94. How to Grow Your Command Energy
Have you ever walked into a meeting knowing exactly what you wanted to say, only to question yourself the moment someone challenged your idea or questioned your expertise? You may think you need more confidence or better executive presence, but the foundation of powerful leadership starts somewhere deeper: your ability to command yourself first.
In this episode, I break down the three foundations of command energy and why they are essential for women who want to lead with more authority, presence, and trust in themselves. I explore why self-trust allows you to stay grounded in high-pressure moments, how building emotional capacity helps you navigate discomfort without letting it control you, and why inner authority matters more than seeking validation from the outside.
You’ll learn how to strengthen your foundation before pursuing visibility, recognition, or your next level of leadership. This episode will help you understand why command energy isn’t about being louder or fearless. It’s about becoming someone who can trust herself, hold uncertainty, and lead from a place of clarity and conviction.
Interested in working with me? Book a free 1:1 consultation here!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why command energy starts with trusting yourself before leading others.
The three foundations that help you build stronger leadership presence and authority.
How to develop emotional capacity so discomfort doesn’t control your decisions.
Why seeking external validation can keep you from stepping into your power.
The difference between building visibility and building the foundation to handle visibility.
How to lead yourself through uncertainty, pressure, and high-stakes moments with greater confidence.
Why command energy isn’t about being louder, but about becoming more grounded, rooted, and self-led.
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Episodes Related to growing your command energy:
60. How High-Achieving Women Advance Without Burnout: Commanding vs. Coping
73. How High-Achieving Women Leaders Move From Survival Mode to Command Energy
Full Episode Transcript:
Have you ever walked into a meeting knowing exactly what you wanted to say? And then, someone interrupted you, dismissed your idea, or questioned your expertise. And suddenly, everything changed. You stopped trusting yourself. You second-guessed what you knew. You held back on your thoughts and opinions, wondering if you should have spoken up differently, if you had more confidence, executive presence.
I know that feeling because I used to feel like I needed more confidence too. But I didn't. I had a foundational problem, and I know millions of women do. We're taught to build confidence, executive presence, and communication. But nobody teaches us how to build ourselves. And that's why I believe so strongly that command energy is what millions of women need in order to advance without burning out.
Command energy isn't about being louder. It's not pretending you're fearless. It's not even dominating a room. Command energy is the ability to lead yourself before you lead anyone else because when you command yourself, you naturally command the room. And eventually, you command your career and your life. If you've ever felt like you're capable of more than you're showing or that you've been waiting for someone to finally recognize your potential, this episode is for you. And if someone came to mind while I said that, send this episode to them now. We all know a woman who's carrying more potential than permission.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
Hey, podcast listeners. Welcome to today's episode. We are going to be talking about command energy. And if you've listened to my podcast in the past, you have probably heard me talk about Command. I have a whole six-month coaching experience, leadership accelerator container for women built around command. And today, I wanted to unveil some of the foundational pieces of this because I want more and more women to understand that there is a foundation within themselves that they could start cultivating today that will help them feel more and more in command. And I strongly believe that it is this command energy that will have you showing up with more executive presence, with better communication, with more authority.
So, you all know me. I don't teach scripts. I don't tell you what to say. I help you learn to trust yourself in high-stake moments and speak up when it matters most. This is what command energy is all about. So today, I wanted to introduce you to three foundations of command energy. There are more than that we build inside Command, but if you understand these three, everything else begins to change.
So, let's talk about the first foundation of command energy. This is self-trust. And I think this is where leadership actually begins because most women know so much information, right? And most of you that are listening to this podcast are likely brilliant women that are high-achieving, that know their stuff down. But what happens often times is when the stakes are high or when you're feeling a lot of emotions, you may end up seeking permission to self-trust. You might be looking at yourself and wondering if you should trust yourself.
So most women don't have a capability problem. Most of us have a self-trust problem, especially in these high-stake situations. We trust other people's opinion, our boss, our mentor, potentially performance reviews, everyone except ourselves. And I know this because when I think back to when I started to really build this stronger foundation inside myself, I realized that when the going got tough, I would look to other people to help solve my problem. I felt like I wasn't capable of it. But the reality was, I hadn't been through this experience before, and so my brain was telling me I needed some more information.
