be.

Enrollment closes tonight at midnight.

Enroll in A.L.L.Y. Leadership Framework

Your Ally,

Stephanie

They are not failing because they lack talent. They are getting stuck because the leadership playbook they were handed was not built for the rooms they are being asked to lead now.

Watch the training above, then read the breakdown below. This is the leadership gap worth addressing before it costs you the next opportunity.

Hi Leaders,

How many times have you consumed something that changed how you think…and then led exactly the same way the next morning?

It happens to almost every leader.

Not because they did not care about what they heard.

Because insight without a system does not produce different behavior. It produces better intentions that look exactly the same in practice.

That is what today’s newsletter is about.

The gap most leaders feel but cannot name

Most leaders who find their way to this conversation are not struggling. They are performing. They are delivering results, earning trust and building something real. And they still feel the gap.

That gap has a name. It is the distance between how you intend to lead and how the people in front of you actually experience your leadership. And it is almost never about effort or intention.

It is about the playbook.

The approach most leaders are using was built for a workforce that looked, communicated, and operated very differently than the one sitting across from you today. Nobody handed you a new one when the workplace changed. You were expected to figure it out.

Most people do. Partially. Through trial and error and the kind of hard moments you do not forget.

What this is actually costing you

The leaders who get passed over for bigger roles are rarely passed over because they lack talent.

They are the ones the decision-makers above them are not convinced can handle complexity. And complexity in today’s workplace means leading people who think, communicate, and operate differently than you do.

That is the evaluation happening in rooms you are not in.

Someone above you is watching how you handle the team member who communicates indirectly. How you respond when feedback does not land the way you intended. Whether you can lead a room that does not already look and think like you.

When the answer is unclear, the opportunity goes to someone else. Not dramatically. Quietly. And you usually find out after the decision has already been made.

Here is what that silence is worth in real numbers. The salary difference between a Director and a VP can be $40,000 to $80,000 a year. Every year the leadership gap goes unfixed, that difference compounds. The raise you did not get, the role that went to someone else, the visibility that never quite materialized…none of that shows up as a single line item. But all of it is connected to whether the people above you trust that you can lead the room they need you to lead next.

And the frustrating part is that most of this happens quietly. Nobody sends you a memo. Nobody tells you where the trust broke down or why the decision went the other direction. The signals were there. They just were not being read.

The framework and why it works

The A.L.L.Y. framework is the part most leaders were never given formally. Not as a philosophy. As a repeatable practice you return to in the exact moments the old playbook runs out.

Ask: Stop assuming. Ask better questions of yourself before you ask anything of your team. Who am I instinctively trusting, and why? What am I missing because this situation feels unfamiliar?

Listen: When people do not feel safe telling you the truth, they tell you the version they think you want to hear. That means you are making decisions on edited information. Listening is not about being agreeable. It is about creating the conditions where people bring you the real version before it becomes expensive.

Learn: The perspectives you have been overlooking may be the very information your team needs. Most leaders walk past this every day. The information is often already in the room. A.L.L.Y. teaches you how to access it.

You Take Action: Awareness without action is just expensive self-reflection. This is where insight becomes behavior your team can count on consistently, especially when pressure rises.

When you lead this way, something shifts. Your team stops editing before they speak. You stop solving the wrong version of the problem. The people above you start to notice, not because you announced that you changed, but because your team starts performing differently.

That result has your name on it.

That is not softer leadership. That is sharper leadership.

The question worth sitting with this week

Where in your leadership are you still relying on instinct, patience, and good intentions in a situation that actually requires a system?

That is not a rhetorical question. It is one of the fastest ways to find the gap before it finds you.

Before it shows up in the performance review that surprises you. Before it shows up in the opportunity that went to someone else. Before it shows up in the exit interview of someone you did not see leaving.

The leaders who get to the next level are not waiting to feel ready. They are doing the work now.

If you are ready to go from the framework to the full practice, the A.L.L.Y. Leadership Framework course is where that work happens.

Real tools. Real scenarios. A 30-day action plan built around the leadership moments already in front of you.

Do not wait until the next missed opportunity shows you where the gap was.

The first release is open now at the lowest price it will ever be. Enrollment closes June 3.

Enroll in A.L.L.Y. Leadership Framework

Your Ally,

Stephanie

It is the number of decisions you made this quarter with incomplete information. Not because your team did not have the full picture. Because they did not feel safe enough to give it to you.

That is not a culture problem. That is a revenue problem.

