The Leadership Skill No One Teaches: Knowing When to Shut Up
Why great leadership sometimes requires withholding judgment instead of asserting it.
One of the most damaging habits in leadership is the need to prove you’re right.
Recently, a woman shared with me a series of decisions she had made about her health — including a significant financial investment she believed would improve it.
As she spoke, I recognized the pattern immediately. I understood the mechanics behind how decisions like this are often influenced, and I felt the urge to diagnose the flaw in the decision and explain why it didn’t make sense.
Instead, I said to myself, “Natalie, shut up.”
And I got curious. I asked her how she came to make the decision.
As she told the story, the details began to unfold. As she explained it to me, her reasoning was simple and deeply personal.
She is living with a complex, unpredictable illness. Something I’m VERY familiar with. And the decision she made wasn’t just about money or logic — it was about hope.
When you live with a condition like that, hope isn’t a small thing.
Hope shapes how someone cares for themselves. Hope can influence a persons behavior. Create better habits. Hope can change how they see their future. Sometimes, hope is the only strategy a person feels they have left. And most importantly - her decision was paying off because -
Her belief and her behaviors were in alignment.
In that moment, I realized something:
Correcting her would have been easy.
But doing so would only serve my need to be right.
The need to be right is one of the biggest blind spots in our leadership today.
It shows up when we:
feel the urge to correct someone
grow impatient with their reasoning
start preparing our counterargument before they finish speaking
To be fair -early in our careers we develop expertise - and that sharpens our judgment.
But sometimes that same expertise causes us to filter everything through what we know or what we THINK we know.
And sometimes the real discipline is knowing when not to assert it.
Leadership isn’t always about better judgment.
Sometimes it’s about withholding it.
Thank you for reading The Nourished Leader™.
The Nourished Leader™ develops women leaders who rise in uncertainty, command ambiguity, and transform complexity into the power, presence, and position required to lead.
— Natalie R. Legrand
Owner, The Nourished Leader™
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