So, the situation was, every month end, I would walk into my meeting and my boss would talk about the financials for the month. He would yell. He would get very upset. He would be very frustrated. And I would just shut down. I didn't know how to speak up for myself. I knew my numbers, I knew what I wanted to say, but it was like I couldn't speak. I didn't trust myself to talk. And without realizing it, I had given him all of my power, and I knew that this pattern, I didn't want it to continue, right? And what I actually learned to do was trust myself every single time. I just became much more conscious of what I was dealing with, and I learned to practice commanding myself. Not allowing this person's abrasive comments and thoughts and tone to take over and have me shut down.
So every time I went back for another month-end meeting or another meeting with him, instead of thinking that there is somebody who's going to come save me or shutting down myself, I learned to be more and more conscious of myself. And I want to share that command isn't just something that happens overnight. It's you trusting yourself to say, "I can handle this. Yes, this moment sucks. I don't like it. It doesn't feel good, but I can overcome this moment and I can handle it." This is the very beginning of command because if you learn to trust yourself and you learn to have your own back while the going gets tough, while the proverbial shit is hitting the fan, this is the moment that you need to be able to start building this command foundation within yourself because there isn't some secret answer.
Every difficult conversation became an opportunity for me to trust myself instead of abandon myself, right? Self-trust doesn't mean you'll never question yourself. I still question myself to this day, but I choose to trust myself for the most part. There's always some conversation that I'm having, but for the most part, I choose to trust myself to speak up because the more I do it, the more I learn that this is better for me. It's so much better to speak up and to share my opinion and to share my thoughts versus staying stuck and shut down and feeling like you have no power. This is where commanding yourself really starts. Self-trust doesn't mean you'll never question yourself. It means you stop making everyone else's opinion more important than your own. And in this situation, I was making my boss's emotional reaction, his comments, more powerful than me.
So what did I have to do? I had to learn to trust myself so that I could match his level of emotion, his level of energy. It didn't mean I had to get louder or angrier or dominate the conversation, but it did mean that I needed to be with myself. I needed to trust myself and I needed to listen to myself when everything in my brain was telling me to shrink back, to step back, to be quiet. So, here's my question for you. Where are you waiting for permission? Permission to speak up, permission to ask for the promotion, permission to make the career change, permission to take up space?
Awareness is where command begins. We need to be on to ourselves and see where we're not fully trusting ourselves to move ahead with our own agenda, with our own desires because of somebody else's emotions, somebody else's thoughts or opinions of us, or some other circumstance that feels like it's so heavy and in our way. If you learn to trust yourself, you will already feel like you could navigate things because you're not also questioning yourself. You're moving ahead and saying, "I'm going to figure this out. I might make a mistake, but I'm going to trust myself to figure it out," right?
And that's exactly what I did. I started becoming much more conscious in these meetings. I started, like the noise of him yelling at me became less and less because I heard my own voice. I heard myself say, "Listen, I know you're concerned about these numbers, but here's what we're doing about it. Here's how I've activated the sales team. Here's how I've talked to the product people. Here's how we're going to renew these clients."
My voice, my energy became firmer and more grounded, and I heard myself speak. I heard more of my own thoughts and emotions in the moment than listening to him overpower me, right? It's a choice. Command is a choice, but it starts with self-trust.
All right, let's talk about foundation number two because it is again, very critical to all of this. The next piece of command energy is to shift into building emotional capacity. Oftentimes, we are feeling so uncomfortable, just like I was sharing with you in my own experience. I felt so uncomfortable with somebody yelling at me in front of other people that I would just shut down.
So this second shift is from avoiding discomfort to building emotional capacity. This is literally something you can build inside of yourself. And when I am coaching women in my Command containers and I'm giving them assignments, it is to build this emotional capacity, to be able to understand that we can have emotions and they don't need to take control of us, and we can use them as data, and we can turn our frustration into influence and into intentionality.
