How Do I Lead When I Don’t Feel Like I Belong at the Table?
Coaching Real Leaders
Harvard Business Review / Muriel Wilkins
4.8 • 759 Ratings
🗓️ 20 October 2025
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
He is a leader looking to advance, but feels like he often struggles in meetings with more senior leadership. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches him through ways to approach these meetings differently and how to position himself to attain the higher level of leadership he wants.
Further reading:
Check out Muriel’s new book, Leadership Unblocked, out October 28th: leadershipunblocked.com
The Hidden Beliefs That Hold Leaders Back
Muriel’s Virtual Book Event
What Having a Growth Mindset Actually Means
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Deal's not just another payroll platform. |
| 0:04.6 | It's one your team might actually enjoy. |
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| 0:10.6 | Built in-house, built for peace of mind. |
| 0:13.1 | Visit D-E-E-E-L.com slash HBR. |
| 0:20.3 | Music I'm Uriel Wilkins, and this is Coaching Real Leaders, part of the HBR Podcast Network. |
| 0:34.8 | I'm a longtime executive coach who works with highly successful leaders who've hit a |
| 0:39.3 | bump in the road. My job is to help them get over that bump by clarifying their goals and figuring |
| 0:45.3 | out a way to reach them so that hopefully they can lead with a little more ease. I typically work with |
| 0:51.6 | clients over the course of several months, but on this show, we have a one-time coaching meeting focusing on a specific leadership challenge they're facing. |
| 1:04.0 | Today's guest is someone will call John to protect his confidentiality. |
| 1:08.0 | He previously worked as a management consultant, advancing at his firm, |
| 1:12.5 | and then moved into an in-house strategy role at a company several years ago. That move was so that |
| 1:18.7 | he could eventually transition from advisory to a more senior operational leadership role. |
| 1:24.7 | I guess kind of long-term dot on the horizon is to have a managing director |
| 1:28.7 | type role, either of a business unit in a bigger company or for like a smaller kind of mid-cap |
| 1:34.0 | company. So kind of using the broad skill set I built early on of knowing a little bit about |
| 1:39.8 | everything in that kind of CEO type position where I need to know a little bit about all the departments |
| 1:46.0 | and then bring kind of cohesion and, you know, a way forward to all of them. |
| 1:51.0 | So far, his hope for advancement hasn't panned out quite as he had hoped. |
| 1:55.0 | I figured I would get into a manager or role, which I did, |
| 1:59.0 | and then find where in the company I would shoot some |
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