Peacemaking Is Her Strength. It Was Also Her Hiding Place.
Joon
14 Jul 2026
Views 85
In my coaching practice, I don't ever come across leaders who lack competence. Instead, the leaders I meet arrive with impressive track records and glowing reviews. However, there's a feeling they cannot quite name: something is limiting how far and how freely they lead. That something almost always lives on the inside.
Kevin Cashman, a thought leader in leadership development, calls this territory "leading from the inside out": who you are drives what you do, and no amount of outer technique can outrun the inner operating system for long. The Leadership Circle framework I wrote about in Aprilcalls it the inner game.
This post begins a four-part series on that inner game: how it runs the outer game of skills and results, how our best strengths can turn into our hiding places, and what changing the game looks like in practice. I want to start with a leader I coached over the past few months, because her story carries the whole idea in one arc.
THE PEACEMAKER
One of my clients is a finance professional at a renowned global entertainment company. She is the kind of colleague everyone hopes to be paired with: sharp with numbers and generous with her time. Over fifteen-plus years across global firms, she built a reputation on a principle to be strategic and thoughtful, and making other people's jobs easier.
But she is no wallflower. In meetings, she is articulate, direct, and fully participatory. Her pattern showed up in two specific situations instead. The first: she would appoint herself problem solver and mediator for everyone, in more or less every situation. (I am exaggerating, but only a little, and she would be the first to laugh about it.) The peacemaking urge stretched her emotional and mental capacity far past what any one person should carry. The second: when her two cross-functional bosses were in a dispute, she would try, and try again, to cater to both of their needs and broker a peace between them, to no avail. She would end up exasperated, confused, and stuck in the middle. And only then would she withdraw, with excellent reasons ready: "this is not in the company's best interest." "this is not my place." She would step back with a splitting heart: on one hand, it feels mature and wise to step back, but on another, she would feel inadequate like she should do more in this impossible scenario.
You can get stuck in a knot when you try to keep peace for others.
image generated by Claude
GOING ALONG TO GET ALONG
After talking to her for a bit, we learned that a strong internal narrative runs through her mind: I'm okay as long as everyone around me is at peace. What works for others is what works for me. I need to make myself useful, solve problems, and put out fires so that everyone is happy and things move forward. Her default response to almost anything was some version of "That's fine. I can handle it," or "It won't be easy, but I can manage."
Serving others comes naturally to her, and it is one of her gifts. But under this narrative, everyone's problems became her problems, every dispute became her assignment. She went along to get along. She absorbed, mediated, raised her hand for extra work, watched others walk away with the recognition, and told herself the peace was worth it. In the meantime, her own opinions, needs and aspirations got lost in the middle of everyone else's and she's consistently overworking.
None of this is a competence problem. Her ceiling was never her skills. It was a rule running underneath the skills: keep everyone at peace, whatever it costs you, and keep your own needs out of the equation. As long as a rule like that stays invisible, we are not holding the rule. The rule is holding us.
THE TURNING POINT
For months she kept naming the same need: clarity and alignment. Although it took a bit to surface, the issue at hand was her expectation of where clarity would come from. She wanted her manager to provide it, or the organization, or possibly me. (I checked my coaching bag, and this was not part of the scope) The shift came when she reversed the order: you establish your own values and vision first, and then you negotiate with the expectations and demands around you.That reversal is the essential inside-out turning point.
We had been working on that over the months and she did the unglamorous work. She wrote down her values, for home and for work. She chose some key tasks she wanted to say no to. She set herself a target of asking a hundred questions, on the theory that a question is the most polite way to sneak an opinion into a room. Within weeks, one of her managers commented that something about her had changed.
The hard work of defining values and vision first. Only then you can negotiate what you can give or take.
image generated by Claude
NOW SHE SPEAKS
In our final session, she said "I thought I was someone without fear, someone free, but looking back, I don't think I was." Coming from a person who kept the peace for everyone around her, that is a devastating sentence, and I admire her for saying it out loud. These days, I can see her really stepping into her convictions. She speaks her own mind. She lets the two bosses own their dispute. She delegates when someone else can do the job better. She no longer feels the urge to produce the right answer on the spot, because, as she put it, showing up and the energy she brings matter more than resolving conflicts or finding answers to everything.
This is an important distinction: there is a difference between retreating because you are depleted and need to take care of yourself, and retreating because you are afraid of what others might think, what discomfort it may cause, or because you feel you do not know enough or that it is not your place to speak. The first kind of retreat is wisdom and strategic self-management. The second kind wears wisdom and strategy as a costume.
Facing what we fear and what makes us uncomfortable is true inner strength. This is the kind of executive presence I'd like all women to cultivate.
Ladies, let's stop overthinking and just start showing up.
Joonyoung Kim is an executive leadership coach and founder of Mindesign. She works with leaders on resonant productivity and creative leadership, the kind that sustains rather than depletes. Based in Korea, working with people everywhere.
