A year into a new role, Jane’s company had been sold to private equity, bringing in a manager who quickly decided she lacked the right experience. And he had no qualms about letting her know.
“Last week a colleague overheard him in the hallway and asked, ‘Does he always speak to you like that?’” she told me. “But if I say something, it will only aggravate him more.”
“Maybe it will,” I said. “But what will it do to you if you let it continue?”
“It’s just not my style, Margie. I’m not that person.”
“Just because you aren’t practiced at standing up for yourself doesn’t mean you can’t.”
This isn’t about bully bosses. It’s about how easily any of us can shrink ourselves to fit the frame of who we once felt we had to be to get by. And how the situations that test us most are always issuing us with an invitation to make a stand for ourselves in a new way, to stop playing ourselves small and to step up to the plate in both leadership and life in a bigger way.
How Tall You Are Matters Less Than How Tall You Show Up
It applies even to people who literally take up more space, like David, a client who stands 6’4″. Yet despite his height, David has long tended to make himself a little smaller. “It’s just how I was raised,” he told me explaining how in his working-class childhood, anything that risked seeming ‘too full of yourself’ was a sure recipe for ridicule.
But David now runs a large division of a company in the midst of immense change. His accommodating style is increasingly coming at the expense of delivering on the responsibility he’s been given.
“If you dialed up your inner warrior to a full 10, what would you be doing more of?” I asked him.
“I’d get ahead of issues. I’d push back harder on my peers. I’d stop tiptoeing and start standing my full height.”
It brought to mind a line often attributed to legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden:
“It’s not how tall you are, but how tall you play.”
Clearly Wooden knew height matters in basketball. A lot. But his point was about the mindset we bring to the larger game that is our life.
None of us get to choose our height. But we do get to choose how we walk into a room, meet our challenges and respond to anyone who wants to play us small.
How tall you stand matters a whole lot less than what you’re willing to stand up for. Beginning with yourself.
We’re wired to belong. Connection was essential to our survival, so much so that rejection activates some of the same brain regions as physical pain. It’s why our desire to belong, to fit in and feel part of the pack is often at odds with our desire to grow, to stand our full height and become the fullest version of who we sense, at a deepest level, we have it with us to become. In short:
Belonging and becoming are often at odds with each other.
Most people can recall a moment where they’ve softened an opinion to avoid tension. Or let a demeaning comment slide. Or dialed themselves down a little to avoid the risk of coming across as too loud, too bold or too much. Research on why people stay silent at work found that fear of being labeled negatively tops the list. A January 2026 TalentLMS survey found 42% of U.S. employees worry that speaking up will get them labeled ‘difficult.’ I know it myself. I’m loath to think how many times I’ve stopped short of asking for what I truly wanted to avoid appearing overly needy or too demanding, or held back from addressing an issue weighing me down only to kick myself later. (There’s a reason I’m writing this!). But here’s the deal:
That risk is real. But if we want to make an impact, and be fully respected when others treat us in ways that aren’t respectful, it’s a risk we must be willing to run.
There is nothing noble in diminishing yourself. Every time we play ourselves small (or let anyone else), we don’t just sell ourselves short. We shortchange everyone who needs the full measure of what we have to bring.
Three Ways To Stand Up For Yourself
1. Hold your ground when someone crosses a line.
Letting an off color remark or diminishing comment slide might keep things harmonious in the moment, but every time we let poor behavior continue, we quietly signal that it’s acceptable. Like it or not, you teach people how to treat you. Someone may outrank you, but you still get to decide how tall you stand. Sacrificing self-respect on the alter of keeping false peace costs far more over time than it may seem in the moment.
2. Speak up more than the ‘nice’ part of you would like.
Kindness is a virtue. But any virtue, over done, becomes a vice. Standing up for yourself doesn’t require you to be unkind or to become combative. It requires first being kind to yourself – setting a boundary, speaking truthfully, pushing back respectfully, speaking a truth that needs to be heard even if someone doesn’t like you saying it. If there’s a conversation you’ve been putting off, these seven keys to speaking up are a good place to start. And if you’re a woman who has often erred toward being too nice, you may want to read this.
3. Step up and own the bigger seat.
David had been given a bigger seat at the table, but he had yet to fully occupy it. To do so, he had to shed the old story that was keeping him being too accomodating, too amiable and too attached to being liked over being effective. This was his’ ‘growth edge’. It wasn’t about him becoming someone he wasn’t but about him occupying the full size his life was asking of him.
The same may be true for you. If you dialed up your inner warrior to a full 10, what would you be doing more of right now? Then pick one things and act on it. Today.
What it means to occupy the full space your life is asking of you will change as your life does. What won’t change is that it will ask you to be braver than you’ll feel in the moment.
Will it be comfortable? Of course not. Nothing worth doing ever is.
But will it be necessary if you want to live true to who you know, deep down, you have it within you to become?
Absolutely. 1000%.
So ask yourself:
If you were to be the fullest size this moment is asking of you, what would you say or do differently?
And how might you grow a little taller in the process?
There is nothing noble in diminishing yourself. So here’s to walking taller through your one and only precious life.
by Margie Warrel
Source: forbes.com
If they choose to, business leaders can get all kinds of advice about how to steer their companies from books, conferences, and even magazines like this one. Recently, however, a small but growing cohort of leaders has gone further: They have been willing to open up about the spiritual foundations that guide their actions and outlook.
When you are an executive facing a new challenge, one of the hardest questions can be who to ask for support. The more senior you are at your organization, the less you can count on your own manager or leadership to fill the gap. When it comes to external advisors, executive coaches, therapists, and consultants can all offer help, but they aren’t interchangeable.
Every November, I pull out my personality assessments and reread them. I collect them the way some people collect wine: enthusiastically, and with strong opinions about each one. Blame my Enneagram 7 for signing me up for every one, and my ENTJ for arguing with every report.
