The Gate

I have stood at the gate of heaven a thousand times before I died.

Not in dreams. In ordinary moments. A school flyer landing in my inbox was enough to put me there. A dinner I almost didn't arrange. A conversation I nearly walked away from. And every time, the same image: me, standing before God, and God asking the question I was most afraid to answer.

Were you faithful with what I gave you?

I have spent forty-something years living inside the questions that leadership eventually forces every serious person to face.

Not am I effective?

Not am I successful?

But am I faithful to the person I was actually made to be?

Because the biggest leadership gap I ever had to close was not a skill gap. It was not a strategy gap. It was the distance between who I truly was and who I had been told to be since I was small enough to believe it.

This is a story about that gap.

Most leaders carry voices they never consciously chose.

Voices absorbed long before they had the maturity to question them.

Some learned that visibility was pride.

Some learned that rest was laziness.

Some learned that love had to be earned.

Some learned that their value came from achievement.

Years later, those voices rarely sound like childhood anymore.

They sound like professionalism.

They sound like humility.

They sound like responsibility.

They sound like strategy.

And because they sound so reasonable, we rarely challenge them.

The most dangerous leadership blind spot is not what you don't know.

It is what you have never thought to question.

About the voices we absorb before we are old enough to filter them.

About the moment you realise that what you called humility was actually someone else's fear of the strength God uniquely made you to be. About learning, really learning, that you were allowed to take up space.

I am still learning. That is the point.

If you are a leader who has ever felt like the truest version of you is the version you keep slightly hidden, there is a story coming for you.

🤍 Vera
Leadership & Communication Coach
Founder of The Honesty Lab & VeraChin.com