There's a specific kind of moment I hear about often.
Someone new starts. Your supervisor asks you to show them the ropes. Not because it's in your job description, but because they already know you're the one who can explain it clearly.
You walk them through the workflow. Answer questions you forgot you even knew the answers to. Decide, on the spot, what matters most for them to understand first.
Then you go back to your desk and think nothing of it.
But that's not nothing.
That's onboarding. Knowledge transfer. Judgment about what's actually important versus what can wait. The kind of thing a job posting for a "Training Coordinator" or "Team Lead" would list as a core requirement, and you've already been doing it, unpaid and unnamed, for years.
It shows up in other places too.
You're the person coworkers come to first when something's unclear. You're the one who steps in when things get busy or messy, not because someone assigned it to you, but because you're the one who can.
None of that requires a title. But it is leadership. The kind that happens before anyone hands you the label for it.
Here's why this matters beyond just feeling good about yourself.
When you're building a resume, prepping for an interview, or trying to figure out what's next, "leadership experience" often gets treated like something you either have or don't, usually tied to whether you've managed direct reports.
But leadership isn't only about who reports to you. It's about what people trust you to handle. And if you've been the one training, guiding, and being relied on, you already have evidence. You just haven't been calling it that.
So this week, notice it. The next time someone comes to you with a question, or you find yourself explaining something to someone newer than you, pay attention. That's not just part of the job. That's the leadership experience you've been telling yourself you don't have.
If you want help putting language around moments like these, and more like them, What Your Experience Really Says walks you through exactly how to translate work like this into something you can actually use on your resume, LinkedIn, and in interviews.
You're not unqualified. You're MISTRANSLATED.
To landing what you've earned,
Kourtney Checots
Career Strategist
Founder, MISTRANSLATED