I grew up thinking that I needed to be loud to be a good leader…

Despite starting my career at a top consulting firm and landing multiple Director-level roles before I was 30, I always thought that being an introvert made me a less effective leader…until that 360 review that changed everything. 

Let me paint the picture: At 30, I was a Director at a tech startup and managed a 40 person team. On LinkedIn, I looked like I was crushing it. In reality, I not only felt disconnected from my team, I felt like I was failing them. 

Determined to improve, I asked to do a 360 review to get input on where to focus. My heart sank when I saw the results. While my peers saw me as a caring and supportive leader, the scores from my direct reports told a different story - that I wasn’t leading in alignment with my core values. 

While it was painful to see low scores in areas that I care deeply about, it also helped me realize that I had been so focused on how I thought I should be as a leader that I had neglected to show my team who I was at my core. Clearly, that wasn’t working, so for the first time in my career, I gave myself the permission to show up fully with my team.

Showing up fully meant sharing my experience of burnout and depression with my team and normalizing more vulnerable conversations. Showing up fully meant sitting down 1 on 1 with all 40 people on my team to check in. Showing up fully meant facilitating personal growth sessions for my team using tools like Myers-Briggs and StrengthsFinder. As my team started opening up in new ways, trust, psychological safety, and communication naturally improved. Something I had shied away from for so long ended up being one of the most powerful things we did together. 

Notice that none of these shifts required me to be louder, only to be more of myself. Because being a good leader has nothing to do with how loud you are, but how fully you show up.