Learning to Trust What Others See In You
They Gave Her the Role. She Just Had to Believe She Deserved It.
She got the call. The president of her organization had made the decision, and it was a big one… an executive position.
And then she called me, unsure if she should take it.
Not because she wasn’t qualified but because she couldn’t yet see in herself what others so clearly saw in her. Even with people around her recognizing her capability and believing she was ready, she hesitated to fully trust it.
When someone else sees you more clearly than you see yourself
Here’s what I want you to sit with for a moment: the president of her organization didn’t offer her this role by accident. He looked at her track record, her leadership, the way she showed up and he made a deliberate decision.
That’s not a gift handed to someone out of convenience. That’s someone being seen.
And yet, so many of us, especially women stepping into bigger leadership roles immediately look inward and start cataloging every reason we might not be enough. Every gap in our technical knowledge. Every time we’ve felt uncertain. Every way we think we’re still learning.
What if we trusted what other people see in us?
The job changes when you move into leadership
One of the things we talked through was her worry about the technical side of the role. The position has so many moving parts: data, platforms, strategy, creative and she was concerned about the pieces she felt less confident in.
But here’s what shifts when you step into an executive seat: the technical components become less about you executing them and more about you leading the people who do.
Your job is no longer to be the best at every tool in the stack. Your job is to build a team that is, and to create the conditions for them to thrive. That requires a completely different skill set… one built on vision, trust, communication, and people. And those? She had in abundance.
The work-life balance conversation no one was actually having
There was something else weighing on her… the fear that taking this role would cost her everything outside of it. The balance she’d worked hard to protect.
So I asked: had anyone at the organization made that an issue? Had anyone told her this role required her to be always-on, always available, with no boundaries?
The answer was no.
The fear was coming from inside. It wasn’t an external expectation being placed on her… it was her own beliefs about what leadership had to look like. Her own assumptions about what she’d have to sacrifice. Her own biases about whether she could hold her boundaries and still be taken seriously.
That’s a really important thing to name, because it’s not uncommon. We carry so many unspoken rules about what it means to be a leader and a lot of them aren’t true.
“You can hold your boundaries and lead well. Those two things are not in conflict… they’re connected.”
3 things to hold onto in that moment
If you’re in a similar place… being offered something big and feeling the doubt creeping in…here’s what I want you to hear:
Trust what others see in you. When a leader you respect extends an opportunity, that’s data. They’re not guessing. Let their confidence inform yours.
Leadership is about people, not just expertise. You don’t need to know everything. You need to build, develop, and lead a team that collectively knows everything. That’s a different skill and one worth developing.
Examine whose rules you’re following. Before you assume the new role will cost you your life outside of work, ask: is that actually true, or is that a story I’ve inherited? Check the real expectations before letting imagined ones make the decision for you.
The Real Shift
The next level is not about proving more or doing more. It is about learning to trust yourself in a deeper way.
Trusting that your experience has prepared you.
Trusting that you can lead without having every answer.
And trusting that you are capable of holding both leadership and the life you want outside of it.
That is the shift most people never talk about, but it is the one that changes everything.