In our last episode of Not Like Me, we talked about what it costs when leaders stay silent in the moments that matter. What came back to me most in the comments and replies was not outrage. It was one honest question showing up in different forms: why does this actually matter to my results?

That is what this week is about. And I promise I will keep it practical, because ya’ll know we have had enough leadership conversations that end with a vague call to action and a LinkedIn quote. Dive back into the conversation with me here:

The Data Most Leaders Have Not Seen

Racially diverse teams are 35% more likely to outperform their counterparts. For every 10% increase in diversity on the senior executive team, earnings before interest and taxes rise 0.8%. Diverse teams make better decisions in 87% of cases.

That is not a social stat. That is a performance stat.

On the other side: only 30% of employees were engaged at work in 2024. More than four million Americans were quitting their jobs every month as recently as 2022. And at the core of almost all of it was not compensation or burnout.

It was leadership.

People do not leave bad jobs. They leave bad leaders.

Why Good Intentions Are Not Enough

Your brain is wired to prefer the familiar. A Stanford study confirmed it…exposure to the familiar reduces uncertainty and allows your brain to process information faster. In practice that means you instinctively trust the voices you already understand, reach for the people who communicate the way you do, and move faster with the team members who require the least translation.

None of that feels like a bias. It feels like just another Tuesday.

But when familiarity drives your decisions, it quietly shapes who gets access, who gets developed, and who gets seen as ready for more. And the perspectives that could sharpen your strategy or surface a risk early stay with someone who stopped bringing them to you months ago.

You cannot fix a pattern you cannot see. Trying harder does not fix it. Caring more does not fix it. What fixes it is a system.

The Framework And What It Returns

A.L.L.Y. is not a set of values. It is a leadership operating system. Four steps that give you a practical structure for leading across differences with more trust, more clarity, and more intentional action…instead of relying on instinct, assumption, and good intentions alone.

Ask: Stop assuming. Ask better questions of yourself first. Who am I instinctively trusting, and why? What am I missing because this feels unfamiliar?

Listen: When people do not feel safe telling you the truth, they tell you the version they think you want to hear. You are making strategy on edited data. That is not a people problem. That is a listening environment problem.

Learn: Your most underutilized competitive advantage is already in the room. The perspectives you have been overlooking are your edge, if you know how to access them. Most leaders walk past this every single day.

You Take Action: Awareness without action is just expensive self-reflection. I say this a lot because people keep needing to hear it. This is where insight becomes behavior your team can actually count on.

What The Gallup Data Actually Means

Most leaders read the 30% engagement number and think about their team. I want you to think about yourself.

Because here is what that number is actually measuring: 70% of employees are either not engaged or actively disengaged. They are doing the work. Showing up. Answering the emails. But there is something underneath the surface that is not quite right. And the research is clear that the primary variable driving that number is not compensation, not work-life balance, not the economy.

It is the quality of the relationship between an employee and their direct leader.

Which means that number is, in large part, a leadership report card.

And if you are reading this, there is a reasonable chance you manage people who are not entirely like you. Different generations, different backgrounds, different relationships to authority and feedback and trust. Which means the way you build the kind of relationship that moves that number…for your people, on your team, on your watch…is directly connected to what we have been talking about in this episode.

You cannot lead today’s workforce with yesterday’s playbook and expect today’s results.

Where To Start

If this is landing, The Modern Leader’s Toolkit is the practical next step to learn the five disciplines built around A.L.L.Y.

Download The Modern Leader’s Toolkit →

The rest of this article is for paid subscribers, it included the most expensive A.L.L.Y. failure I have ever witnessed up close, and what it cost. Spoiler: it involved a lot of red.

Upgrade to keep reading →

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Imagine you’re leading a meeting.

A woman shares an idea, gets interrupted mid-sentence, and the conversation moves on without missing a beat. Two minutes later, someone else says essentially the same thing…and suddenly it lands. The room lights up, heads nod, and momentum builds around an idea that was already in the room five minutes ago, attached to a different name.

Nobody pauses. Nobody connects the dots.

I mean ya’ll…someone just got their intellectual property stolen in broad daylight, and the meeting continued like absolutely nothing happened. No police tape. No investigation. Just Gary presenting her idea with full confidence while she sat there trying not to flip the table.

And according to research, it’s likely that you watched the whole thing happen, and you said nothing.

If that’s a situation you’re familiar with witnessing, congratulations. You just taught your entire team exactly whose voice matters in that room…and it wasn’t hers.

