We Were Never Meant to Lead Like This

It is easy to forget how recently in our history women have been allowed to lead at all. A century ago, most women could not sign a mortgage, manage a bank account, or walk into a boardroom without an escort. Today, women hold roughly 32 percent of executive roles in the United States, according to McKinsey’s 2024 Women in the Workplace report. That is progress, yes, but it is also proof that most of us are still newcomers in rooms built by and for someone else.

We are often the minority at the table.

We know it.

They know it.

And we learn to perform accordingly.

From an early age, girls are taught to read a room before they ever learn to trust their own voice. We are rewarded for making people comfortable, praised for being adaptable, and quietly punished when we are not. By the time many women arrive in leadership, performance has become muscle memory. We have learned how to be palatable, how to manage perception, how to hold authority without appearing “too much.”

“We inherited a leadership script written for someone else, and the cracks are showing.”

As a woman who has spent her career in senior leadership, I have watched brilliant women fracture themselves trying to fit inside systems that were never designed for them. They perform strength in cultures that reward stoicism. They soften their truths to stay likable. They translate empathy into data just to be heard.

It is exhausting.

And it is unsustainable.

We inherited the wrong script. One that equates leadership with control, authority with volume, and composure with worth. A script that says feelings are liabilities and intuition belongs at home, not in the boardroom.

But the cracks are widening, and light is getting through.

The Fracture We Carry

When we lead from fractured selves, we split the very qualities that make us powerful. We compartmentalize our intellect from our intuition, our logic from our empathy, our structure from our spirit. We think we are being strategic. In reality, we are surviving.

The cost is subtle but steep. It shows up as burnout disguised as dedication, as imposter syndrome that never quite fades, as the quiet ache of feeling successful but not whole.

“True leadership is not about compartmentalization. It is about integration.”

That ache is not weakness. It is wisdom. It is the soul of leadership reminding us that control and connection are not opposites. They are partners.

When half the population learns to lead through suppression, entire organizations lose access to imagination and trust. We pay for fracture collectively—in creativity, in innovation, and in culture.

The Seat at the Table

I come from the world of higher education, a place where systems and stories coexist in a delicate dance. On paper, my role is about physical and digital infrastructure: buildings, spaces, servers, software, and strategy. In reality, it is about people. Every decision about technology ripples through human lives: faculty who teach, students who dream, and staff who hold the institution together quietly and usually without credit.

It is a world that prizes order. But it is also a world full of friction.

Structure, ideas, and innovation often collide.

And that is where I have learned the most about leadership.

Integration does not mean erasing boundaries or ignoring structure. It means remembering that efficiency without empathy is not sustainable. It is scaffolding with no building inside. The best systems and processes work because they honor both logic and life.

When I lead from wholeness, when I allow intellect, intuition, and emotion to stand in the same circle, the work transforms. Conversations deepen. Teams collaborate differently. Innovation stops being a buzzword and starts being a byproduct of trust.

And the results are better. Every measurable outcome improves when people feel seen as whole humans.

The Hidden Performance

Women are often told to “lean in.” I understand the intention. But leaning in to a table that was not built for you only teaches you how to balance better on the edge.

“It is not lean in. It is evolve out.”

Evolving out does not mean walking away from the table. It means rebuilding the table entirely and reclaiming what leadership looks like, sounds like, and feels like when it is fully human.

It means speaking in full sentences, not softened ones.

It means allowing intuition to be a form of intelligence.

It means recognizing that empathy is not emotional labor. It is strategic insight.

Women who lead from wholeness do not perform confidence; they embody it. They do not ask permission to exist in full color. They simply stop muting themselves for comfort.

The shift is subtle at first. You start telling the truth without flinching. You stop apologizing for tone and start clarifying intention. You bring both compassion and accountability into the same meeting. And slowly, the energy around you changes.

People begin to exhale.

Teams start to trust.

Work starts to feel like purpose again.

What Integration Looks Like

Integration is not a slogan. It is a discipline. It is choosing alignment over approval, depth over performance, and authenticity over applause. It is the daily practice of checking in with yourself before you check off another box.

In practical terms, it might look like pausing before a decision to ask, What does this mean for the people behind the numbers? It might mean protecting your own energy as fiercely as you protect your team’s. It might even mean saying, I do not know yet, and trusting that uncertainty is not incompetence. It is honesty.

When women lead from wholeness, everyone benefits. Culture shifts. Creativity expands. And the next generation grows up seeing a version of leadership that looks a lot less like control and a lot more like truth.

“Integration is not softness. It is the next evolution of strength.”

Breaking the Script

The hardest part of evolving out of the old script is realizing how deeply it is written into us. I still catch myself performing. I still modulate tone, translate intuition into logic, and worry that softness will be mistaken for weakness.

But now I notice it.

And noticing is the first rewrite.

Each of us who chooses to lead whole gives others permission to do the same. Every time we refuse to fragment ourselves, we repair something larger: the collective story of what leadership can be.

We are, all of us, still writing the script. The beauty is that it is no longer a solo act. We are co-authoring a new narrative built on clarity, compassion, and courage.

The story of integration.

The story of evolution.

The story of women who lead as themselves without apology.