So the second shift, like I said, is emotional capacity, not emotional intelligence, right? We decide emotional intelligence later. We start with emotional capacity because leadership isn't about avoiding hard emotions. If you think leadership should be an easy ride, then you are probably stuck where you are because these emotions are going to come up. You're going to, as you rise in your leadership, deal with many personalities, much more interpersonal relationship issues, a lot more emotions. It's about learning to carry and understand the emotions without them taking control over you or commanding you. It's dealing with the pressure head-on, the conflict, the rejection, the uncertainty, the disappointment, the feedback. Those aren't signs you're failing. They're signs that you're leading. If you are feeling emotionally uncomfortable, you are probably growing.
I want to share this with you because I think a lot of women are kind of like, "Something has gone terribly wrong if I am feeling uncomfortable." But in most sense in leadership, this is about expanding your capacity to understand and hold the emotions within yourself as they come up. People assume confidence means you're never nervous and that you're not fearful. But I'm nervous. I get nervous when I do something new. When I did the TEDx talk, standing on stage, my heart was racing. My hands felt a little shaky, but the difference wasn't confidence. The difference was capacity. I was like, "Of course, I'm feeling this way. I know I am putting myself on stage, doing something I've never done before." And I spent years building the ability to feel uncomfortable without letting that discomfort make my decision.
The TEDx stage didn't create command. It's something that was revealed because it's the foundation of what I've been building for years, every difficult conversation, every rejection, every boundary that I put in place, every courageous decision, every moment I chose to grow over comfort became another brick in that foundation. People see the stage, but they rarely see the years it took for me to build the woman who could stand on it. That is command energy, and that is you building that emotional capacity to say, "Hey, I know these emotions are coming and I am learning how to build more and more capacity to be with these emotions without running away from them, without suppressing them, without telling a big story about them."
Really being able to build this capacity, like just as I did, whether it was the TEDx stage or with that boss that I shared with you, building the capacity to be like, "Whoa, I feel scared in this moment. Whoa, I do not like how he's talking to me. Whoa, I feel rejected in this moment." He just told me that my leadership is terrible. But I was able to build the capacity to feel those emotions because I'm human and still command myself and still ask the questions and still speak up for myself and still talk on that stage in a way because I again, trusted myself and I had the emotional capacity to hold the fear and the potential rejection and to hold the joy of being in the moment because I have worked on that emotional capacity.
So this is part of the work. This is your foundation. When you have this strong foundation, if somebody says something to you, it's not that big of a deal because you know how to take care of yourself. You know how to build the capacity of like, "Whoa, those were some tough emotions that I'm feeling, but that doesn't need to be my story, my end all, my definition." This is just part of the journey. And the more you understand that, the more you're in command of yourself.
So, the next foundational piece, and these all build on each other. They're all related to each other. This is about moving from external validation to inner authority. Again, we oftentimes look outside of ourselves for wisdom, for permission, for understanding from authority figures. But at some point in your leadership and in some point in your life, you need to trust yourself and have that inner authority within you. So the third foundation is really where this changes.
I recently spoke with a woman who was interested in working with me, and she said something I hear a lot. I think a lot of people believe that they need to work on their executive presence, and they think it's like something outside of themselves. And they want to be more visible and they want to work on—she talked about social eminence before I do this deeper work. And I was very kind of a little bit curious about it, but also a little bit confused by it. But I actually could understand it much more when I kind of stepped away from it because I was like, "You want to build all of this LinkedIn profiles and social media and like, look really big out there in the world, but you're not working on your foundation."
You know, the inside, how you feel about yourself, how you feel about yourself when nobody responds to your request for connection when you are hoping that if you do all this work, right? If you've got this like map that, hey, this is how you succeed, but the reality is most entrepreneurs know this, and even you in your corporate career, right? We work so hard, we work so hard. We think that if we do the hard work, that somehow things will just come easy to us or it won't feel uncomfortable. But honestly, this is the work that is needed, this foundational work, for things to feel easy. They don't feel easy when you, if you think about you're building the roof of your house and you want the roof to be beautiful, but the inside is a mess, right? The inside foundation is not strong. It actually will take more work to uphold your roof if your foundation isn't strong. So even though she really wanted to invest in all of these other things, and I thought about it, I was like, "I understand this."
