Embracing Confidence

Women leaders (myself included) get so rattled when we are made to feel like we didn’t give others enough space to voice their thoughts.

We lose confidence when we feel we aren’t humble enough.

The thing is; we are being told to listen and follow all. the. time. Even though we always pay attention to those around us and the people we are privileged to lead.

What we are not told to do is hold steady, stay solid, stick to our ideas. They are good – even if they are different. Especially when they are different.

The ideas of the past have led to a status quo that celebrates the individual over the communal, and in so doing abandons those most vulnerable among us while destroying the ground we stand on.

Well done.

I would rather think too highly of myself and flip the script on that abject failure.

Because we can be humble and confident at the same time.

They are not mutually exclusive, and thinking they are diminishes our capacity to lead. If we are willing to keep learning, be wrong, and argued with, we have not lost our humility. I say we can stop worrying about that.

The women leaders I know are capable of holding the grey area that is life, not back down when the work gets hard, and know when to reach out for help. And we listen.

That is true leadership.

And we do all this despite being told to follow all our lives.

Time to stop telling women how to lead so we don’t have to battle our own demons on top of the ones white men created.

We got this. Get out of the way.