In my coaching practice, I don't ever come across leaders who lack competence. Instead, the leaders I meet arrive with impressive track records and glowing reviews. However, there's a feeling they cannot quite name: something is limiting how far and how freely they lead. That something almost always lives on the inside.
Kevin Cashman, a thought leader in leadership development, calls this territory "leading from the inside out": who you are drives what you do, and no amount of outer technique can outrun the inner operating system for long. The Leadership Circle framework I wrote about in April calls it the inner game.
This post begins a four-part series on that inner game: how it runs the outer game of skills and results, how our best strengths can turn into our hiding places, and what changing the game looks like in practice. I want to start with a leader I coached over the past few months, because her story carries the whole idea in one arc.
THE PEACEMAKER
One of my clients is a finance professional at a renowned global entertainment company. She is the kind of colleague everyone hopes to be paired with: sharp with numbers and generous with her time. Over fifteen-plus years across global firms, she built a reputation on a principle to be strategic and thoughtful, and making other people's jobs easier.
But she is no wallflower. In meetings, she is articulate, direct, and fully participatory. Her pattern showed up in two specific situations instead. The first: she would appoint herself problem solver and mediator for everyone, in more or less every situation. (I am exaggerating, but only a little, and she would be the first to laugh about it.) The peacemaking urge stretched her emotional and mental capacity far past what any one person should carry. The second: when her two cross-functional bosses were in a dispute, she would try, and try again, to cater to both of their needs and broker a peace between them, to no avail. She would end up exasperated, confused, and stuck in the middle. And only then would she withdraw, with excellent reasons ready: "this is not in the company's best interest." "this is not my place." She would step back with a splitting heart: on one hand, it feels mature and wise to step back, but on another, she would feel inadequate like she should do more in this impossible scenario.
You can get stuck in a knot when you try to keep peace for others.
image generated by Claude
GOING ALONG TO GET ALONG
After talking to her for a bit, we learned that a strong internal narrative runs through her mind: I'm okay as long as everyone around me is at peace. What works for others is what works for me. I need to make myself useful, solve problems, and put out fires so that everyone is happy and things move forward. Her default response to almost anything was some version of "That's fine. I can handle it," or "It won't be easy, but I can manage."
Serving others comes naturally to her, and it is one of her gifts. But under this narrative, everyone's problems became her problems, every dispute became her assignment. She went along to get along. She absorbed, mediated, raised her hand for extra work, watched others walk away with the recognition, and told herself the peace was worth it. In the meantime, her own opinions, needs and aspirations got lost in the middle of everyone else's and she's consistently overworking.
None of this is a competence problem. Her ceiling was never her skills. It was a rule running underneath the skills: keep everyone at peace, whatever it costs you, and keep your own needs out of the equation. As long as a rule like that stays invisible, we are not holding the rule. The rule is holding us.
THE TURNING POINT
For months she kept naming the same need: clarity and alignment. Although it took a bit to surface, the issue at hand was her expectation of where clarity would come from. She wanted her manager to provide it, or the organization, or possibly me. (I checked my coaching bag, and this was not part of the scope) The shift came when she reversed the order: you establish your own values and vision first, and then you negotiate with the expectations and demands around you. That reversal is the essential inside-out turning point.
We had been working on that over the months and she did the unglamorous work. She wrote down her values, for home and for work. She chose some key tasks she wanted to say no to. She set herself a target of asking a hundred questions, on the theory that a question is the most polite way to sneak an opinion into a room. Within weeks, one of her managers commented that something about her had changed.
The hard work of defining values and vision first. Only then you can negotiate what you can give or take.
image generated by Claude
NOW SHE SPEAKS
In our final session, she said "I thought I was someone without fear, someone free, but looking back, I don't think I was." Coming from a person who kept the peace for everyone around her, that is a devastating sentence, and I admire her for saying it out loud. These days, I can see her really stepping into her convictions. She speaks her own mind. She lets the two bosses own their dispute. She delegates when someone else can do the job better. She no longer feels the urge to produce the right answer on the spot, because, as she put it, showing up and the energy she brings matter more than resolving conflicts or finding answers to everything.
This is an important distinction: there is a difference between retreating because you are depleted and need to take care of yourself, and retreating because you are afraid of what others might think, what discomfort it may cause, or because you feel you do not know enough or that it is not your place to speak. The first kind of retreat is wisdom and strategic self-management. The second kind wears wisdom and strategy as a costume.
Facing what we fear and what makes us uncomfortable is true inner strength. This is the kind of executive presence I'd like all women to cultivate.
Ladies, let's stop overthinking and just start showing up.
Joonyoung Kim is an executive leadership coach and founder of Mindesign. She works with leaders on resonant productivity and creative leadership, the kind that sustains rather than depletes. Based in Korea, working with people everywhere.
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