Because it's much easier to polish the outside than strengthen what's underneath. It's easier to update your LinkedIn profile than to ask for the raise. It's easier to attend another leadership course or get another certification than have that difficult conversation with your boss. It's easier to become more visible outside in the world than to become more vulnerable. This work is messy. You have to ask, you have to hear no, you have to disappoint people. You have to stop outsourcing your worth to other people, which we've probably been conditioned to do, right? We work really hard, we get the gold star, we feel good about ourselves. But that hamster wheel will end at some point as you continue to rise into leadership because as a leader, you are no longer like waiting for that gold star. You start becoming somebody who can give yourself that so that you can command that, so that you can ask for that.
So you have to stop waiting for someone else to tell you who you are. But here's what I've learned. Visibility doesn't create command. Command creates the woman who can handle visibility. You will only be able to handle the visibility that your nervous system, that your foundation is open to handling. Because once you get a bad review or once you don't get the visibility or once you are out there in the world and things are very visible, I've had this too. I've had people come to me and been like, "Oh my gosh, my LinkedIn like post went viral and now I'm feeling so scared. I'm feeling freaked out." That is where your foundation becomes shaky. It can be positive or negative news. It's uncertainty that will cause your command energy to shrink back if your foundation is not strong and solid.
This is where inner authority is when you stop asking the room who you are. If you are in command, how can you ask the room who you are? The truth is, if you are really in command and you have your inner authority, you're connected to it, then you've already decided. And from this place, this is where you speak differently. This is where you lead differently. This is where executive presence is exuded. It's a byproduct of you working on yourself first and foremost. You make decisions differently, not because you're louder, but because you're more rooted in yourself and grounded in yourself and you trust yourself, and you have the emotional capacity to deal with whatever comes your way. And you have the inner authority within yourself to say, "I look at myself. I trust myself. My opinion of myself matters more than anyone else's opinion."
I'm going to say that again and with conviction. My opinion of myself matters more than anyone else's opinion of me. Now, if you can state that with conviction, with rootedness, with a power in your body, then that is the inner authority I'm talking about. And that's why command energy is so powerful, right? Because you are not waiting for somebody else to approve of you. You are not waiting for circumstances to change around you. You are choosing to command in the here and now. And if you've heard my other episodes, you are more powerful in the here and now than you are anywhere at any time in your life because in the here and now is where you make decisions. In the here and now is where you speak up. In the here and now is where you put boundaries in place for yourself.
So, those were the three foundations that I wanted to cover for command energy, and I want you to notice yourself and ask yourself, "When does this come up for me? How am I not listening to my own opinion about myself? Where am I being mean and cruel to myself? Where am I not having the emotional capacity to deal with the negative emotions that come up?" Ask yourself these questions because this command energy has the ability to change your life forever, but it is not easy work. It's simple work, but it's not easy. It's messy, it's vulnerable, but I will tell you this, it is the work that will have you understand yourself so much more deeply, trust yourself so much more deeply, and have you create opportunities that you have always wanted and desired in your life.
So, if you remember nothing else from today's episode, remember this: the world spends a lot of time teaching women how to look like leaders. I'm far more interested in helping women become leaders whose foundation can hold the weight of the life they're asking for because promotions bring pressure, visibility brings criticism, success brings bigger decisions, influence brings greater responsibility. If your foundation isn't strong enough, every new level will feel heavier and heavier than it should. And this is what eventually leads to burnout in women. But command energy changes that. It's built through self-trust. It's strengthened through emotional capacity. It's sustained through inner authority. This isn't about becoming fearless. It's about becoming someone who can lead herself, especially when life feels uncertain.
So this week, I want you to ask yourself one question: What would command do here? When you're about to shrink, when you're about to stay silent, when you're waiting for permission, when you're questioning yourself, ask that question, "What would command do here?" And trust the answer because every time you choose yourself, every time you honor your values, every time you take courageous action before you feel completely ready, you're strengthening that foundation. You're becoming the woman who can hold more, more opportunities, more uncertainty, more responsibility, more influence, more impact, more income, not because you're pretending to be confident, but because you've built something far more powerful.
