I was on a start-up call recently, for a leadership programme. The kind of call where everyone goes round in turns saying who they are. I sat there listening and could feel it. The performing, the proving. Where they’d worked, who they’d worked for, what they’d delivered. It all felt a bit much – like they were peacocking.

Then it got to me.

“Hi, I’m Andrea, from Manchester. You can probably guess that from the bee on my shelf behind me.”

That was it. That’s all I gave them.

One of the leaders said, “…and you’ve worked with leaders for nearly 25 years, and got level 7 qualifications in the topic?”

“Yes,” I said.

He only knew because we’d talked years before. I didn’t say it on that call …he said it for me.

Sit with that for a second, because I did.

A room full of people who might work with me, deciding whether I was right for it, and the only reason any of them knew what I’d actually done was because one man happened to remember a conversation from years ago. If he hadn’t been on that call, and if he hadn’t remembered …nobody in that room would have known.

I do this for a living. I help people see what they can’t see about themselves. And I still needed someone else to see it for me, out loud, in front of everyone, before it counted.

I sat there afterwards thinking about my Mum and Dad. Nobody in our house went round telling people what they’d achieved. You did the work. People felt it. That was enough.

I ended up leading the action learning strand …the only one on the call qualified with 25 years’ experience, and yet I still needed someone else to say so out loud before it counted.

Then a week later, someone asked me how long I’d been running my business. “Nearly eleven years,” I said. I saw the shock on their face, because I never led with it. Because that’s not how I was raised.

For years I thought it was humility. On reflection, some of it was hiding. Hiding dressed up as humility.

It’s funny because when I’m actually in the work, I’ve never needed to say any of it. The leaders I work with don’t need to know. They feel it, and that’s true and right.

But in the room before the work starts …I’ve come to realise staying quiet isn’t modesty. It’s disappearing.

My Mum and Dad were right. You do the work, and people feel it. But somewhere I confused that with permission to stay invisible.

Where have you been doing the same?

Staying quiet in rooms where you had every right to speak. Letting someone else speak for you. Confusing humility with hiding. Or the other way …performing credentials and proving, because you didn’t trust the work to speak for itself.

I still don’t know exactly where the line is. I know it exists. I know I’ve been on the wrong side of it more than once, and I thought I was doing the right thing.

If you’ve recognised yourself somewhere in this story, a Hide and Seek Session is where we start. Click here to book

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