65. Servant Leader or Total Pushover? How Sara Protected Her Bandwidth & Built Leadership Backbone Without Abandoning Her Values or her Team

🚨 RESILIENT enrollment is open. Final cohort of 2025. Secure your spot: https://melodywilding.com/resilient In this episode, I sit down with Sara, a team leader who grew up in a military family and carried that "stand at attention" mentality straight into the corporate world. Sara shares how she went from automatically deferring to anyone with authority while simultaneously babysitting her team through every decision, to building the backbone needed to challenge up, set boundaries, and actually develop her people. If you've ever found yourself nodding along in meetings when you have something valuable to add, saying "yes sir" when you should be pushing back, or constantly rescuing your team from problems they should solve themselves, this conversation will resonate deeply. What You’ll Discover: How Sara went from silent observer to strategic contributor in executive meetings – and why her boss started specifically asking for her input The childhood programming that made Sara cower around authority and how she broke free without losing respect How she learned to redirect out-of-scope requests diplomatically while actually helping people get better solutions The fix that freed up hours of Sara’s week that she could reinvest in more important work Connect with Melody: FREE NEWSLETTER: Psychology at Work Weekly Get on the Waitlist for Speak Like a Senior Leader™ Follow Melody on LinkedIn Follow Melody on Instagram Get Melody's new book, Managing Up