If this episode resonated with you, share it with another woman who needs this reminder today. My hope is that command becomes more than a concept. I hope it becomes a question women ask themselves in the moments that matter most. And if you're listening and thinking, "This is exactly the work I need," then that's why I created Command. We don't begin with the polish. We begin with the foundation because when your foundation changes, everything you build on top of it changes too. Remember this: you command yourself first, then you command the room, then you command your life and leadership. I'll see you next week.
Have a beautiful week, and let me know how this episode is landing with you. Meet me on LinkedIn. You can connect with me and DM me, or you can find me at connect@aspire-coaching.co. Just send me an email, and I will personally get back to you. I'd love to hear what comes up for you as you are commanding more and more of your life. All right, I will see you next week. Have a beautiful week.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
I know that feeling because I used to feel like I needed more confidence too. But I didn't. I had a foundational problem, and I know millions of women do. We're taught to build confidence, executive presence, and communication. But nobody teaches us how to build ourselves. And that's why I believe so strongly that command energy is what millions of women need in order to advance without burning out.
Command energy isn't about being louder. It's not pretending you're fearless. It's not even dominating a room. Command energy is the ability to lead yourself before you lead anyone else because when you command yourself, you naturally command the room. And eventually, you command your career and your life. If you've ever felt like you're capable of more than you're showing or that you've been waiting for someone to finally recognize your potential, this episode is for you. And if someone came to mind while I said that, send this episode to them now. We all know a woman who's carrying more potential than permission.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
Hey, podcast listeners. Welcome to today's episode. We are going to be talking about command energy. And if you've listened to my podcast in the past, you have probably heard me talk about Command. I have a whole six-month coaching experience, leadership accelerator container for women built around command. And today, I wanted to unveil some of the foundational pieces of this because I want more and more women to understand that there is a foundation within themselves that they could start cultivating today that will help them feel more and more in command. And I strongly believe that it is this command energy that will have you showing up with more executive presence, with better communication, with more authority.
So, you all know me. I don't teach scripts. I don't tell you what to say. I help you learn to trust yourself in high-stake moments and speak up when it matters most. This is what command energy is all about. So today, I wanted to introduce you to three foundations of command energy. There are more than that we build inside Command, but if you understand these three, everything else begins to change.
So, let's talk about the first foundation of command energy. This is self-trust. And I think this is where leadership actually begins because most women know so much information, right? And most of you that are listening to this podcast are likely brilliant women that are high-achieving, that know their stuff down. But what happens often times is when the stakes are high or when you're feeling a lot of emotions, you may end up seeking permission to self-trust. You might be looking at yourself and wondering if you should trust yourself.
So most women don't have a capability problem. Most of us have a self-trust problem, especially in these high-stake situations. We trust other people's opinion, our boss, our mentor, potentially performance reviews, everyone except ourselves. And I know this because when I think back to when I started to really build this stronger foundation inside myself, I realized that when the going got tough, I would look to other people to help solve my problem. I felt like I wasn't capable of it. But the reality was, I hadn't been through this experience before, and so my brain was telling me I needed some more information.
So, the situation was, every month end, I would walk into my meeting and my boss would talk about the financials for the month. He would yell. He would get very upset. He would be very frustrated. And I would just shut down. I didn't know how to speak up for myself. I knew my numbers, I knew what I wanted to say, but it was like I couldn't speak. I didn't trust myself to talk. And without realizing it, I had given him all of my power, and I knew that this pattern, I didn't want it to continue, right? And what I actually learned to do was trust myself every single time. I just became much more conscious of what I was dealing with, and I learned to practice commanding myself. Not allowing this person's abrasive comments and thoughts and tone to take over and have me shut down.
