Leadership Isn’t Earned Through Authority. It’s Earned in the Rain

The Day I Stopped Pretending and Started Leading

I used to think leadership came from titles and confidence.
From sounding sure, even when you weren’t.

It turns out it starts much earlier, when no one is listening and you have to lead anyway.

For me, it began in a downpour.
Soggy boxes. Cold hands.
Wondering why anyone would follow me.

Since then, I’ve learned leadership isn’t one big moment.
It’s a few small ones that change you for good:

• the day I stopped pretending,

• the review I deserved,

• and the notes that saved a promotion.

Each one taught me a different truth.
Together, they taught me what leadership really is.

Earned in the Rain

It was a cold day in November, and I was drenched. I like sunshine and warm weather, but here I was in the rain, hands shaking, delivering food to volunteers. They were spread out in junctions outdoors, but at least they had some protection from the rain.

It was several months since a friend told me that as a manager I was, well, bland. Unremarkable. The kind of manager that no one remembers. That doesn’t change lives. I wasn’t really thinking about this when I carried the soggy food boxes. What I thought about was that I had no idea what I was doing.

This time, I was the youngest person in the non-profit. Everyone else was older, more experienced, and much more financially well-off than I was. Through some bug in the universe, I was in charge. My usual playbook, of pretending to be the perfect manager, just wouldn’t work in this situation.

I could try to speak confidently. Well, pretend to be confident and speak with authority. Be decisive and make the hard decisions without knowing all the facts. Because that’s the kind of things that leaders do, in the books.

But something changed for me that November day. My teeth chattering, my breath steaming, I stayed to talk with the volunteers. Mostly, I just wanted a few more minutes out of the rain. I was too tired and wet and miserable to try and “lead,” so I just listened. I stopped trying to hide my discomfort, I just let myself... be.

They were older and wiser. And they talked. And they listened. And they smiled.
Later, they did what I asked, before I even asked it. They chose to follow.

In that downpour, I realized that I don’t need to pretend. I can be myself, with all my quirks. My passion for Origami, folding complex beetles and dragons from a single uncut sheet of paper. Or my nerdiness with the math behind this folding.

Years later, at Meta, I picked up a square pink sticker.
It said: “Be the nerd.”

Whether you have authority or not.
There’s only one real way to lead.
And that’s to be your authentic self.

The Review I Deserved

It was supposed to be a formality.
I was sick, my head pounding, when my manager asked me to come to the office. I figured we’d wrap up a quick performance review and be done.

Instead, they cut straight to it. No preamble. Just the rating. Then silence. Space for me to read the feedback myself.

I skimmed it once. Then again. The words didn’t sting as much as they numbed. I wasn’t angry. Just detached.

I thought I’d done fine. My team was strong. We were shipping. But the review said something else: I was too focused inside the team, not enough on the broader organization.

At first, I disagreed. I rationalized. But over the next few weeks, I started following the suggested next steps. They worked. My performance improved.

Months later, I reread the review, and this time, it landed.
I saw the pattern stretching back years. I’d been optimizing for my immediate world, not the larger system around it.

That realization changed everything.
The next time I walked into a meeting with senior leaders—the kind that shapes the work of thousands of engineers—I didn’t just represent my team. I connected dots across the organization. I brought context they hadn’t considered. And the project changed direction.

That’s when I finally understood:
Leadership isn’t about owning a team.
It’s about serving the system the team belongs to.

The Notes That Saved The Promotion

It was supposed to be easy.
A promotion discussion for one of my engineers. The work was strong, the impact clear, and the reputation solid. I expected agreement all around.

Then a manager from another team spoke up.
They said my engineer had ghosted their team at a critical moment. That they couldn’t support the promotion.

I was caught off guard.
This wasn’t just a disagreement; it was new information, and it came from someone I thought was an ally. I kept calm, said I’d look into it, and promised to follow up. But I knew I had only a few hours before the decision would be finalized.

So I went back to my notes.
For months, I’d been keeping detailed records of every 1:1, stored in a simple system I’d hacked together with scripts and tags. I connected those notes to our shared project documents and found the exact week that manager was referring to.

The trail was clear. Their team had changed priorities and told us they no longer needed support. My engineer hadn’t disappeared. They’d simply moved on, as requested.

Armed with that evidence, I rejoined the forum later that day and walked everyone through the timeline. The promotion went through.

That experience taught me something I still carry:
The quiet systems you build when no one’s watching can change the outcome when everyone is.

Closing

The funny thing about leadership is that no one hands it to you.
You stumble into it.
In the rain.
In a performance review that doesn’t go your way.
In the quiet moments when you’re digging through notes to defend someone who deserves better.

Each of those moments stripped something away.
The act.
The ego.
The illusion that leadership is about control.

What’s left is simpler, but harder.
You lead by showing up as yourself.
You lead by seeing the system, not just your piece of it.
And you lead by preparing quietly, so that when it matters, you can act fast and stand firm.

Authority can be granted.
Titles can be given.
But leadership, that has to be earned.
Sometimes in the rain.
Sometimes in silence.
Always through the work no one sees.