I called it strength

Acknowledging it wasn't, was the first honest thing I did.

I am the person people come to - I always have been.

The one who listened without interrupting, remembered the things others had forgotten they’d even shared, and who could absorb someone’s pain without flinching. And I wanted those connections. I paid attention, I cared deeply, and I gave everything I had to the people around me.

But there was something I never quite allowed in return.

I was always carefully in control of how close people got. Not in a way anyone would have noticed…I wasn’t cold or distant. I was warm, present, engaged. But underneath that, I was steering. Guiding conversations away from the parts of me I didn’t want seen. Making sure I was always the one asking questions, because as long as the focus stayed on them, it couldn’t reach me.

I told myself it was strength. That people needed me to be solid and steady. That if I let any vulnerability through, any sign that I was carrying something, they’d stop trusting me. So, I kept the capable, together version front and centre, and everything else backstage.

Sound familiar?

Having spent years working in the people and change space, I’ve supported people through their hardest moments. Restructures, the weight of leading teams through change they didn’t choose, the quiet exhaustion of feeling unseen in a system that was supposed to support you. I felt every one of those conversations deeply. Not as an observer, but as someone who absorbed what was in the room and carried it long after the meeting ended.

From the outside, I was dependable. The person who remained composed when everything else was falling apart.

What nobody saw was the other side of that - the exhaustion sitting just beneath consistent performance. The interactions I’d turn over in my mind long after the day had ended. The energy spent making sure nothing real came through.

This kind of pattern doesn’t look like struggle. It looks like professionalism. And that’s exactly what makes it so easy to miss.

I see it constantly. Leaders who have learned to perform composure so well that they’ve lost access to the very thing that would make them more effective: their ability to read what’s happening in the room, to sense what their people actually need, and to lead from a place of real connection rather than polished distance. They’ve come to believe that sensitivity is something to manage. That a firm emotional boundary is what good leadership looks like.

But when did you decide that feeling things deeply made you less credible? I’d be willing to bet it wasn’t a conscious decision. Just a slow accumulation of moments that taught you it wasn’t safe to let it show.

And what nobody told you - what nobody told either of us - is what that distance is doing to the people around you. Because they don’t experience your composure as strength. They experience it as absence. And in that absence, they stop bringing their best thinking, their real challenges, their trust.

For me, the shift came through working with a coach who helped me see something I’d been unable to see on my own. That what I'd framed as strength, was actually fear. A persistent, quiet fear that if people saw all of me, not just the reliable and capable version, they wouldn’t stay.

But the moments that have changed me most weren’t the ones I powered through. They were the ones I allowed myself to actually feel.

These days, I move through life differently. Not because things are simpler, but because I’m no longer spending energy managing what comes through. My sensitivity isn’t something I contain; it’s something I bring deliberately. And far from undermining my credibility, it’s the foundation of every meaningful connection I’ve built.

Everything changes when you stop treating sensitivity as a liability. You stop performing steadiness and start embodying something more sustainable, because it’s coming from somewhere true.

This won’t happen in a day. But it also doesn’t require a complete reinvention. For me, it started with simply paying attention to moments I was performing and getting curious about why.

So, let me ask you something.

Where are you still performing? Not on a stage, but in the small, daily moments. The reaction you suppress in a meeting. The instinct you override because it feels too exposed. The part of yourself you’ve quietly decided has no place in a professional setting.

Because what if that’s exactly the part your people have been waiting for you to bring?

Sensitivity isn’t a weakness. In a world asking leaders to hold teams through relentless uncertainty, to build trust when the ground keeps shifting, to stay connected when everything is pushing them towards distance - it might be the most underrated leadership quality there is.

So, it was never a weakness. It was always the whole point.

If this resonated, there’s more where this came from.

Rewriting the Playbook is a free three-part masterclass series for leaders who are done with the old rules. Each session stands alone - drop into one, a few or all three. No commitment. Just the conversations most leadership development never makes space for.

We’re starting with From Authority to Influence - Thursday 28 May, 6:30pm-7:45pm AEST. Free and virtual.

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