So every time I went back for another month-end meeting or another meeting with him, instead of thinking that there is somebody who's going to come save me or shutting down myself, I learned to be more and more conscious of myself. And I want to share that command isn't just something that happens overnight. It's you trusting yourself to say, "I can handle this. Yes, this moment sucks. I don't like it. It doesn't feel good, but I can overcome this moment and I can handle it." This is the very beginning of command because if you learn to trust yourself and you learn to have your own back while the going gets tough, while the proverbial shit is hitting the fan, this is the moment that you need to be able to start building this command foundation within yourself because there isn't some secret answer.
Every difficult conversation became an opportunity for me to trust myself instead of abandon myself, right? Self-trust doesn't mean you'll never question yourself. I still question myself to this day, but I choose to trust myself for the most part. There's always some conversation that I'm having, but for the most part, I choose to trust myself to speak up because the more I do it, the more I learn that this is better for me. It's so much better to speak up and to share my opinion and to share my thoughts versus staying stuck and shut down and feeling like you have no power. This is where commanding yourself really starts. Self-trust doesn't mean you'll never question yourself. It means you stop making everyone else's opinion more important than your own. And in this situation, I was making my boss's emotional reaction, his comments, more powerful than me.
So what did I have to do? I had to learn to trust myself so that I could match his level of emotion, his level of energy. It didn't mean I had to get louder or angrier or dominate the conversation, but it did mean that I needed to be with myself. I needed to trust myself and I needed to listen to myself when everything in my brain was telling me to shrink back, to step back, to be quiet. So, here's my question for you. Where are you waiting for permission? Permission to speak up, permission to ask for the promotion, permission to make the career change, permission to take up space?
Awareness is where command begins. We need to be on to ourselves and see where we're not fully trusting ourselves to move ahead with our own agenda, with our own desires because of somebody else's emotions, somebody else's thoughts or opinions of us, or some other circumstance that feels like it's so heavy and in our way. If you learn to trust yourself, you will already feel like you could navigate things because you're not also questioning yourself. You're moving ahead and saying, "I'm going to figure this out. I might make a mistake, but I'm going to trust myself to figure it out," right?
And that's exactly what I did. I started becoming much more conscious in these meetings. I started, like the noise of him yelling at me became less and less because I heard my own voice. I heard myself say, "Listen, I know you're concerned about these numbers, but here's what we're doing about it. Here's how I've activated the sales team. Here's how I've talked to the product people. Here's how we're going to renew these clients."
My voice, my energy became firmer and more grounded, and I heard myself speak. I heard more of my own thoughts and emotions in the moment than listening to him overpower me, right? It's a choice. Command is a choice, but it starts with self-trust.
All right, let's talk about foundation number two because it is again, very critical to all of this. The next piece of command energy is to shift into building emotional capacity. Oftentimes, we are feeling so uncomfortable, just like I was sharing with you in my own experience. I felt so uncomfortable with somebody yelling at me in front of other people that I would just shut down.
So this second shift is from avoiding discomfort to building emotional capacity. This is literally something you can build inside of yourself. And when I am coaching women in my Command containers and I'm giving them assignments, it is to build this emotional capacity, to be able to understand that we can have emotions and they don't need to take control of us, and we can use them as data, and we can turn our frustration into influence and into intentionality.
So the second shift, like I said, is emotional capacity, not emotional intelligence, right? We decide emotional intelligence later. We start with emotional capacity because leadership isn't about avoiding hard emotions. If you think leadership should be an easy ride, then you are probably stuck where you are because these emotions are going to come up. You're going to, as you rise in your leadership, deal with many personalities, much more interpersonal relationship issues, a lot more emotions. It's about learning to carry and understand the emotions without them taking control over you or commanding you. It's dealing with the pressure head-on, the conflict, the rejection, the uncertainty, the disappointment, the feedback. Those aren't signs you're failing. They're signs that you're leading. If you are feeling emotionally uncomfortable, you are probably growing.
I want to share this with you because I think a lot of women are kind of like, "Something has gone terribly wrong if I am feeling uncomfortable." But in most sense in leadership, this is about expanding your capacity to understand and hold the emotions within yourself as they come up. People assume confidence means you're never nervous and that you're not fearful. But I'm nervous. I get nervous when I do something new. When I did the TEDx talk, standing on stage, my heart was racing. My hands felt a little shaky, but the difference wasn't confidence. The difference was capacity. I was like, "Of course, I'm feeling this way. I know I am putting myself on stage, doing something I've never done before." And I spent years building the ability to feel uncomfortable without letting that discomfort make my decision.
