Stop Shrinking: The Leadership Lesson I Learned On A Zurich Sidewalk
The harder I tried to stay out of everyone’s way, the more I got shoved aside. One minute in the morning rush taught me something no MBA program ever did.
It started as a perfectly ordinary Tuesday morning in Zurich. I was late, the sidewalk was packed, and I was doing everything right — or so I thought. Shoulders in. Eyes down. Stepping aside for anyone who looked as though they might need the space. I was the most accommodating person on that street, and I was getting nowhere fast.
The more deferential I became, the worse it got. Elbows jabbed. People cut in front of me. I was, in the most literal sense, invisible — a gap in the crowd that everyone else filled. My politeness had turned me into an obstacle.
Then something clicked. I squared my shoulders, lifted my chin, and just walked. Not aggressively. Not faster. I simply moved as though I had somewhere to be and every right to get there. Within seconds, the crowd shifted. People stepped aside without me asking. A path opened up that hadn’t existed thirty seconds earlier.
I was at my desk by 8:50, a little unsettled — not by the commute, but by what it had just shown me about leadership.
The more I ceded ground, the less room I had. Not because the crowd was hostile, but because I’d signaled that I didn’t need any.
Confidence Is a Signal, Not a Performance
What happened on that sidewalk is not really about sidewalks. It is about the signal your presence sends before you open your mouth.
Body language research — including Amy Cuddy’s widely discussed work at Harvard Business School, though its replication has been debated — points consistently to one underlying truth: posture and physical presence influence how others read you from the first moment. Leaders who enter a room with physical openness and calm directness are perceived differently before a single word is spoken. That first impression is sticky.
The same principle plays out in boardrooms, client pitches, and salary negotiations. When you walk into a meeting already hedging — apologizing for taking up time, prefacing every opinion with “this might be wrong, but…” — you are sending a signal. People receive it. And they respond accordingly.
This is not a call for arrogance. The executives I have watched navigate the most difficult rooms are not the loudest or the most aggressive. They are the clearest. They know what they want, they say it plainly, and they do not fill silence with nervous noise. That clarity, more than any specific tactic, is what commands attention.
Why Accommodation Backfires
There is a counterintuitive truth about over-accommodation: it does not make you easier to work with. It makes you harder to trust.
When a leader constantly defers, adjusts positions before being challenged, or softens every message to the point of ambiguity, teams stop knowing where they stand. And people who don’t know where they stand become anxious. Anxious teams don’t execute well.
Consider what happens in a board presentation. A CFO I know used to open every quarterly review with a version of “these numbers are a bit complicated, so bear with me.” The result was predictable: the board leaned back, crossed their arms, and spent the next forty minutes looking for the problem she’d already implied was there. When she dropped the preamble and simply opened with the numbers and her reading of them, the dynamic changed immediately. Same data. Completely different room.
Research on negotiation consistently shows that vague or shifting positions invite pushback, while clear anchoring — stating what you want and why, directly — tends to move conversations forward faster. The other party may disagree, but at least they know what they’re reacting to.
The same dynamic was at play on that sidewalk. My uncertain movements didn’t make the crowd comfortable. They made me unpredictable. Once I moved with purpose, I became readable — and readable, in a crowd, means you get space.
Clarity is not just a communication skill. It is a form of respect — for your own position, and for the people who need to understand it.
Three Things Worth Changing Tomorrow
The shift I am describing is not cosmetic. It is not about standing differently in front of a mirror. But there are concrete places to start.
First, stop pre-apologizing. Phrases like “I know this might be a stretch, but…” or “You’ve probably already thought of this…” erode your message before it lands. Say the thing. Let it stand on its own.
Second, own your physical space in meetings. Sit all the way back in your chair. Put your materials on the table. Do not fold yourself into a corner. The space you occupy physically communicates something about the ideas you’re about to share.
Third, when you don’t know, say so directly — then say what you’re going to do about it. “I don’t have that number in front of me. I’ll get it to you by the end of the day”, is confident. Mumbling an approximate answer you’re not sure about is not.
The Room You Make for Yourself
The crowded street was not hostile. Nobody was trying to push me around. They were simply responding to the space I was — or wasn’t — claiming. When I stopped broadcasting uncertainty, the crowd stopped confirming it.
Boardrooms work the same way. The respect you get is, to a surprising extent, a reflection of what you silently signal you expect. And that signal starts long before anyone has said a word.
On a packed Tuesday morning in Zurich, I learned something I had been told a dozen times but never quite felt: the space you occupy is, largely, the space you decide to take.
What room are you giving away right now?