Leadership Isn't About Being Untouchable. It's About Being Trustworthy.

If you're heading into a leadership role, or already in one, how do you guard against being put on a pedestal?

Because it always happens. You get the title, and suddenly you're the person people look to when the room gets quiet. They think twice before challenging you. They wait for you to speak first. They assume you know the answer, even when you're still working through the question.

In a recent podcast conversation, leadership coach and strategist Julie Jakopic of iLead Strategies had a clear answer: you can't always stop people from putting you on a pedestal, but you can remember what they're responding to.

If you forget that critical line, leadership can start messing with your head.

The Role Is Not the Person

One of the weird things about leadership is how fast the title can outrun your own sense of readiness.

You spent years being good at the work. Then your job changes, and now you're leading the people doing the work.

A great reporter becomes an editor. A strong individual contributor becomes a manager. A teacher becomes an administrator.

When the new role feels uncertain, the old skills bubble back up: jumping in, fixing problems, rescuing the project. You pick up every dropped ball because you know how. It feels efficient. It also keeps you close to the version of yourself that always knew what to do.

Julie told a story about a performance review where her boss said her team knew she would pick up every ball they dropped — and if she was going to do that, they didn't really need the team.

Ouch.

That one hits really hard, especially for those of us who built our confidence on being reliable. The person who gets things done.

At some point, the work shifts from proving you can do it to helping someone else learn how. And that's one of the hardest parts of leadership: letting people learn without abandoning them.

Sometimes the ball can't hit the ground.  Sometimes the client relationship, the deadline, or the public stakes are too important. But sometimes the dropped ball is the lesson. Sometimes your job isn't to prevent the mistake, but to help someone make sense of it while the stakes are still manageable.

Leaders Need Rooms Where They Can Tell the Truth

There's another trap: pressure to become more polished than you really are. You start thinking you have to sound more certain. Gotta sit up straighter. Be composed at all times.

Then you begin performing the role instead of inhabiting it.

Your team doesn't need a live broadcast of every frustration. Every passing irritation doesn't call for a meeting. Every anxious thought doesn't need to become an email with too many commas and an ominous "just circling back."

Please, for the love of all inboxes, do not send that email.

But the frustration doesn't disappear just because you handled it professionally. All that pressure still needs somewhere to go.

Julie talked about real safe spaces. The kind where a leader can say the messy thing without it becoming organizational news. She talked about going to a rage bar with trusted people. Break some plates, let the pressure move through, and keep it off the conference room table.

And, honestly I get it. Every leader needs some version of that.

Maybe it's a coach, or a therapist, or a trusted peer. Or one friend who can hear the unedited version and still see you clearly.

Pressure needs somewhere honest to go. Without that kind of space, people start confusing composure with good health. They look fine in the meeting, say the right things, and keep moving along. Meanwhile, the body keeps score and keeps receipts.

Empathy Belongs Near the Top of the List

I asked Julie how important empathy is in leadership. Her answer made me laugh — she said if she made a list of the top 100 leadership traits, the first 30 would be empathy.

I think she's right.

Empathy gets talked about like it’s a soft skill, which is a weird phrase for something so hard to practice well. It takes work to understand what the world looks like from somebody else's chair. It takes discipline to slow down long enough to ask what someone is afraid of, what they need, what they misunderstood.

People rarely resist change for no reason. They resist it because something feels uncertain, unsafe, unclear, or unspoken. A leader who can understand that has a chance of guiding them through it. A leader who can't will keep wondering why the beautifully designed plan isn't landing.

Power Turns Up the Volume

Julie said something else that deserves a spotlight: power amplifies people.

We talk about power as if it changes someone into a different person. Sometimes it does. But more often, it just turns up the volume on what was already there.

Generosity gets louder. Ego gets louder. Service gets louder. Insecurity gets louder. Courage gets louder.

The role gives those qualities more reach. That's why the internal work of leadership matters so much. You can learn how to run better meetings, give clearer feedback, delegate more effectively. But sooner or later, the bigger questions show up.

Who do I become under pressure? What patterns are getting louder now that I have more responsibility?

Those questions can be uncomfortable. They should be.

Trustworthy, Not Untouchable

Let's come back to the pedestal. The real danger isn't just that other people put you there. It's that you may start arranging your life around staying there. Always the composed one. Always the certain one. Always the one above the mess.

But leadership is about being trustworthy, not untouchable.

Trustworthy enough to tell the truth, to let people grow, and to remember that the role may be powerful, but it is not the whole person.

The leaders we need aren't the ones performing certainty from the top of a pedestal. They're the ones grounded enough to carry responsibility without losing touch with their own humanity.

So here's the question: where in your leadership are you trying to look certain when what you really need is a place to be honest?

If that hits close to home, let's talk. This is exactly the kind of work I help people like you move through.

I’m Richard Taliaferro. I’m a certified career coach specializing in helping mid-stage professionals gain clarity on their career journey. I’ve written a guide on how to escape the work hamster wheel. Click here to download yours.