Reclaiming personal power at work doesn’t start with a promotion, a new job, or finally getting the recognition you deserve. It starts with a quiet, uncomfortable realization: you’ve been handing your power away for years without even noticing. I know because I did it. I handed my power to people who didn’t earn it, systems that didn’t protect me, and beliefs about authority that I’d never thought to question. And it nearly broke me.
This is the story of how I lost myself in a leadership role, hit rock bottom, and slowly rebuilt something stronger. Not because I became harder or more aggressive, or because I learned to “play the game.” But because I finally understood where my power had been going, I decided to stop giving it away.
The Version of Me Who Still Believed Authority Meant Truth
My first real leadership role felt like everything I’d been working toward. I’d been a high performer. I’d earned my reputation. I genuinely believed that if you showed up, worked hard, and cared about your people, success would follow.
I inherited a strong, likable team. I wanted to lead with trust, warmth, and connection. I believed good results would speak for themselves.
And for a while, the system worked. Until it didn’t.
I assumed if someone was in charge, they must be right. That’s what we’re taught, isn’t it? Respect the hierarchy. Trust the process. If leadership is correcting you, there must be a reason. If you’re struggling, the problem is probably you.
I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I wasn’t lazy. I wasn’t careless. I just hadn’t been taught that authority and truth aren’t the same thing. That someone can hold power over you without deserving it. That the system you trusted can fail you completely.
Reclaiming personal power at work requires first understanding how you lost it. And for me, the loss started with a simple, dangerous belief: that the people above me knew better than I did about who I was and what I was capable of.
How Power Gets Taken (Quietly, Daily, One Conversation at a Time)
Nobody announces they’re about to erode your confidence. There’s no memo. No formal meeting. It happens in small moments that feel insignificant until you look back and realize they were anything but.
Being pulled into offices. Feedback without coaching. Criticism without context. Expectations that shifted constantly, making it impossible to ever feel like you’d gotten it right.
I started questioning myself. Not in the healthy, reflective way that makes you better. In the spiraling, anxious way that makes you smaller.
Every day felt like a test I didn’t know I was taking. I stopped thinking about how to lead well and started thinking about how not to screw up. Fear replaced clarity. Doubt replaced conviction.
Here’s what I learned too late: power is rarely stolen. It’s handed over when we’re scared.
Nobody forced me to stop trusting my instincts. Nobody physically took my confidence. But when you’re in an environment where every decision feels wrong, where you’re constantly bracing for criticism, your nervous system starts making choices for you. You shrink. You defer. You stop speaking up because the cost feels too high.
This is how reclaiming personal power at work becomes necessary in the first place. Not through dramatic confrontations or obvious abuse, but through the slow, daily erosion of self-trust that happens when you’re operating in fear.
The Moment I Broke — And Why That Matters
I cracked.
Not dramatically. Not in a way that made for a good story. Just completely.
I found myself unable to continue. Tears I couldn’t stop. A body that refused to keep going. I walked out of work, called HR, and took stress leave.
For the first time in my career, I felt like a failure.
I honestly started to believe I wasn’t cut out for this — that being kind meant I was weak. That my instinct to lead with humanity was the problem. That if I’d just been harder, colder, more willing to play the game, none of this would have happened.
The breaking point matters because it’s where most people get stuck. They interpret the crack as evidence that they were never strong enough. That they don’t have what it takes. That the people who criticized them were right all along.
But breaking isn’t failure. Breaking is your body and mind finally refusing to participate in something that was never going to work. It’s not a weakness. It’s wisdom you haven’t recognized yet.
Reclaiming personal power at work often starts at rock bottom — not because you need to suffer to grow, but because sometimes you need to lose everything before you realize what was never yours to lose in the first place.
The Message That Changed Everything
While I was on leave, convinced my career was over, I started applying for jobs. Desperate, scattered applications. The kind where you’re not evaluating opportunities — you’re begging for escape routes.
Then a LinkedIn message arrived.
Not a week later. Not a month later. The next morning.
A recruiter reached out about a role that seemed impossibly aligned with what I needed. The timing felt like more than a coincidence.
I don’t care what you believe — God, the universe, dumb luck — but something cracked open that day. Something that let me see leaving not as failure, but as redirection. Not as proof I couldn’t cut it, but as evidence that I didn’t belong there in the first place.
Sometimes power returns before confidence does. The opportunity landed in my inbox before I was ready to believe I deserved it. But I took it anyway. And that choice — saying yes when everything in me wanted to hide — was my first real act of reclaiming personal power at work.
I Escaped — But I Didn’t Feel Free Yet
I got the new job. I should have felt relieved. I should have walked into my new role with fresh energy and renewed self-assurance.