The TEDx stage didn't create command. It's something that was revealed because it's the foundation of what I've been building for years, every difficult conversation, every rejection, every boundary that I put in place, every courageous decision, every moment I chose to grow over comfort became another brick in that foundation. People see the stage, but they rarely see the years it took for me to build the woman who could stand on it. That is command energy, and that is you building that emotional capacity to say, "Hey, I know these emotions are coming and I am learning how to build more and more capacity to be with these emotions without running away from them, without suppressing them, without telling a big story about them."
Really being able to build this capacity, like just as I did, whether it was the TEDx stage or with that boss that I shared with you, building the capacity to be like, "Whoa, I feel scared in this moment. Whoa, I do not like how he's talking to me. Whoa, I feel rejected in this moment." He just told me that my leadership is terrible. But I was able to build the capacity to feel those emotions because I'm human and still command myself and still ask the questions and still speak up for myself and still talk on that stage in a way because I again, trusted myself and I had the emotional capacity to hold the fear and the potential rejection and to hold the joy of being in the moment because I have worked on that emotional capacity.
So this is part of the work. This is your foundation. When you have this strong foundation, if somebody says something to you, it's not that big of a deal because you know how to take care of yourself. You know how to build the capacity of like, "Whoa, those were some tough emotions that I'm feeling, but that doesn't need to be my story, my end all, my definition." This is just part of the journey. And the more you understand that, the more you're in command of yourself.
So, the next foundational piece, and these all build on each other. They're all related to each other. This is about moving from external validation to inner authority. Again, we oftentimes look outside of ourselves for wisdom, for permission, for understanding from authority figures. But at some point in your leadership and in some point in your life, you need to trust yourself and have that inner authority within you. So the third foundation is really where this changes.
I recently spoke with a woman who was interested in working with me, and she said something I hear a lot. I think a lot of people believe that they need to work on their executive presence, and they think it's like something outside of themselves. And they want to be more visible and they want to work on—she talked about social eminence before I do this deeper work. And I was very kind of a little bit curious about it, but also a little bit confused by it. But I actually could understand it much more when I kind of stepped away from it because I was like, "You want to build all of this LinkedIn profiles and social media and like, look really big out there in the world, but you're not working on your foundation."
You know, the inside, how you feel about yourself, how you feel about yourself when nobody responds to your request for connection when you are hoping that if you do all this work, right? If you've got this like map that, hey, this is how you succeed, but the reality is most entrepreneurs know this, and even you in your corporate career, right? We work so hard, we work so hard. We think that if we do the hard work, that somehow things will just come easy to us or it won't feel uncomfortable. But honestly, this is the work that is needed, this foundational work, for things to feel easy. They don't feel easy when you, if you think about you're building the roof of your house and you want the roof to be beautiful, but the inside is a mess, right? The inside foundation is not strong. It actually will take more work to uphold your roof if your foundation isn't strong. So even though she really wanted to invest in all of these other things, and I thought about it, I was like, "I understand this."
Because it's much easier to polish the outside than strengthen what's underneath. It's easier to update your LinkedIn profile than to ask for the raise. It's easier to attend another leadership course or get another certification than have that difficult conversation with your boss. It's easier to become more visible outside in the world than to become more vulnerable. This work is messy. You have to ask, you have to hear no, you have to disappoint people. You have to stop outsourcing your worth to other people, which we've probably been conditioned to do, right? We work really hard, we get the gold star, we feel good about ourselves. But that hamster wheel will end at some point as you continue to rise into leadership because as a leader, you are no longer like waiting for that gold star. You start becoming somebody who can give yourself that so that you can command that, so that you can ask for that.
