Early in life, I didn’t want to be a leader.

Still, I held the roles.
Captain. Point guard. Softball coach. Director.
The one speaking up.
The one people quietly followed.

I equated leader with something I didn’t want to become.

Someone controlling everything.
Performing competence.
Holding it all together at the cost of themselves.

So I resisted the word.

What I didn’t understand then is that leadership doesn’t begin with control.

It begins with standing.

Standing in your own body.
Standing in what’s true for you.
Standing in a frequency that might not be popular—or understood—or immediately mirrored back.

Leadership ≠ Control

In a recent conversation on the Soulful Speaking podcast with Jeni Holla and Giselle Jennaway, we noticed something important:

The leaders we trust most aren’t trying to control.
They aren’t managing perception.
They aren’t forcing outcomes.

They’re responding to an inner call—and daring to stay there long enough for others to feel it.

This kind of leadership can look quiet from the outside. But internally, it can be anything but.

It can feel lonely.
Disorienting.
Risky to the nervous system.

Especially if you’ve spent a lifetime being praised for accommodating, smoothing, or performing competence.

The Cost of Fitting In

One of the themes that surfaced in our conversation was self-abandonment—the subtle ways we leave ourselves in order to be accepted.

Sometimes fitting in looks like:

• explaining yourself one more time to be understood
• matching someone else’s intensity even when it’s not yours
• shrinking nuance into something more palatable

And then, suddenly, there’s a moment of recognition:

This isn’t me.

Leadership can seem to ask us to choose between fitting in and truth.
That’s a mirage.

As leaders, we aren’t meant to fit in.
We’re meant to light the way toward what’s possible.

There’s a part of us that already knows:
fitting in is not the same thing as belonging.

We can be different and belong.
In fact, we were born for it.

From Strategy to Sovereignty

We also explored the difference between strategy and intuition led sovereignty.

Many of us were taught that freedom comes from choosing between a narrow set of acceptable options.
But real sovereignty doesn’t live inside those rails.

It lives in the body.
In intuition.
In the place that can’t always be explained—or justified—before it’s lived.

Untamed leadership isn’t about having a better strategy.
It’s about releasing the need to tame ourselves in order to feel safe.

Here’s the truth that landed in my bones during this conversation:

Freedom isn’t found by pushing harder.
It’s found when you stop taming yourself.

Standing Alone (Until You Don’t)

There’s a moment in this kind of leadership where we may feel like we’re standing alone.

No applause.
No immediate validation.
No clear evidence that we’re “doing it right.”

And yet—something steadies.

We stop abandoning ourselves.
Our nervous system settles.
The space between the notes widens.

And eventually, almost imperceptibly, others begin to feel it too.

Not because we convinced them.
But because we stayed.

A Remembering, Not a How-To

This episode of Soulful Speaking—the first Untamed Leader Conversation—isn’t a framework or a checklist.

It’s a remembering.

A return to the kind of leadership that doesn’t ask us to become someone else—but invites us to stand as we are.

🎧 Untamed Leader: Standing in Your True Frequency
[Listen to the full episode →]

If you’ve been feeling the pull to lead differently—
quieter, truer, less performative—
this conversation is for you.

With love & passion,
Lauri

This conversation is part of a larger thread that’s been weaving itself together over time. In January, Jeni, Giselle, and I will gather with a few other magical humans for Untamed Leader—a spacious, winter-honoring unsummit for those feeling called to lead from truth rather than conditioning.

More soon.