If you’re like me, at one time you’ve looked at the charismatic person in the room— holding court, keeping the energy up late into the day—and thought:
That’s what people want in a leader. And that isn’t me.
So you push yourself to be more vocal, more visible. More like them.
Eventually, the strain catches up with you.
Because leading in a way that isn’t your own takes energy you don’t have to spare.
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My guest this week, Dr. Vance Cooper, spent years in that loop.
He has a PhD in corporate leadership. He’d studied the theories. He was succeeding at work. And still he felt like he wasn’t reaching his potential.
So he did something then the theories don’t really teach.
He got honest about who he actually was.
His strengths, limitations, what drained him. And what he was uniquely good at.
What he discovered was that his real strength wasn’t holding court. It was empowering the people around him—leading from a supporting role, asking better questions, and filling gaps other people weren’t seeing.
Once he stopped trying to be the extroverted version of a leader, something shifted.
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There’s a line from our conversation I keep coming back to.
Vance describes leadership as a process of self-discovery. Not something you eventually figure out and move past, but something that keeps changing as you have new experiences.
And that matters because the better you understand yourself, the better you can understand how you affect other people.
It made me think about how often we start with the wrong question.
We ask, “What do I need to get better at?”
Communicating more confidently.
Speaking up more.
Building executive presence.
Those things can matter. But Vance’s argument is that they’re downstream of something more fundamental: knowing yourself well enough to understand how you actually lead best.
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Another idea in this episode I really loved was about vision.
Vance’s approach is refreshingly practical. He doesn’t just think about where he wants to go. He writes it down, works backward from the goal, and builds it into his routine.
During our interview, he pointed to a poster board on his wall: his goals for 2026, the steps to get there, and the things he needs to do every day.
There’s nothing particularly complicated about it. But seeing the goal every day—and knowing what you need to do next—makes it much harder to drift.
You don’t become the leader you want to be all at once. You build it into what you do every day.
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And if you’re doing good work but not getting recognized as a leader, Vance has another piece of advice I found genuinely useful:
Stop waiting for your title to make you one.
Instead, look for places where something needs to be done and nobody is stepping up, within your organization, and if not there, look for it within your community. Seek out a board position. Take on a project nobody wants to own.
Volunteer to take on more responsibility.
That’s where you get the experience of actually leading. And over time, those experiences become core to how other people see you.
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I liked this conversation because none of Vance’s advice requires you to become a different kind of person.
It’s really about understanding yourself well enough to stop fighting your natural way of leading—and then getting deliberate about building on that foundation.
Give it a listen.
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