A working paper for rising leaders — Doug Thorpe, Leadership Powered by Common Sense®
You just made a call in the team meeting. You laid out a direction, felt good about it, and then someone pushed back. Not rudely — just a flat “I’m not sure that’s going to work.” And in the half-second before you even opened your mouth to respond, a whole story ran through your head. Maybe I don’t belong in this seat. Maybe they can tell I’m making this up as I go. Maybe I’m not enough for this.
Here’s what I want you to notice about that moment. The pushback lasted three seconds. The story you told yourself about the pushback ran for the rest of the day. And that story cost you far more than the disagreement ever could.
I’ve coached more than 4,500 leaders, and I can tell you the pattern is almost universal among people early in their leadership. When resistance shows up — and it always will — they take all that energy and aim it straight at themselves. This article is about learning to point it somewhere far more useful.
Think about a car engine idling in the driveway. Fuel is burning. The engine is working hard. But the car isn’t going anywhere, because it’s in park. All that combustion, all that heat, and zero distance covered.
That’s what self-judgment does with your energy. When you turn pushback into “I’m an imposter,” you’re not lazy or weak — you’re actually working incredibly hard. Your mind is running full throttle, replaying the exchange, scanning for evidence you’re a fraud, rehearsing what you should have said. It burns real fuel. It just burns it in park.
Here’s the thing: leadership takes energy. Giving people Clarity takes energy. Guiding a messy situation takes energy. Sitting in the middle of a conflict without flinching takes energy. Influencing people who don’t report to you takes a lot of energy. You’ve only got so much in the tank on any given day. Every unit you spend judging yourself is a unit you didn’t spend leading.
So the goal isn’t to feel more confident before you act. The goal is to take the engine out of park.
Let me name what’s actually happening, because it helps to see it clearly.
When you were an individual contributor, your job had a scoreboard. You wrote the code, closed the deal, finished the report. You could look at your work and know whether it was good. Feedback was concrete.
Then you became a leader, and the scoreboard disappeared. Now your job is to get results through other people, and people are not predictable. They disagree. They have bad days. They question your calls. And because there’s no clean scoreboard anymore, your brain reaches for the nearest measuring stick it can find — other people’s reactions. Someone frowns in a meeting and you read it as a verdict on your worth.
Here’s what nobody tells you: pushback is not a scoreboard. It’s just information. A “that won’t work” tells you something about the idea, or about that person’s concerns, or about what they don’t yet understand. It tells you nothing about whether you deserve to be in the room. You’re the one assigning that second meaning, and you can stop.
This is the single most important shift in the whole article, so sit with it.
When pushback hits, most young leaders silently ask, How am I doing right now? Do they respect me? Am I enough? Every one of those questions points a spotlight back at you. And a spotlight in your own eyes is blinding — you can’t see the people in front of you anymore.
The leaders who grow fast learn to ask a completely different question in that moment: What does this situation need from me right now?
It’s like the difference between a nervous new doctor and a seasoned one. The nervous one is thinking, Do I look like I know what I’m doing? Is the patient losing confidence in me? The seasoned one has stopped thinking about herself entirely — she’s thinking, What does this patient need? Same medical knowledge. Completely different focus. And the patient can feel the difference in about ten seconds.
When you swap the question, your energy has somewhere to go besides your own gut. The pushback becomes a problem to solve out there, not a wound to nurse in here. Let’s look at the four places that redirected energy is best spent.
Most resistance you’ll ever face isn’t really disagreement. It’s confusion wearing a disagreement costume. When someone pushes back, a huge percentage of the time they simply don’t understand the why behind the direction, or they’re missing a piece of context you have and they don’t.
So the first place to send your energy is toward making things clear. Instead of “Do they think I’m competent?” ask “Have I actually made this easy to understand?”
It’s like being the person holding the map on a group hike. Nobody needs you to be the fastest hiker or the strongest. They need you to be the one who can say, plainly, “We’re here, we’re going there, and this is the trail.” When you give people a clear map, half the pushback evaporates — not because you won an argument, but because there was never really an argument to begin with.
Practical move: When you feel the inward pull start, physically redirect by asking a clarifying question out loud. “Tell me what part feels shaky to you.” Now you’re gathering information to lead with, instead of collecting evidence to convict yourself.
Younger leaders often think their job is to have the answer. So when they don’t have one instantly, they read it as personal failure. But your job is rarely to have the answer. Your job is to guide the group to a good one.
Think about a river guide steering a raft. The guide didn’t create the river. He can’t control the rapids, the rocks, or the weather. What he does is read the water, call the strokes, and keep the boat pointed the right way through the rough patch. Nobody expects him to make the river calm. They expect him to navigate it.
That’s leadership. You’re not expected to eliminate uncertainty — you’re expected to move people through it with a steady hand. When you stop demanding that you have every answer, an enormous amount of pressure lifts, because “guide us through this” is a job you can absolutely do, even on a day you feel unsure.
