Leadership Presence: The Override That Feels Like Good Judgement

You had the read early in the meeting. The recommendation that went out had fewer edges and one more caveat than the one you'd written in your head, and nothing about that looks like a leadership presence problem.

Leaders in this position tend to call it tiredness and put it down to the volume of work. What I keep seeing in the leadership rooms I work in doesn't fit that.

Reading a room is a real capability. The leaders who override themselves most are usually the ones who are best at it, and it's one of the reasons they're in the seat they're in. The person didn't change. The role got bigger, the audiences multiplied, and the same calibration kept running against far more variables, until a skill aimed at the room started being aimed at the woman using it.

Adjusting the message for the audience is leadership. Removing yourself from the message is where the extra cost sits, and there's no moment where anyone flags that the first has become the second.

It rarely turns up as a single decision you could point to. It turns up in front of a wardrobe before the day has started, and in the meeting where the sharpest read stays in your head until someone asks for it directly. By Thursday afternoon there's less of you left than the calendar can account for.

The common response is confidence work, on the assumption that the override is insecurity. That reading's worth a second look, because it sends a capable leader off to fix something that isn't broken.

The full article works through where the override runs, and why getting dressed is often where it gets loudest.

Where does yours run?

Read the full article on Substack: https://sonyachoilarosa.substack.com/p/you-had-the-read