A leader in her early thirties sat in my office a while back and told me she’d been promoted into a role she wasn’t sure she could do.
I asked her what she was most afraid of.
She said, “That I’m the only one in the building who feels this far out of my depth.”
I’ve heard some version of that sentence from emerging leaders for thirty years. The fear isn’t incompetence. It’s isolation. They’re bright. They were trusted with the seat for a reason. But nobody around them seems to be struggling the way they are, so they stop saying they’re struggling.
They answer questions in meetings with more confidence than they feel. They Google things their boss assumes they already know. They say yes to assignments they haven’t figured out how to start.
And the gap between what they show and what they’re holding grows a little wider every month.
This is the hidden cost of emerging leadership. Not a shortage of skill. The loneliness of being trusted before you feel ready.
A room of peers changes it. Not the boss. Not the team. Not the people evaluating you. Other leaders in the same season, sitting with the same fear, willing to say out loud what everyone else in the room is also holding.
It’s part of why we facilitate a C-Suite and Emerging Leader team through Convene. One of the rooms we’ve built at Eden Business Concepts for leaders in the middle of being trusted before they feel ready for it.
If you’re leading something that matters and you’re not sure anyone else knows how much it weighs, that’s not a sign you’re in the wrong seat. That’s a sign you need a room.