Dear Certainty, I'm Handing in My Notice

One of the strangest things about leadership is that the more senior you become, the more people assume you have the answers.

The job starts to come with an invisible expectation that you should be certain, confident and composed at all times. But some of the most important moments in leadership happen when we're none of those things.

They're the moments when a project isn't going to plan and you have to admit it. When someone gives you feedback you weren't expecting. When a challenge exposes a gap in your thinking. When a strategy that once made perfect sense suddenly doesn't fit the situation anymore.

That's not failure. That's development.

Growth isn't just about adding new skills or knowledge. Sometimes it's about letting go of assumptions, beliefs and ways of seeing ourselves that have served us well but no longer fit the person we're becoming. And that process can feel surprisingly vulnerable.

After all, it's much more comfortable to be the person who knows than the person who is learning. It's easier to defend an existing view than to examine it. It's easier to project certainty than to say, "I'm not sure anymore."

Yet when I think about the leaders I've trusted most, it wasn't because they always had the answers. It was because they were willing to be honest about what they didn't know. They could acknowledge mistakes, change their minds when new information emerged, and stay curious when things became complicated.

That's a different kind of strength.

That doesn’t make leadership about sharing everything or wearing your heart on your sleeve. It's more the willingness to be changed by what you learn. And maybe that's what transformational leadership really looks like. Not becoming a better version of who you already are, but becoming willing to outgrow who you've been.