Nobody sat you down and said, "This is leadership. Write it down."
It just happened. Someone struggled, and you helped. Someone was new, and you explained. Someone hit a wall, and you were the one they came to.
There was no ceremony. No title change. No line item added to your job description.
So you didn't file it under leadership. You filed it under just doing your job, or being the one who happens to know things, or helping out.
That's the quiet cost of experience that accumulates without a name attached to it. It doesn't disappear. It just stops registering as evidence.
Here's what I've noticed. People rarely undersell the things they were officially assigned. If it's in the job description, they'll claim it. What gets left out is almost always the stuff that happened informally, the stuff nobody told them to track.
But informal doesn't mean small. It often means trusted.
Someone decided you were the one who could handle the question, the new hire, the mess. That decision wasn't random.
You don't need a title to have been leading. You need to start noticing when you already are.
You're not unqualified. You're MISTRANSLATED.
To landing what you've earned,
Kourtney Checots
Career Strategist
Founder, MISTRANSLATED