When Leadership Begins with Letting Go

Michel on bias, limits, and accepting his true role

There is a moment in leadership that feels less like growth

and more like grief.

Not grief for what you’ve lost

but for the version of yourself you thought you had to be.

Michel named that moment quietly, almost casually, during his interview. But what he described is one of the most difficult thresholds a leader crosses.

“Before I went into this course, I was convinced I didn’t have any biases.”

That sentence alone takes courage.

The bias we rarely see: believing we are neutral

Most leaders don’t walk into leadership believing they are biased.

They believe they are fair.

Objective.

Rational.

Michel did too.

And in a way, that belief made sense. He had built his career on competence, logic, and problem-solving. Those qualities are rewarded in engineering environments. They feel clean. Predictable. Safe.

But leadership doesn’t just surface other people’s biases.

It surfaces your own.

And the most confronting realization for Michel wasn’t about prejudice,

it was about self-image.

The talent that comes with a shadow

As Michel began to understand himself more deeply, one truth became unavoidable:

He is a reformer.

Someone who sees systems, connections, and long-term consequences. Someone who naturally operates from the helicopter view.

That is not a flaw.

It is a rare and valuable talent.

But every talent casts a shadow.

Seeing the whole means not living in the details.

Holding the overview means letting others go deeper than you ever will.

Leading the system means accepting that you cannot master every part of it.

And that acceptance was not easy.

The pain of not being everything

Michel spoke honestly about how hard this was for him.

He wanted to do everything well.

He wanted to be competent everywhere.

He wanted to deserve his seat in the room by being excellent at all of it.

But leadership doesn’t work that way.

The more time he spent in the helicopter view, aligning people, seeing patterns, protecting direction, the less time he could spend in the nitty-gritty details.

And that felt like loss.

Loss of identity as the expert.

Loss of certainty.

Loss of the familiar comfort of being the one who knows.

This is where many leaders get stuck.

They cling to detail not because it’s needed, but because it proves something to themselves.

Letting go as an act of integrity

What Michel faced wasn’t incompetence.

It was limits.

Time is limited.

Attention is limited.

Energy is limited.

And leadership maturity begins when you stop fighting that truth.

Accepting that you will never be the best specialist in the room

is not a downgrade.

It’s a reorientation.

Michel didn’t stop caring about quality.

He stopped confusing quality with personal mastery.

He learned to trust others to go deeper

and to value himself for holding the whole.

Bias, revisited

The most profound bias Michel uncovered wasn’t about others.

It was about what good leadership was supposed to look like.

He believed that to be worthy, he had to be excellent at everything.

That to lead, he had to outperform.

That to belong, he had to prove.

The course didn’t take that belief away.

It gave him the space to question it.

And once questioned, something shifted.

The relief of being who you are

There is a quiet relief that comes with self-acceptance in leadership.

When you no longer try to be:

🔥 the best engineer

🔥 the deepest specialist

🔥 the fastest problem solver

You become something else.

You become the person who:

❤️‍🔥 sees how pieces fit together

❤️‍🔥 notices where things break

❤️‍🔥 creates clarity where others feel overwhelmed

Michel didn’t become less capable.

He became more honest about where his value lies.

And honesty is what makes leadership trustworthy.

A reflection for you

If leadership feels exhausting right now, ask yourself:

What are you still trying to prove,

that leadership is quietly asking you to release?

Because sometimes the next step isn’t learning more.

It’s accepting the role you’re already growing into, even if it means letting go of who you thought you had to be.

🐉