756: When It Feels Like You Don’t Belong, with Muriel Wilkins

Coaching for Leaders

Dave Stachowiak

Education, Business, Management, Self-improvement, Careers

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Muriel Wilkins: Leadership Unblocked
Muriel Wilkins is the founder and CEO of Paravis Partners and a sought-after C-suite adviser and executive coach with a twenty-year track record of helping senior leaders take their performance to the next level. She is the coauthor of Own the Room and the host of the Harvard Business Review podcast Coaching Real Leaders. She’s just released her newest book, Leadership Unblocked: Break Through the Beliefs That Limit Your Potential (Amazon, Bookshop)*.

You may have spent years aiming for the leadership role you now have. But now, once you’re in the job, it can be really disorienting to feel like you don’t belong. In this conversation, Muriel and I explore this reality that a lot of leaders face and what do when you run into it.
Key Points

Feeling like you don’t belong is a normal and common reality at inflection points in your career.
A vicious cycle can emerge: you’re waiting to be included while others are waiting for you to engage.
While you can’t control others, you can break the part of the pattern you have control of.
Even when you believe that not belonging is triggered by sexism, racism, and ableism, it doesn’t serve you to hold onto that belief.
Define your value proposition. What gets missed when you don’t show up?
Remind yourself of shared goals or values with the group. This prevents the small stuff from distracting you as much.
Identify a few supportive people and build relationships with them.

Resources Mentioned

Leadership Unblocked: Break Through the Beliefs That Limit Your Potential by Muriel Wilkins (Amazon, Bookshop)*

Interview Notes
Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).
Related Episodes

How to Start a Big Leadership Role, with Carol Kauffman (episode 617)
How to Start Better With Peers, with Michael Bungay Stanier (episode 635)
The Habits That Hold Leaders Back, with Marshall Goldsmith (episode 696)

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Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You may have spent years aiming for the leadership role you now have, but now, once you're in the job, it can be really disorienting to feel like you don't belong.
0:11.7	A conversation today about this reality that a lot of us run into and how to handle it when you do.
0:18.9	This is Coaching for Leaders, Episode 756.
0:23.3	Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.
0:31.7	Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I'm your host,
0:39.3	Dave Stahoviac.
0:44.8	Leaders aren't born. They're made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. One of the things that leaders run into, I certainly
0:51.7	have in my career, and I see it all the time and the folks I work with
0:55.6	is feeling like we don't belong. We don't belong in the role. We don't belong in the room.
1:02.3	We don't maybe even belong in the organization. It's such a common and normal thing for leaders
1:08.1	to run into. And the question is, when we do run into it, how do we
1:12.6	handle it in a way that's effective for us and the people around us that we're working
1:17.1	to support? Today, I'm so glad to welcome back a guest expert who's going to help us to
1:21.6	navigate that feeling a bit when we run into that moment when we feel like we don't belong.
1:27.5	I'm so pleased to welcome back Muriel Wilkins.
1:30.4	She is the founder and CEO of Paravis Partners and a sought-after C-suite advisor and
1:35.9	executive coach with a 20-year track record of helping senior leaders take their performance
1:40.6	to the next level.
1:42.3	She is the co-author of Own the Room and the host of the
1:45.7	Harvard Business Review podcast, Coaching Real Leaders. She's just released her newest book,
1:51.3	Leadership Unblocked, Breakthrough the Beliefs That Limit Your Potential. Muriel, always a pleasure
1:57.9	to talk to you. Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much, Dave. The feeling is mutual. I'm delighted to be back.
	...

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