Fair warning: this post is about to get introspective.

This week, I participated in a Quantum Bloom Women’s Leadership Session provided by Relias, and let’s just say it’s one of those experiences that leaves you questioning some fundamental things about yourself. The good kind of questioning, though—the kind that makes you realize you’ve been carrying around beliefs that stopped serving you a long time ago.

The session focused on examining the stories we tell ourselves—the beliefs and values that shape our professional identities but don’t necessarily help us grow. While the conversation touched on gender dynamics in the workplace, what I’m taking away goes deeper. It’s about the narratives we create, the shields we carry, and what happens when you finally decide to put them down.

When Your Heroes Have the Same Doubts You Do

I was in a breakout session with two colleagues I genuinely admire. These are women I consider experts in their fields—talented, productive, excellent communicators who build strong communities and possess deep knowledge in their areas of ownership. They’re the kind of professionals I look up to and think, “Yeah, that’s who I want to be like.”

So imagine my surprise when both of them started talking about their insecurities. About not feeling good enough for their roles. About questioning whether they belong.

These incredible, accomplished women were expressing the exact same doubts I carry around every day.

If you’ve been reading my posts for any length of time, you know my particular flavor of self-doubt. I don’t think I’m technical enough. I moved into management as a mid-level engineer without a computer science degree, having come to tech through a bootcamp as a second career. This insecurity was cemented early on when a leader told me that if I went into management before becoming a senior engineer, I’d never earn the respect of strong technical talent. They said senior developers wouldn’t respect me as a leader because of my lack of technical depth.

That comment? It stuck. Hard.

The Shield I Didn’t Know I Was Carrying

Here’s the complicated part: this belief has actually served me in some ways. I’ve used this narrative to brand myself as a different kind of engineering leader—one who brings skills beyond the purely technical, who can fill gaps in a strongly technical leadership team. And honestly? That story has worked. It’s proven valuable.

But it’s also been a cage.

I’ve avoided situations where I’d be technically challenged. I’ve controlled the narrative by preemptively telling people—especially those I perceive as highly technical—that I’m “not a technical leader.” By saying it first, I manage their expectations and protect myself from judgment.

The problem is that while there’s power in controlling how others see you, this approach has been unnecessarily reducing my value. It undermines how good I actually am at my job. And I am good at my job. I’m very good at what I do.

When I shared this belief in our breakout session, the women I admire pushed back immediately. They told me I am technical. That they’ve always seen me as technical. That this story I tell myself doesn’t match the reality they see.

As we went around sharing our limiting beliefs, we were all genuinely shocked to discover we felt similarly diminished in different ways. Watching these talented women undersell their own skill sets was both disheartening and revealing—revealing of how we’ve internalized expectations and lost trust in ourselves over time.

The Moment Everything Shifted

At the end of the exercise, we were asked to rewrite our limiting beliefs. My first attempt was predictably safe: “My lack of technical skills does not diminish my value in my role.”

One of the women in my group stopped me cold. “You need to stop saying you’re not technical. Period. That’s not serving you and it never will.”

So I tried again. This time, I wrote something simple and terrifying: I am a technical leader.

There it is. That’s the rebrand. No more hedging, no more caveating, no more controlling the narrative by diminishing myself first. This blog will no longer be a space for ruminating on why I’m not enough. I’m going to own what I bring, challenge myself, and actually grow.

The Perfection Problem

Another theme that emerged in our session was the pressure to be perfect. Many of us talked about growing up with expectations to excel at everything—to be the A+ student, the top of the class, the one who never makes mistakes. While this isn’t exclusively a gendered experience, I do think we internalize these expectations in different ways.

That people-pleasing, teacher’s-pet programming from our youth? Sure, it’s part of why we’re successful. But at what cost? How much are we missing out on because we won’t put ourselves in situations where we might not be the best in the room?

There has to be a way to keep our drive while establishing healthier boundaries. It requires checking in with ourselves when we’re obsessing over the perfect wording of an email or avoiding an opportunity because we’re not guaranteed to excel. We need to allow ourselves to be in uncomfortable spaces, to potentially fail, and to see what happens when we stop limiting ourselves.

The Communication Style Trap

The third insight that really landed for me was about how we compare ourselves to colleagues who use more direct, assertive, sometimes aggressive communication styles. Many of us bring more empathetic, open-minded approaches to getting things done, yet we watch the more abrupt style get rewarded more often.

This makes sense when you consider that corporate America was designed by and for a specific demographic. The system cyclically supports certain communication styles and ways of working. (If you haven’t read the Harvard Business Review article “Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome,” I highly recommend it—it articulates this dynamic perfectly.)

But here’s what I realized: someone who can learn from direct, assertive approaches and embrace empathetic, holistic communication? That person has access to a genuine superpower. Knowing when to be direct and when to be empathetic, understanding when to focus on goals and when to engage with someone as a whole person—this isn’t a weakness. It’s flexibility and range.

The corporate value system is shifting, slowly but surely. I hope my generation of leaders—those of us who tend to be more thoughtful about the whole person and the whole situation—can help accelerate that change. We don’t need to place arbitrary value on one approach over another just because of historical precedent.

What Comes Next

This conversation was a turning point. I’m walking away with a reworked belief system, one that actually supports who I am and where I want to go instead of holding me back.

I want to be clear: while these conversations often center on gender, this isn’t about attacking anyone. It’s about acknowledging that certain dynamics exist in workplace cultures—dynamics that don’t always support different approaches or perspectives equally. For those navigating multiple intersections of identity, these dynamics can be even more complex.

I’m looking forward to seeing how things evolve. I’m excited to keep having these conversations with colleagues. And honestly? I’m excited to see where this rebrand takes me.

So here we go. New narrative, same person—just finally willing to own all of it.

And hey, to the women who were in my breakout session—if you’re reading this, thank you. You’re both incredible, you absolutely have this, and I’m lucky to work alongside you. I can’t wait to see your own rebrands in action.