756: When It Feels Like You Don’t Belong, with Muriel Wilkins

107 snips

Oct 27, 2025

Muriel Wilkins, founder and CEO of Paravis Partners and a seasoned executive coach, dives into the common yet disorienting feeling of not belonging in leadership roles. She discusses how this sensation can emerge during career transitions and the vicious cycles it creates. Muriel emphasizes the importance of focusing on one’s own responses rather than external behaviors. She encourages leaders to act with conviction, articulate their unique value, and build supportive relationships, highlighting that self-worth should not hinge on acceptance from others.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

ADVICE

Act Like The Seat Is Yours

Act like your seat at the table is yours instead of waiting for others to validate it.
Maintain self-acceptance while adapting behaviors to increase acceptance when useful.

INSIGHT

External Approval Still Dominates

Most adults still rely on external approval to gauge worth; true internal worth is rare.
The goal is to hold both self-assessment and external feedback without letting either define your value.

ADVICE

Change Beliefs, Then Behaviors

Before changing behavior, examine the beliefs driving it and adjust those first.
Pause and ask what you're telling yourself to reveal alternative responses you can choose.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Muriel Wilkins: Leadership Unblocked

Muriel Wilkins is the founder and CEO of Paravis Partners and a sought-after C-suite adviser and executive coach with a twenty-year track record of helping senior leaders take their performance to the next level. She is the coauthor of Own the Room and the host of the Harvard Business Review podcast Coaching Real Leaders. She’s just released her newest book, Leadership Unblocked: Break Through the Beliefs That Limit Your Potential (Amazon, Bookshop)*.

You may have spent years aiming for the leadership role you now have. But now, once you’re in the job, it can be really disorienting to feel like you don’t belong. In this conversation, Muriel and I explore this reality that a lot of leaders face and what do when you run into it.

Key Points

Feeling like you don’t belong is a normal and common reality at inflection points in your career.
A vicious cycle can emerge: you’re waiting to be included while others are waiting for you to engage.
While you can’t control others, you can break the part of the pattern you have control of.
Define your value proposition. What gets missed when you don’t show up?
Remind yourself of shared goals or values with the group. This prevents the small stuff from distracting you as much.
Identify a few supportive people and build relationships with them.

Resources Mentioned

Leadership Unblocked: Break Through the Beliefs That Limit Your Potential by Muriel Wilkins (Amazon, Bookshop)*

Interview Notes

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

Related Episodes

How to Start a Big Leadership Role, with Carol Kauffman (episode 617)
How to Start Better With Peers, with Michael Bungay Stanier (episode 635)
The Habits That Hold Leaders Back, with Marshall Goldsmith (episode 696)

Discover More

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.