So you have to stop waiting for someone else to tell you who you are. But here's what I've learned. Visibility doesn't create command. Command creates the woman who can handle visibility. You will only be able to handle the visibility that your nervous system, that your foundation is open to handling. Because once you get a bad review or once you don't get the visibility or once you are out there in the world and things are very visible, I've had this too. I've had people come to me and been like, "Oh my gosh, my LinkedIn like post went viral and now I'm feeling so scared. I'm feeling freaked out." That is where your foundation becomes shaky. It can be positive or negative news. It's uncertainty that will cause your command energy to shrink back if your foundation is not strong and solid.
This is where inner authority is when you stop asking the room who you are. If you are in command, how can you ask the room who you are? The truth is, if you are really in command and you have your inner authority, you're connected to it, then you've already decided. And from this place, this is where you speak differently. This is where you lead differently. This is where executive presence is exuded. It's a byproduct of you working on yourself first and foremost. You make decisions differently, not because you're louder, but because you're more rooted in yourself and grounded in yourself and you trust yourself, and you have the emotional capacity to deal with whatever comes your way. And you have the inner authority within yourself to say, "I look at myself. I trust myself. My opinion of myself matters more than anyone else's opinion."
I'm going to say that again and with conviction. My opinion of myself matters more than anyone else's opinion of me. Now, if you can state that with conviction, with rootedness, with a power in your body, then that is the inner authority I'm talking about. And that's why command energy is so powerful, right? Because you are not waiting for somebody else to approve of you. You are not waiting for circumstances to change around you. You are choosing to command in the here and now. And if you've heard my other episodes, you are more powerful in the here and now than you are anywhere at any time in your life because in the here and now is where you make decisions. In the here and now is where you speak up. In the here and now is where you put boundaries in place for yourself.
So, those were the three foundations that I wanted to cover for command energy, and I want you to notice yourself and ask yourself, "When does this come up for me? How am I not listening to my own opinion about myself? Where am I being mean and cruel to myself? Where am I not having the emotional capacity to deal with the negative emotions that come up?" Ask yourself these questions because this command energy has the ability to change your life forever, but it is not easy work. It's simple work, but it's not easy. It's messy, it's vulnerable, but I will tell you this, it is the work that will have you understand yourself so much more deeply, trust yourself so much more deeply, and have you create opportunities that you have always wanted and desired in your life.
So, if you remember nothing else from today's episode, remember this: the world spends a lot of time teaching women how to look like leaders. I'm far more interested in helping women become leaders whose foundation can hold the weight of the life they're asking for because promotions bring pressure, visibility brings criticism, success brings bigger decisions, influence brings greater responsibility. If your foundation isn't strong enough, every new level will feel heavier and heavier than it should. And this is what eventually leads to burnout in women. But command energy changes that. It's built through self-trust. It's strengthened through emotional capacity. It's sustained through inner authority. This isn't about becoming fearless. It's about becoming someone who can lead herself, especially when life feels uncertain.
So this week, I want you to ask yourself one question: What would command do here? When you're about to shrink, when you're about to stay silent, when you're waiting for permission, when you're questioning yourself, ask that question, "What would command do here?" And trust the answer because every time you choose yourself, every time you honor your values, every time you take courageous action before you feel completely ready, you're strengthening that foundation. You're becoming the woman who can hold more, more opportunities, more uncertainty, more responsibility, more influence, more impact, more income, not because you're pretending to be confident, but because you've built something far more powerful.
If this episode resonated with you, share it with another woman who needs this reminder today. My hope is that command becomes more than a concept. I hope it becomes a question women ask themselves in the moments that matter most. And if you're listening and thinking, "This is exactly the work I need," then that's why I created Command. We don't begin with the polish. We begin with the foundation because when your foundation changes, everything you build on top of it changes too. Remember this: you command yourself first, then you command the room, then you command your life and leadership. I'll see you next week.
Have a beautiful week, and let me know how this episode is landing with you. Meet me on LinkedIn. You can connect with me and DM me, or you can find me at connect@aspire-coaching.co. Just send me an email, and I will personally get back to you. I'd love to hear what comes up for you as you are commanding more and more of your life. All right, I will see you next week. Have a beautiful week.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
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