Every person I coach has outgrown at least one identity they are still trying to live within.
We learn to shrink ourselves into labels early. At first they help other people make sense of us. Later we mistake them for who we are.
Smart. Difficult. Creative. Too intense. Not enough.
The repetition gives them weight. The familiarity gives them authority. Before we know it, we are adjusting ourselves to stay consistent with a story that stopped being true a long time ago.
Here is my part in it. I have held on to labels that felt comfortable even when they kept me small. Some of them made me feel capable. Some made me feel boxed in. All of them hid parts of me I had not learned to name yet. Letting them go has taken more honesty than effort, and it is work I am still doing.
For much of my life, I was praised for how quickly I stepped into whatever role I was given. That praise became its own quiet limit. My growth kept moving faster than the roles around me. Some people appreciated that. Others did not. Either way, it was true.
This is not limited to leaders. I see it in anyone who is growing. Most of the time, ability is not the issue. An old identity is.
The real work is learning to notice when you have outgrown a version of yourself. It is choosing to tell a new truth about who you are now, not who you were then.
If you are in a season where the label feels small and the expectation feels even smaller, reach out. There is more room than you think.
​Most strategies make perfect sense in the boardroom. Four layers down they flail.
You were in the room. The deck was tight. Leadership was aligned. Everyone left with the same priorities.
One team is moving fast, another is protecting quality, and a third is defending margin. None of them are wrong. All of them believe they are executing your strategy.
You probably sensed something was off before you could name it.
A strategy that cannot answer "what does this actually change four levels down" has not been finished. It has been approved.
The gap is almost always there. A few conversations will find it. In my experience, very few organizations ever have them.
Be careful not to be intimidating. Aloof. Intellectually snobby.
The hiring manager called me to move me forward in a process he had initiated. He loved what he saw. He wanted me there.
Then he said it. A watch out, he called it. Be careful not to be intimidating with the next round of interviewers.
I have heard some version of those words more times than I would like to admit. I have heard them and been selected. I have heard them and not been selected.
As I have gotten older, I have realized they all tell me the same thing. Not about my ceiling. About theirs.
Here is the part that stays with me.
Every time I have gotten in, every time the distance closed and the work began, I have been told I am the most approachable and authentic person in the room. Not occasionally. Consistently.
The problem was never me. It was the gap between who they imagined and who I actually am.
Organizations are making consequential decisions from that distance, before they ever close it, every day.
I was in a conversation yesterday with a client. Exceptional leader. Significant track record. Late stage interviews for senior roles in fintech.
The feedback he received: the other person was a tad closer to what they were looking for.
That is not feedback. That is an organization that could not name what it felt in the room and did not try.
Here is what is actually happening in that room.
The candidate who creates no friction, no uncertainty, no unnameable feeling is easier to say yes to. The one who would have actually moved something makes people uncomfortable in a way they will not examine. So they don't. They choose comfort and call it fit.
What they are giving up is not a hire. It is what he would have built. The problems he would have solved. The people he would have developed. The work that only happens when someone of that caliber has real room to operate.
That feedback is not an assessment. It is a forecast. What it predicts is not his ceiling. It indicts yours.
I work with leaders who have been on the receiving end of those words, and with the organizations that used them. Both problems are solvable. Neither solves itself.
The word they were looking for is game-changing.