Crossing the Leadership Threshold: The Courage to Trust Yourself

In my last post, I described a leader who looked, from the outside, exactly like what she’d always been: a capable, trusted executive. Inside, she felt like she was running harder just to hold her ground. The cause might have been growth, mounting pressure, market forces, client challenges, or intractable people conflicts. 

She feared she wouldn’t rise to the moment, and that her failure could set off a cascade of consequences for her organization and her career. Every day felt hard instead of fulfilling. 

She was standing at a leadership threshold. 

I’ve stood at several in my own career, and I know how unsettling they can be. 

Are you at a leadership threshold yourself? 

If so, you have a real opportunity to develop the inner authority you need to move forward. Reaching a threshold isn’t a sign of lacking capability. It’s a sign that the next phase of your leadership requires something new from you, and that takes a willingness to grow. 

What Does It Mean to Be at a Threshold? 

Literally, a threshold is the strip of wood or stone at the bottom of a doorway, a point of entry. At a deeper level, it’s the critical point at which something begins to happen, change, or take effect. 

The word is closely related to the Latin limen, which gives us “liminal.” A threshold is a symbol of liminality: the space between spaces, where you are no longer who you were but have not yet become who you will be. 

For a leader, this can be a difficult and uncomfortable place to be. Yet many spiritual traditions see the in-between not as a vacuum but as fertile ground where profound inner change can occur. It calls for both honesty with oneself and surrender. 

To cross a threshold, you must be willing to leave something behind. That might mean shedding familiar ways of operating that served you well in the past but aren’t sufficient for what lies ahead. It may mean letting go of fears, anxieties, and limiting beliefs about yourself and your capabilities. It may also mean releasing the need to have all the answers, to please everyone, or to prove yourself through constant effort. 

These patterns may have helped you succeed, but they become obstacles when you’re called to lead at a new level. 

Developing Your Inner Authority 

At a leadership threshold, the challenge isn’t that you’ve lost your capabilities. Those capabilities brought you and your organization this far. Nor is it simply a matter of finding a better strategy. You already know how to plan, solve problems, and execute. 

What may be needed is something deeper: what I call inner authority. 

Inner authority is the capacity to trust your own perceptions and judgment rather than constantly seeking validation from outside. It’s the ability to discern what is true for you and your organization in this next phase, to recognize your own power and wisdom, and to guide others from clarity rather than uncertainty or self-doubt. 

This doesn’t mean ignoring feedback, dismissing other perspectives, or assuming you always know best. Quite the opposite. Inner authority lets you listen openly, weigh different viewpoints, and still trust yourself to make difficult decisions. It gives you the steadiness to act with conviction when the path isn’t entirely clear or when you meet pushback. And it lets you lead from your deepest values and vision rather than from fear, anxiety, or the need for approval. 

Crossing a leadership threshold isn’t simply about becoming a more skilled leader. It’s about becoming more fully yourself as a leader. 

What Do You Need to Leave Behind? 

If you sense you’re standing at a leadership threshold, take a few minutes to reflect on these questions: 

• What fears, anxieties, or limiting beliefs about yourself as a leader may be holding you back? 

• Which familiar ways of thinking or operating have served you in the past but may no longer serve the leader you’re becoming? 
• What would change if you trusted your own vision, wisdom, judgment, and capacity to lead more fully? 

You don’t need to have everything figured out before you cross the threshold. But you do need the willingness to let go of what no longer serves you, and the courage to trust the leader you are becoming.