Stepping In
A Reflection on Growth, Leadership, and the Courage to Act
Recently I was sitting with the CEO of a biotech company discussing leadership development and coaching. At one point he shook his head and said: “I don’t really believe people change.”
Recently I was sitting with the CEO of a biotech company discussing leadership development and coaching. At one point he shook his head and said: “I don’t really believe people change.”
He told me about an executive he had once sent to a coach. For a while things seemed better. The executive listened more carefully, communicated differently, and appeared more self-aware. Then, gradually, old patterns returned. The same reactions. The same frustrations. The same behaviour.
“A waste of time and money,” he concluded.
I knew what he meant.
Most of us have seen something similar. Someone attends a workshop, reads a book, starts a new habit, makes a resolution. For a while things look different. Then life gets busy, pressure returns, and before long they seem to be exactly where they started.
As I listened, I found myself thinking of a senior manager I had been working with over the previous months. Not because her story disproved his point.
In many ways, she remained the same person.
And yet, looking back, she had grown.
The situation itself was surprisingly ordinary.
She had recently stepped into a new leadership role and was now working across several teams. During one of our conversations, she described a tension around priorities. Different expectations needed to be aligned. I suggested that a simple conversation with her former manager might help clarify things.
Her reaction surprised me.
What seemed like a straightforward conversation suddenly felt loaded. At first, I assumed there was some complication I wasn’t aware of. Perhaps the relationship was difficult. Perhaps there had been previous disagreements. Perhaps there were broader tensions in the team.
There weren’t.
She respected her manager. They worked well together. The conversation itself was unlikely to be confrontational. In many ways, it was one of those ordinary situations that occur every day in large organizations: a conversation that simply needed to happen.
And yet the prospect of having it seemed to terrify her.
A few days later, she found herself standing near the coffee machine. Her manager was there. The topic was already on her mind. The conversation would probably have taken no more than a couple of minutes.
She said nothing. Instead, she walked away.
Afterwards, she replayed the conversation in her head. Considered different approaches. Imagined possible reactions. Criticized herself for not speaking up.
From the outside, it seemed like a small thing. From the inside, it clearly wasn’t.
What struck me over time was that the coffee-machine conversation was not an isolated incident.
As we continued to work together, similar situations kept appearing in different forms. In meetings, she sometimes had important questions but struggled to enter the conversation. After discussions with more senior leaders, she would often leave replaying the conversation in her head, thinking about what she wished she had said and criticising herself for staying silent.
What was very clear was that competence was rarely the issue.
She was highly capable, thoughtful, and respected by her colleagues. Most of the time, she already knew what needed to be said.
And yet, again and again, she found herself hesitating to step in, to take up space, or to voice her perspective. Afterwards came the familiar cycle of second-guessing — what she should have said, what she could have said, what she would say next time.
That was what struck me. She already knew what she wanted to say. And yet, in the crucial moment, something held her back.
Rather than focusing on the conversations themselves, we began to pay closer attention to what happened just before she spoke.
What immediately stood out was how much attention she gave to everything happening around her. The meeting. The people in the room. The different options available to her. The possible consequences of each. And she was exceptionally good at that. Long before a conversation took place, she had often already thought through multiple scenarios and possible responses.
When I asked how she actually felt, she would often begin by explaining what she was thinking. But after staying with the question, something else emerged. There was often a tightening in her chest and throat. A nervousness that appeared before difficult conversations or moments when she wanted to speak up.
Instead of moving past it, we stayed with it. We simply paid attention to what was happening in her body. Sometimes we experimented with small supporting gestures — a hand resting on her upper chest, a way of grounding herself before acting.
And what became increasingly clear was that the nervousness wasn’t going away. The tightening still appeared. The difficult conversations still felt uncomfortable. She still didn't always feel ready.
And yet, over time, something began to shift.
She started to enter the conversation anyway. She spoke while uncertainty was still present. She asked questions before she had fully thought through every possible response. And she increasingly trusted her own judgement, even when part of her remained nervous.
Thinking back to my conversation with the biotech CEO, I realized we were looking at different things. The woman I worked with did not become a different person. She was still thoughtful, analytical, and someone who liked to think things through carefully.
The nervousness did not disappear either.
What changed was that it no longer stopped her.
She learned to notice it and to accept it. She carried it with her into the conversation rather than waiting for it to go away first. And because of that, she began to step in. She spoke up more often in meetings. She increasingly asked difficult questions and entered conversations she would once have avoided. And through all of this, she trusted herself more.
Looking back, I can understand why the CEO was skeptical. Many of our habits and behaviour patterns remain surprisingly stable over time.
And yet something important can still shift.
A person who once walked away from the conversation at the coffee machine can eventually have it. A person who remained silent can speak up. A person who waited until they felt ready can learn to step in before that moment arrives.
Perhaps that is one way human beings grow: not by becoming someone else, but by becoming able to step into situations, even when they still feel uncomfortable.
And sometimes, after doing so for a while, we discover that the boundaries of our lives have quietly expanded.
