My life philosophy is simple. We get one chance at this and our lives are a gift, our time is too precious to be wasted.
Work should be a positive force in our lives, not something we endure as a means to an end. It should be a mechanism to provide financial stability and comfort but also a chance to bring the greatest version of our selves to the world. It should be a route to self expression, fulfilment and joy.
In my 20s and 30s I would not have imagined I would ever be someone who had a life philosophy.
Back then, I was firmly in survival mode. Superficially successful, but deeply unfulfilled and insecure. Suffering from a painful combination of a driving need to make a difference and a heartfelt desire to have the freedom to be myself, I bounced from one role to another, looking for something unnamed that I now realise I was never going to find in a multinational corporation.
For too long, I was a hidden leader. I knew I had something of great value to offer to the world but I couldn’t find a route to share it.
And I now know, I am not the only one. There are hidden leaders everywhere.
Buried in the hierarchy, they are the people with an intuitive understanding of leadership, value and serving others. They automatically root-cause the problems, they understand their customer’s needs and frustrations and see the latent talent of their peers being blocked by an organisation that’s not optimised for success.
They see what their leaders are missing, but convince themselves they must be the ones missing something.
Always praised for their contribution but somehow never quite ‘ready’ for promotion when appraisal time comes around, they twist themselves into knots trying to figure out what it is they are missing. They compensate by working tirelessly to fill the gaps where they can, holding the organisation together like glue, desperately hoping someone will notice and support them.
The hidden leaders don’t fit in anywhere.
They aren’t competitive and sure of themselves like the high-profile leaders who get promoted ahead of them. They are too self aware and reflective to argue too strongly that they are right (the more they learn, the more they realise they don’t know; supercharged levels of humility and curiosity that fuel insecurity when not supported).
Surely they must be missing something that these people who have been in the business so much longer than them can see?
But equally, they aren’t able to accept the status quo and stay in their lane like their colleagues who are happy delivering their work against a plan which doesn’t stand up to questioning.
It’s a lonely place to be, the hidden leader looks around and wonders why everyone else is ok, reaching the inevitable conclusion that it must be something within them that is broken.
So they strive to make things better, not for their own sake, but because they can see the business could and should be delivering more value.
The hidden leaders are deeply empathic, value their personal relationships highly and yet often sacrifice time with family and friends because they are driven to take responsibility for everything in their work. When people ask them why they care so much, they can’t really answer. It’s a specific sort of painful dissatisfaction.
The route out, of course, is upwards.
As a hidden leader you will feel that sense of satisfaction and fulfilment when you are in a role where your leadership is no longer hidden, is instead in alignment with the authority of your role. And when the hidden leaders do break through to roles where they have responsibility for others and the freedom to make strategic decisions, they are incredibly effective.
Their intelligent approach, intuitive wisdom and focus on what really matters leads to high performing teams and incredible business results.
The challenge is that the path upward depends on waiting long enough for someone to notice you need to be given a chance. And when the people you need to see this are threatened by your capability and insight, or just not aware enough to see what you see, you can be waiting for a very long time.
I now know there is an alternative path to success and happiness for the hidden leader, but I couldn’t see it from where I was standing. I stumbled on it by accident when I started training as a coach.
I turned to coaching as a career solution, what I got was a life solution. Through this process I understood that escaping the trap of the hidden leader wasn’t a matter of luck or time.
There is a path to life satisfaction for the hidden leader and it starts with understanding yourself and recognising you have more options than you can see at this moment.
If I had understood this 20 years ago, my career would have looked very different. The things I now understand have helped me increase my impact exponentially.
I can now see that everything I thought was wrong in my workplace earlier in my career actually was wrong. I mistakenly believed I needed more experience to see something different, what I actually needed was a different mindset and the courage to take action.
We need to increase the impact of hidden leaders everywhere, for everyone’s sake.
If you are done with wasting time and being overlooked, if you have had enough of your career not being all you want it to be, if you are ready to make this year the year you finally get the role that allows you to make the impact you know you are capable of…
Or if you recognise there are hidden leaders in your organisation who you need to support to fulfil their potential..
Or you have been a hidden leader and are now in a position where you can support others (but still have your own struggles influencing peers who don’t have the same world-view as you)..
Let's have a conversation about how I can help.
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