Instead, I was terrified.
I was terrified they’d realize I faked my way into the room — that I didn’t actually deserve to be there. So I started overworking. Overanalyzing. Replaying conversations. Questioning every decision.
I wasn’t lazy — I was scared. And fear looks a lot like ambition when no one talks about it.
This is the part of toxic workplace recovery that nobody warns you about. You can leave the building, but you take the fear with you. You can escape the person who made you feel small, but the smallness follows you into every new room until you consciously decide to leave it behind.
Imposter syndrome isn’t a personality flaw. It’s a survival response. When you’ve been trained to expect criticism, you brace for it everywhere. When you’ve been taught that your instincts are wrong, you stop trusting them entirely.
Reclaiming personal power at work isn’t just about leaving bad situations. It’s about unlearning the beliefs those situations installed in you.
The Realization That Took Years
Holy shit… I thought I was bad at leadership. But maybe I was just early. Maybe I was still becoming the kind of leader I was meant to be.
This realization didn’t come quickly. It came in fragments, over months and years of processing what had happened. Of working with people who actually supported my growth. Of seeing my leadership style succeed in environments that valued it.
I wasn’t bad at leading. I was unprotected, uncoached, and early.
I was trying to lead in a way that required psychological safety to thrive — and I was doing it in an environment that offered none. My approach wasn’t wrong. It was misplaced.
This distinction matters enormously for anyone questioning themselves after a difficult professional experience. The environment that rejected you is not the final word on your capabilities. The leader who criticized you is not the authority on your potential. The system that failed you is not evidence of your inadequacy.
Power doesn’t equal dominance. Power equals choice. The choice to define yourself. The choice to trust your instincts. The choice to stop letting other people’s limitations become your identity.
What Reclaiming Personal Power at Work Actually Looks Like
Reclaiming personal power at work isn’t dramatic. It’s not about confrontation or revenge or proving people wrong. It’s quieter than that. More internal. More sustainable.
It looks like asking better questions instead of accepting answers that don’t make sense.
It looks like not auditioning for approval from people who haven’t demonstrated they deserve to evaluate you.
It looks like a decision rather than a reaction. Making choices from clarity rather than fear.
It looks like recognizing when you’re handing your power away — and gently, firmly, taking it back.
For me, reclaiming personal power at work meant stopping the constant self-audit. Stopping the mental replays of conversations, searching for evidence of my failures. Stopping the preemptive apologies and the defensive over-explaining.
It meant trusting that my fifteen years of HR experience gave me legitimate expertise. That my instinct to lead with humanity wasn’t weakness — it was wisdom. The people who told me I was too soft were projecting their own limitations onto me.
It meant understanding that I’d never been as broken as I believed. I’d just been in environments that couldn’t recognize what I had to offer.
The Leader I Chose to Become
I didn’t become harder after that experience. I became clearer.
I learned that kindness without boundaries leads to burnout. But boundaries without kindness lead to the kind of leadership that damages people. The balance isn’t easy, but it’s possible.
I learned that my values were sharpened by contrast. I know exactly what kind of leader I refuse to become because I’ve experienced what that kind of leadership does to people. I know what I stand for because I was forced to decide.
I learned that reclaiming personal power at work is an ongoing process. It’s not a one-time decision. It’s a daily practice of noticing when you’re shrinking, when you’re deferring, when you’re handing your authority to people who haven’t earned it.
And I learned that the breaking wasn’t the end of my story. It was the beginning of a better one.
If You’re Questioning Yourself Right Now
If you’re reading this and recognizing your own experience — if you’ve been in environments that made you doubt your fundamental competence — I want you to hear something clearly:
You are probably closer to your power than you think.
The fact that you’re questioning, reflecting, trying to understand what happened and why — that’s not weakness. That’s the beginning of reclaiming personal power at work. That’s consciousness waking up. That’s the part of you that knows something was wrong, even if you can’t fully articulate it yet.
The people who made you feel small don’t get to define you. The systems that failed you don’t get to determine your future. The beliefs you absorbed in survival mode don’t have to run your life forever.
You get to decide who you are. You get to define what leadership means to you. You get to take your power back.
If you want to unpack where you’ve been giving your power away — not to “fix” yourself, but to finally see clearly — I’d love to talk.
Book Your Free 15-Minute Strategy Call → https://calendly.com/rosey-singh-eunioa/free-strategy-call
Because if this much resonated from a newsletter, imagine what we can do together.
Rosey has spent 15 years in HR and now runs Eunioa, a career concierge service helping professionals break through career plateaus, navigate toxic workplaces, and reclaim their leadership confidence. Her “Sht They Forgot to Teach You” newsletter delivers the career advice you should have gotten years ago.*