The data behind that moment is worth sitting with.

About 60% of men believe they’re strong supporters of women at work. When you ask women? Only about 30% agree.

That’s not a communication problem or a perception issue…that’s a leadership failure hiding in plain sight, playing out in meeting rooms every single day.

I had a behind-the-scenes conversation with my friend Dr. Brad Johnson, a researcher, author, and one of the most clear-eyed voices I know on what allyship actually looks like in practice versus what leaders think it looks like. Brad has spent years studying this gap, and sitting with him, hearing the data up close, it hit differently than reading it in an article. Because behind every percentage point is a room full of people who stopped speaking up.

That conversation, and honestly dozens like it that most people never get access to, is what finally pushed me to do something my friends, colleagues, and team have been asking me to do for a long time: start a podcast.

I’m already in these rooms. I’m already having these conversations. But that’s exactly the problem, most people aren’t. And what gets said backstage is too important, too useful, and frankly too good to stay there.

So here I am, introducing: Not Like Me

The first episode is my full conversation with Brad, digging into what it actually looks like to close that gap. Not as a label you give yourself at a DEI training and forget by Thursday. But as something you do, in real time, in the moments that are easy to miss and even easier to avoid.

Listen or Watch Episode 1 of Not Like Me here

Here’s the part nobody talks about, because it’s uncomfortable and it doesn’t make leaders look great. It’s not that leaders don’t care. Most of them genuinely do.

The problem is that caring is passive, and leadership is not.

When someone gets talked over in a meeting, your brain isn’t thinking about values or allyship or any of the things you wrote in your LinkedIn bio. It’s running a fast, automatic calculation: Is it safe for me to step in right now?

That’s your amygdala, your brain’s ancient threat-detection system, prioritizing your social comfort over your leadership responsibility. And your amygdala does not care about your leadership philosophy. It did not read your performance review about how inclusive you are. It is simply trying to keep you from being socially awkward at 2pm on a Tuesday.

The result is a half-second pause that turns into a full second, and then someone else is already talking and the moment is gone.

Meanwhile, the person who just got interrupted is running their own calculation. Her brain is asking a quieter but far more damaging question: Do I actually belong in this room?

When that question goes unanswered enough times, behavior changes. They might contribute less, self-edit more, and stop bringing their best thinking to the table. Your team doesn’t decline all at once. It happens one overlooked moment at a time, and you won’t see it in the numbers until it’s already too late.

And before you tune out thinking this is a conversation only about women… it isn’t.

This same dynamic plays out with newer employees sitting across from senior leaders, introverts stuck in high-energy rooms, and underrepresented voices navigating majority groups.

The pattern is remarkably consistent. Some voices get amplified, others get minimized, and the leader’s response…or telling non-response teaches the room what’s acceptable. Every single time.

None of this requires perfection. It requires paying attention and being willing to act on what you see, even when it’s slightly uncomfortable. That discomfort is just your brain running its default protection program. Strong leaders learn to override it with a better question: What does leadership require right now?

That’s the shift. And it’s a skill, not a personality trait, which means you build it by practicing it, not by intending to.

This week, pick one meeting. Pay attention to who gets interrupted, overlooked, or talked past. Then step in. Not perfectly, but intentionally. That’s how Ally Leadership becomes consistent, and that’s how you earn the title, not because you decided it for yourself, but because the people you lead watched you prove it.

Want practical language ready before that meeting happens? The V.O.I.C.E. Cheat Sheet gives you conversation tools for the exact moments we’ve been talking about, including how to handle interruptions, set boundaries, and communicate your impact with confidence.

Download the V.O.I.C.E. Cheat Sheet here

Dr. Brad Johnson and I go much deeper on all of this in Episode 1 of Not Like Me. If you want to sharpen how you lead across difference, this conversation will challenge you in the best way.

Listen to Episode 1 of Not Like Me here

And if you want to go even further, Brad’s book The Fair Share breaks down how work gets distributed inside teams, what often goes unseen, and what it actually looks like to build a more equitable, high-performing environment. It’s practical, it’s clear, and it will give you more language for how to lead in these moments.

Pre-order The Fair Share here

What you just read is the framework. What comes next is what I don’t say on stages. The specific follow-up moves that make allyship actually stick after the moment passes, how to handle the pushback that sometimes follows when you do step in, and the one thing most well-intentioned leaders do that quietly unravels everything they’ve built. I’m also sharing the questions I ask myself after hard moments in the room, because staying honest with yourself is half the work.

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