Practical move: Trade the phrase “I need to have the answer” for “I need to move us toward one.” Then say out loud, “Here’s what I’d suggest as a next step” — even a small step counts. Motion beats certainty.
Here’s a truth that took me years to fully accept: conflict on a team is not a sign that you’re failing. It’s a sign that people care and see things differently. A team with zero conflict isn’t healthy — it’s either checked out or too scared to speak.
The leaders who turn pressure inward tend to treat any conflict as proof they’ve lost control. So they either avoid it — smoothing things over, letting problems fester — or they overcorrect and shut it down hard. Both come from the same place: making the conflict about them instead of about the work.
Think of yourself less as a fighter in the ring and more as the referee. The referee isn’t threatened by the fight — the fight is the whole point of the match. His job is to keep it clean, enforce the rules, and make sure it stays about the sport and not about hurting each other. When you see conflict as something to manage rather than something that indicts you, you can stand in the middle of it calmly. And that calm is one of the most powerful things a leader can offer.
Practical move: When two people on your team clash, resist the urge to ask “Is this my fault?” Instead ask, “What’s the real issue underneath this, and how do I keep the conversation honest and respectful?” Name the tension in the room plainly. Naming it takes its power away.
This is the big one, and it’s where the imposter voice gets loudest — because influencing people who don’t report to you feels like you’re asking for something you haven’t earned.
But flip it around. Influence has almost nothing to do with your title. The people who move organizations are rarely the ones with the most authority — they’re the ones others trust and want to help. And you build that the same way whether you’re a CEO or six months into your first lead role.
It’s like being the neighbor everyone goes to for advice. That person has no authority over anyone on the street. No badge, no title. People listen because over time she’s been useful, honest, and genuinely interested in them. She asks good questions. She follows through. She gives before she asks. That’s influence, and it’s completely available to you right now, regardless of where you sit on the org chart.
When you catch yourself thinking “Why would they listen to me?”, that’s the exact energy to redirect. Don’t spend it wondering whether you deserve to be heard. Spend it becoming genuinely useful to the person in front of you — understanding what they’re trying to accomplish, and helping them get there. Influence is a byproduct of usefulness, not a reward for status.
Practical move: Before you try to get someone on board with your idea, spend the first energy learning what they care about. “What are you trying to protect here? What would make this a win for your side?” People are influenced by those who clearly understand them.
I’m not going to tell you the voice will disappear. That would be dishonest, and you’d catch me in the lie the next time it showed up. Nearly every capable leader I know still hears some version of “I’m not enough” now and then. Feeling like an imposter isn’t a defect — it usually shows up precisely because you’re stretching into something bigger than what you’ve done before. It’s the growing pain of leadership, not the proof you don’t belong.
Here’s what I’ve noticed over the years, though. The difference between leaders who stall and leaders who grow isn’t whether they hear the voice. It’s what they do in the ten seconds after.
The one who stalls follows the voice inward and spends the afternoon in park. The one who grows notices the voice, gives it a nod — thanks, I hear you — and then deliberately turns the wheel outward: What does this situation need from me right now? Clarity? Guidance? Steadiness in a conflict? A better understanding of the person across the table? The voice is still there. It just doesn’t get to drive.
That’s the whole discipline. Not silencing the critic. Just refusing to hand it the keys.
You don’t fix this with one big insight. You build the habit in small reps. Here’s something concrete to try this week.
The next three times you feel that inward pull — the pushback lands and the “maybe I’m a fraud” story starts up — do three things, in order. First, catch it. Just notice, silently: there’s the inward turn. Naming it breaks the spell. Second, ask the redirect question: What does this situation need from me right now? Third, take one small outward action toward that need — ask a clarifying question, suggest a next step, name the tension, or get curious about what the other person wants.
That’s it. Catch, redirect, act. Three reps this week. You’re not trying to feel like a different person. You’re just practicing where your energy goes.
Because here’s the truth: your team doesn’t need you to feel certain. They need you to give them clarity, guide them through the hard parts, hold steady in conflict, and help them get where they’re going. Every ounce of energy you stop spending on judging yourself is an ounce you get back to spend on them.
So here’s the question worth sitting with: the next time the pressure hits, where are you going to point it?
If this is the kind of thing you’re wrestling with, it’s exactly what we work through in one-on-one Coaching and in the Headway Huddle — a small group of leaders solving real problems together. You can start with a free 20-minute conversation at https://calendly.com/dougthorpe/30min, or take the free Leadership Assessment at https://doug-ysqodzse.scoreapp.com/ to see where your energy is going right now.
— Doug Thorpe · Leadership Powered by Common Sense® · dougthorpe.com
The post Stop Turning the Pressure Inward: How to Redirect Your Energy Toward Leading first appeared on Servant Leadership Coaching | Practical Leadership Development | Doug Thorpe.
