Hi Leaders,
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.
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