An executive I was coaching recently described herself as a very different leader from the one she was at home.
At home she was warm, patient and connected to the people around her. At work she was factual, direct and focused on outcomes. She trusted people to deliver and expected them to tell her if they couldn’t. She had little patience for excuses and found herself increasingly frustrated when capable people couldn’t solve problems that she thought were relatively straightforward.
As she described her leadership style, she said something that stayed with me.
“I don’t really have it in me at work to deal with other people’s emotions.”
She wasn’t saying it proudly, she was simply stating it as a fact, as though somewhere along the way she had packed that part of herself away and stopped expecting it to come with her to work.
The more we talked, the more curious I became; people don’t usually wake up one morning and decide to become less empathetic, less patient or less emotionally connected.
What We Give Up to Get Ahead
What I’ve noticed through years of coaching women leaders is that they learn to suppress emotional responses in order to adapt and be successful in a leadership context. They believe it will help them build credibility, earn influence and be seen as “leadership material”. Until one day they realised they can no longer access parts of themselves that made them effective in the first place.
As we explored her story, she reflected on the environments that had shaped her career. Nobody had explicitly told her to change. Instead, she had spent years observing what was valued and adapting accordingly – be decisive and have an answer, don’t overcomplicate things, keep things moving.
She was ambitious, intelligent and highly observant and, like many successful leaders, she learned how to succeed in the environment she was in. And succeed she did.
The Moment It Became Clear
The turning point came during a recent team training session where participants were practising coaching conversations around real workplace challenges. Her role was to coach a senior executive through a problem that he was grappling with.
She was meant to be playing the role of coach but she couldn’t stay curious.
The more he spoke, the more frustrated she became. In her mind the answer seemed obvious…
Why couldn’t he work it out?
Why was he getting stuck?
Before long she had stopped coaching and started solving.
When we unpacked the experience together, she realised she wasn’t really reacting to him at all. She was reacting to a standard she had spent years applying to herself.
Figure it out.
Push through.
Don’t need help.
Find the answer and move on.
The exercise wasn’t designed to test whether she could solve the problem. It was designed to test whether she could stay curious long enough for someone else to solve it. Yet within minutes she had moved from coaching into fixing. In that moment she recognised something she hadn’t seen before.
The adaptation that had helped her succeed had also narrowed her. Not dramatically or intentionally but gradually over time. She had become exceptionally effective at being decisive, practical and outcome focused. But she had become less comfortable with uncertainty, less patient with struggle and less able to stay present when someone else’s emotions entered the conversation.
She hadn’t become a worse leader because in many respects she had become more successful. What had changed was her access to parts of herself that had once helped her connect, coach and understand people more deeply.
A Conversation We Need to Have
This is the conversation we don’t have often enough with women leaders.
We spend a lot of time talking about confidence, influence and executive presence. What we discuss less often is what women may quietly put down along the way. Most aren’t trying to become someone else – they’re responding intelligently to the environment around them, learning what creates credibility and what creates friction.
The coaching conversation stayed with me because I don’t think this story is unique.
Over the years, I’ve worked with many women who have become incredibly effective at navigating leadership environments. They learned how to build credibility, influence and authority. In many ways, the adaptation worked exactly as it was supposed to.
Perhaps the question isn’t whether we’ve adapted. Leadership will always require that. The more interesting question is whether, in the process of succeeding, we’ve turned down something we still need.
When we continually suppress our emotional responses in order to fit in, we eventually risk suppressing parts of ourselves. And maybe that’s worth paying attention to before success asks us to leave too much of who we are behind.
If you think you are holding part of yourself back that could actually help you:
Notice what you keep calling “professional”.
Some behaviours are genuine discipline. Others are just well-rehearsed self-protection. Ask yourself: when I’m being “professional”, am I bringing more clarity to the room, or am I hiding something useful?
Look for the parts of yourself that only appear outside work.
If patience, humour, warmth, honesty, ease or curiosity show up at home but disappear at work, don’t assume they’re irrelevant to leadership. They may be part of what helps people trust you.
Separate adapting from erasing.
Adapting means changing your language, pace or tone to fit the context. Erasing means leaving behind something true because you think it won’t be welcome. The second one costs more over time.
Watch where you become least curious.
Notice how and where you move from coaching to fixing when someone else’s struggle feels inefficient. That impatience may be a clue: you may have left behind your own permission to need time, seek help or ask questions.
Ask who gets the most guarded version of you.
Often it’s peers, boards or senior stakeholders, the people who most need your judgement and candour. Reflect on where you are so busy managing how you land that people stop getting a clear read on what you actually think.
If this resonates, we’d love to help you explore it further. Get in touch with Dattner Group to find out how our coaching and leadership programs can help you reconnect with the parts of yourself that make you a more effective, more human leader.
