In a recent live conversation, I sat down with Megan Reese; therapist, licensed counselor, and coach who specializes in psychological safety and neuro-affirming workplaces to talk about why so many folks end up playing small at work. What we landed on wasn't a confidence problem. It was something more structural than that.
Here are four things from that conversation I keep thinking about.
1. Playing small isn't a personal failing. It's a system working as designed.
The workplaces most of us spend our careers in were not built to help us thrive. They were built around productivity, profit, and control. And what gets rewarded in those environments: being easy to work with, not rocking the boat, putting in long hours without complaint; looks a lot like shrinking.
Megan named it clearly: some of us were socialized to put everyone else's needs first. And workplaces reinforce that. If you've ever watched someone get passed over, pushed out, or quietly sidelined for speaking up, you learned something. Your nervous system took note. That's not weakness. That's how conditioning works.
The point isn't to feel hopeless about it. The point is to stop treating it as a character flaw and start seeing it as something that was done to you; which means it can be undone.
2. "Executive presence" usually just means: be more like a cis-white man.
Megan said this plainly, and I think it deserves to be said plainly: when someone is told they need more executive presence, the feedback is almost always asking them to perform a very specific kind of leadership that has nothing to do with their actual effectiveness.
She described a colleague who would sit quietly through a meeting and then, once in a while, say exactly the one thing that unlocked everything. Everyone listened. Everyone respected her. But she wouldn't have been tapped to lead; because she didn't talk the most or the loudest.
What she and I both believe: if someone gives you that feedback, get curious before you change anything. Ask them what they're actually looking for. Ask what outcomes they're trying to create. Because sometimes that feedback is useful and sometimes it's a confession about what that person is afraid of.
Nobody else gets to define what your leadership looks like. Only you can do that.
3. Your imposter syndrome has information in it, but it doesn't get to drive.
When the subject of imposter syndrome came up, Megan reframed it in a way I've been sitting with since: the inner critic is usually trying to protect you. It has real information in it. The question is whether you let it inform you or take over.
She suggested treating it like one consultant on a team; someone whose input you consider, but who doesn't get to veto everything. And then she offered something practical: run experiments instead of waiting until you're ready. Try one small piece of the thing. See what you learn. Tweak it. Run it again.
My son is 16 months old and just learned to walk. He falls down constantly. He gets back up every time. Somewhere between toddlerhood and adulthood, we stop doing that; we start treating every stumble like evidence that we shouldn't have tried. The experimental approach is about recovering that instinct.
4. Disconnecting from joy doesn't make you more productive. It just serves capitalism.
Megan said something in this conversation that I think about all the time now: when we're tired, drained, and disconnected from the people and things we love, that only serves the system. It's not virtuous. It's not hustle. It's just depletion in the service of someone else's bottom line.
She was speaking directly to people in job searches; the ones who spend eight exhausting hours a day applying and refreshing and spiraling. Her ask was simple: what if the most productive thing you could do right now was take care of your body? Go outside. Move. Make something. Let yourself dream without an agenda.
This applies beyond the job search, too. If you're building something on the side while holding down a full-time role, the care rituals aren't the reward you get after you've done enough work. They're what make the work sustainable in the first place.
You can connect with Megan on Linkedin. And if you want to join the next live conversation in this series, head to learnmindfully.co/events to see what's coming up.
This episode of In Her Words is available wherever you listen to podcasts.