Most of us can remember someone who changed us. A teacher, a manager, a mentor, a parent. Someone who saw more in us than we were showing. They didn’t flatter us, fix us, or push us. Yet somehow, around them, we became more. We stepped up. We took ownership. We showed up for our own lives.
If you think about it, it probably wasn’t anything specific they said. It was who they were.
Some people have the opposite effect, and we’ve all met them too. Around them, we shrink. We get careful, defensive, or quiet. We do what’s needed and nothing more. They may say all the right things, but something in how they show up tells us what they really believe about us.
People don’t respond to our words as much as they respond to who we are being.
Are you being someone who believes in the person in front of you, even before they believe in themselves? Or someone who has already decided what they’re capable of? Are you present and curious, or busy judging, rescuing, or proving something? Are you living what you’re asking of others: owning your choices, telling the truth, stepping into what scares you?
People feel the difference long before they can name it.
So the question isn’t “How do I get people to step up?” It’s: Who do I need to be, such that people step up around me?
Answering that means looking honestly at who you are when you’re with people: what you believe about them, what you believe about yourself, and the patterns you bring into every room without noticing.
But let’s be honest about something. A moment of insight, on its own, rarely changes anything.
We’ve all been there. Something moves us, a book, a talk, a conversation, and we’re full of good intentions. A week later, the old habits are back and the insight has quietly faded. That isn’t a failure of willpower. It’s how people work. Who we are with others was shaped over years, and it won’t be reshaped in a day.
Change happens through continuity. It comes from practising in real moments, noticing what happened, reflecting, and choosing again. It’s the small, repeated choices about who you’ll be, made on ordinary days, again and again.
The real work happens in everyday life: in the meeting where you catch yourself shrinking someone instead of seeing them, in the moment you choose belief over judgement, in the day you show up as the person you’d want to follow. Those moments are where this stops being an idea and becomes who you are.
It only works if you bring your whole self to it. Not the polished version. The real you, with the moments you’re proud of and the ones you still replay at night.
So consider one question:
Who would you have to be, for the people around you to become more?
Sit with your answer. Or sit with the question.