The Leadership Habit That’s Wasting More Energy Than You Realize
There’s a leadership habit that’s quietly eating up a hell of a lot of your energy.
And you may not even realize you’re doing it.
It’s not procrastination.
It’s not poor time management.
It’s not that you need to delegate more.
It’s managing other people’s opinions of you.
You send the email—and then reread it to make sure you didn’t sound too direct.
You make a decision you know is right—and then overexplain the reasoning behind it so everyone understands where you’re coming from.
You have something important to say in a meeting—but mentally rehearse it first, trying to anticipate how everyone in the room might respond.
You give feedback—and spend the next hour wondering if they’re upset with you.
You walk away from a conversation replaying what you said, what they said, what their facial expression meant, and whether you should have handled it differently.
Meanwhile, you have an actual job to do.
How Much Energy Are You Spending Managing Other People’s Opinions?
The women I work with are incredibly accomplished.
They’re executives. Entrepreneurs. Leaders. Women responsible for teams, businesses, decisions, strategy, growth, and results.
They know how to lead.
But many of them are also carrying around an invisible second job:
Trying to manage how everyone else experiences them.
Am I being too much?
Not enough?
Too direct?
Too emotional?
Too opinionated?
Too demanding?
Did I explain myself enough?
Does she think I’m difficult?
Does he think I know what I’m doing?
Are they questioning my decision?
And because high-achieving women are really freaking good at solving problems, they often try to solve this one too.
So they prepare more.
Explain more.
Work harder.
Rehearse the conversation.
Soften the message.
Read the room.
Watch everyone’s reactions.
And adjust accordingly.
That might look like thoughtful leadership from the outside.
But there’s a difference between being aware of how you impact people and being controlled by what you think they might think about you.
That distinction matters.
This Isn’t Really About Other People
Here’s where this gets uncomfortable.
Because the problem isn’t actually everyone else’s opinion.
It’s what their opinion might mean about you.
If someone disagrees with you, does that mean you made the wrong decision?
If someone is disappointed, does that mean you failed them?
If someone thinks you’re too direct, does that mean you need to soften yourself?
If someone questions your expertise, does that make you question it too?
If someone doesn’t like you, can you still trust yourself?
This is why you can’t always solve the problem by telling yourself to simply “stop caring what people think.”
If it were that easy, you probably would have done it already.
These patterns can run deep.
They’re tied to the beliefs you’ve collected about what it means to be successful, likable, respected, valuable, good, or worthy.
And at some point, managing everyone else’s perception of you may have actually helped you succeed.
Maybe being prepared earned you praise.
Being agreeable kept the peace.
Overdelivering got you recognized.
Reading the room helped you belong.
Being the person everyone could count on made you valuable.
Those strategies worked.
Until they started costing you more than they were giving you.
Confident Leadership Requires Self-Trust
There’s a version of leadership that’s exhausting because you’re constantly looking outside yourself for confirmation that you’re doing it right.
And there’s another version built on something much steadier:
Self-trust.
That doesn’t mean you stop listening to feedback.
It doesn’t mean you become unwilling to change your mind.
And it sure as hell doesn’t mean you stop caring about the people you lead.
It means your opinion of yourself stops changing every time someone else has an opinion about you.
You can hear feedback without making it mean something about your worth.
You can make an unpopular decision without spending the next three days questioning yourself.
You can be direct without immediately trying to soften or explain it.
You can let someone be disappointed without assuming it’s your job to fix their disappointment.
You can walk into the room without performing the version of yourself you think everyone wants to see.
That’s a very different way to lead.
And it frees up an incredible amount of energy.
You Don’t Have to Untangle This Alone
This is also why I believe deeply in doing this work alongside other women.
Because some leadership patterns are difficult to see when you’re standing in the middle of them.
You can know intellectually that you need to trust yourself more and still find yourself rewriting the email for the fourth time.
You can understand that you shouldn’t care so much about everyone else’s opinion and still feel your stomach drop when someone pushes back.
Awareness matters.
But lasting change often requires more than awareness.
It takes practice.
Reflection.
Honest feedback.
Support.
And sometimes someone helping you recognize the belief underneath the behavior you’ve been trying so damn hard to change.
That’s a big part of why I created Brilliance Unleashed, my leadership mastermind for high-achieving women.
It’s a small-group coaching experience designed to help accomplished women get out from under the inner noise that keeps them second-guessing themselves and begin leading with more confidence, self-trust, and calm authority.
Because the goal isn’t to turn you into a different leader.
It’s to help you stop questioning the one you already are.
Imagine What You Could Do With All That Energy
Think about how much mental bandwidth goes into managing other people’s opinions.
The conversations you replay.
The emails you rewrite.
The decisions you overexplain.
The ideas you hold back.
The reactions you analyze.
The energy you spend trying to make sure everyone understands you, approves of you, agrees with you, or at the very least isn’t upset with you.
Now imagine putting that energy somewhere else.
Into the work you actually care about.
Into the bold idea you haven’t said out loud yet.
Into making the decision and moving forward.
Into developing your team.
Into growing your business.
Into solving the problem in front of you instead of solving for everyone’s possible perception of you.
Into your life outside of work.
Hell, maybe into doing absolutely nothing for once.
You already have enough responsibility on your plate. You don’t need the full-time job of managing everyone else’s opinion of you, too.
Ready to Lead With More Confidence and Self-Trust?
This is the work we’re doing inside Brilliance Unleashed: A Mastermind for Confident, Grounded Leadership.
This isn’t about adding another leadership strategy to your toolbox or teaching you how to perform confidence more convincingly.
It’s about getting underneath the patterns that make you question yourself in the first place.
Over five months, you’ll join a small group of high-achieving professional women for live teaching, reflection, personalized coaching, and honest conversations about what it actually takes to lead without being run by the inner critic, perfectionism, overthinking, or everyone else’s opinions.
You’ve already proven you can achieve a hell of a lot while carrying all of that.
Imagine what becomes possible when you stop.
Enrollment for Brilliance Unleashed is open now, but doors close soon.
If you’re ready to stop spending so much energy managing how everyone else sees you—and start putting that energy toward owning your brilliance and actually leading—I’d love to have you in the room.
Learn more about Brilliance Unleashed and claim your spot before doors close.
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