As an Associate Dean, I spend a fair amount of time in meeting rooms with a large boardroom table in the middle and extra chairs around the edges. There isn’t a seating plan. Anyone in the room can sit at the table.

For a long time, I didn't do that.

I had every reason to be there. I had been invited to the meeting. I had a role to play and something to contribute. Still, I sometimes chose a chair along the side of the room.

I don't remember consciously deciding that I didn't belong at the table. It was more subtle than that. The table seemed to be where the more senior, more established people sat. I had the title and the responsibilities of a leader, yet some part of me was still learning to see myself that way.

Recently, I walked into one of those same rooms, put down my things and sat at the table.

I didn't think about it at all.

Only later did I remember all the times I had chosen a chair along the wall. Nobody had invited me to move. Nobody had told me I belonged there now.

Something had simply caught up.

Maybe it was me.

I've been thinking about that moment because leadership roles often arrive before our identities have fully adjusted to them. The title changes. The responsibilities change. Other people begin looking to us for decisions, direction and judgment. Internally, that transition can take longer.

There can be a lag between being given authority and feeling entirely at home inside it.

We don't talk about that lag very much. Leadership stories are usually told retrospectively, once someone appears settled in the role. We see the appointment, the promotion, the accomplishment. The quieter process of learning to occupy the space that comes with it is less visible.

I think many of us imagine leadership development as preparation. We gain experience, develop confidence and eventually become ready to lead.

Much of my own leadership development has happened while I was already doing the job.

I have learned by sitting in meetings where I didn't understand all the history. By making decisions and occasionally wishing I had made them differently. By watching leaders I admired. By noticing approaches I didn't want to reproduce. By having difficult conversations, getting things wrong, trying again and gradually developing a clearer sense of how I wanted to lead.

The role shaped me while I learned how to inhabit it.

Perhaps this is one reason transitions into leadership can feel uncomfortable. The institution may recognize us as a leader before we fully recognize ourselves that way. Other people can see authority that still feels unfamiliar from the inside.

That space can easily be interpreted as evidence that we aren't ready.

I see it differently now.

Experienced leaders don't stop questioning themselves. They become less likely to interpret every question as evidence that they don't belong.

There are still meetings where I am learning. There are decisions I think about long after they are made. New responsibilities continue to stretch my understanding of what good leadership requires. I expect that will continue for as long as I keep doing work that asks something new of me.

I am more comfortable with that than I used to be.

Maybe that is part of what it means to lead while unfinished. We make decisions while we are still learning. We occupy authority while our identities continue to evolve. The work changes us as we do it.

There may never be a moment when we feel completely finished and entirely certain that we are ready for whatever comes next.

Perhaps we don't need one.

These days, I sit at the table.

Although on any given day, I might still choose a chair along the wall. The difference is that now I know they are both mine to choose.

A question to sit with

Where have you already been given a seat that you are still learning to occupy?