The Leadership We Learn Before We Choose It
I was thirteen or fourteen when the apartment next to ours caught fire. What I remember most isn’t the flames, it’s the smell. The density in the air. My parents moving quickly but without direction. We were sent onto the balcony to wait for the fire department.
My mother went back inside to retrieve something. I don’t remember what. I only remember telling her to take a towel, soak it in water, and hold it over her mouth.
I didn’t feel brave. I felt clear.
For years, I carried that memory as evidence of something flattering, I stay calm under pressure. I think clearly when others freeze.
Recently, I listened to a conversation about leadership identity ( Leadership is a Choice: Challenging How We Think About Power and Leadership ) that suggested something simple but powerful: Recall your earliest memory of leading — before titles, before promotions — and study it.
When I returned to that balcony in my mind, I realized something uncomfortable. That moment wasn’t just leadership. It was adaptation.
There’s a particular kind of competence that develops when stability isn’t guaranteed. You learn to assess quickly. You anticipate risk. You become useful. Responsibility becomes a way to create order. And usefulness can look a lot like leadership.
Years later, working inside a startup defined by urgency and constant escalation, I recognized the same internal rhythm. There were always “critical” deadlines. Always something burning. I was effective. I could stabilize chaos. I could handle high-pressure situations without spiraling. But something felt misaligned. Not because I couldn’t handle the stress, but because I kept asking: Why are we building a system that requires this much emergency? Why is crisis the baseline?
When I suggested processes to reduce volatility, the response wasn’t enthusiasm. It was resistance. In cultures where identity is built around heroism, prevention can feel threatening. If someone’s value comes from saving the day, eliminating the need for rescue destabilizes the hierarchy.
That’s when I understood something important about myself. I wasn’t meant to be the best firefighter in the room. I was meant to question why the building was flammable.
There’s a version of leadership born in smoke. It moves fast. It stabilizes. It protects. It earns praise because it is visible. But there’s another version — quieter, slower, more structural. It designs systems that reduce chaos instead of glorifying survival.
For a long time, I built structure from protection. I didn’t want to feel destabilized again. I wanted clarity, process, infrastructure. Over time, that shifted.
Now I’m less interested in proving I can operate under pressure and more interested in designing environments that don’t require constant pressure to function.
That shift has changed how I think about business, culture, and power.
Many organizations reward urgency. They celebrate resilience. They monetize intensity. But resilience is not the same as sustainability.
Leadership, I’ve come to believe, is not defined by how well you perform in crisis. It’s defined by the kind of pressure you choose to normalize.
Some of us learned to lead because someone had to step in. The real evolution is choosing how we want to lead now.
