How a Top Leader Discovered Being "Unqualified" Was Her Greatest Advantage

A senior vice president shares how changing a core belief unlocked her path to growth and greater career fulfillment, while making her a better leader

I’m excited to share another guest post with you this week. Guest posts help me share the stories of other searchers, learners, transformers, thinkers and recovering overachievers, so we can learn from their perspectives, lessons, and ideas. I want to amplify our community and help demonstrate the beauty of a life lived messy— learning, growing, and doing, on whatever terms make sense for each of you.

Ineke found career success when she began embracing who she really is, rather than trying to fit a mold — busting the myth we have to be “perfect” to achieve and to find fulfillment, while pointing to an exciting way we can all transform our biggest mental blocks into our strongest building blocks.

One of the first things I noticed about Ineke when I met her at Nike was that she could get things done. She was well-liked by a broad cross-section of team members, peers, and top leaders. She was willing to think outside the box without fear of judgment. And I loved working with her. She was honest, transparent, and had the urgent need to drive real outcomes. Over time she became a friend. 

Today, Ineke is a Senior Vice President of Community and Sales at Better Place Forests, which has to be one of the coolest, most meaningful death-related startups ever. A crazy sentence, I know. They build conservation memorial forests for families who choose cremation and want to support the environment. Ineke is also a passionate horseback rider, and even edited pieces of her guest post while competing in a horse show! 

Her career story–which began on the sales floor at Nordstrom, saw her rise through the ranks at places like Anthropologie, Nike, and REI, and ultimately landed her a top leadership role in a fast-growing start-up with big heart–is also a story of personal growth and fulfillment. I believe all good leadership stories are. 

How I Discovered Being "Unqualified" Was My Greatest Advantage

Picture this: You’re interviewing for the role of a lifetime, aiming for a promotion, changing careers, or trying to land your billion dollar idea, but there's one nagging doubt: you don't feel qualified. It's a feeling many people face, even after achieving significant career growth or landing impressive positions. But what if you could flip the script and consider being "unqualified" not as a limitation, but as your secret weapon on a path to becoming an exceptional leader?

My Unconventional Journey

From a young age, I had a natural leadership instinct and was full of ideas on how I could make things better. I learned that while money doesn’t buy happiness, it does unlock life experiences, opportunities, and comforts. I was keen to orchestrate these ideas into money making schemes. I produced puppet shows that required an entry fee, and created a highly profitable lemonade stand by unlocking a free supply chain from Grandma and low cost labor from my brothers. I got a taste of making exciting things happen in business, and I loved it.

As I grew into a young adult, I had big aspirations yet never had a clear blueprint for my career. I experimented over the years. From retail field management to entrepreneurship, non-profits to business school, my journey took many unexpected turns.

Within the first 5 years of starting my career, I was promoted into mid-level management roles in retail field management, enabling me to begin honing my skills as a leader. I got years of hands-on experience running a business and managing teams. I gained an understanding of how to win with customers in the moment of truth. I was given increasing responsibilities and gained the confidence of senior leaders. When something wasn’t working, send Ineke, they said.

But despite being challenged within these roles, I often felt unfulfilled. I knew I wasn’t reaching my potential, which to me meant solving larger, more difficult problems, learning and innovating, and having the ability and oversight to make a real, tangible impact. I also wanted to be recognized for doing great work.

Plus, I experienced ongoing frustrations at work that prompted me to ask a lot of big questions. 

• Why didn't things work well? 

• Why weren’t customers getting what they needed? 

• Why were we moving so slow? 

• Why was company Y innovating and we were lagging? 

• Why were executives seemingly unfazed by real gaps in the business?

What I saw happening didn’t add up with what I expected from my top leaders, and what I knew our teams could achieve.

The Unqualified Conundrum

I knew I had the smarts to do more and make a big impact. But to do this, I needed a breakthrough opportunity to prove that I could perform at higher levels. This is not easy, and I wasn’t sure how to get there.

I spent a lot of time reflecting about what I had accomplished, and what was missing. I had a hunch that I wasn’t being taken seriously because I worked in field management, where I was one of hundreds. I had to figure out a way to stand out. So I took it one careful step at a time.

My first breakthrough was going to business school. I had always wanted to go, but often people asked, “well, why would you do that?” It was discouraging, and I listened. But one day sitting at the beach, I told my husband I had always considered going and he nonchalantly said, “oh, well, why don't you?”  As crazy as it sounds, it was as if in that moment, I got permission to succeed, it validated that I should go for it.

My other problem was that I was always quietly doing excellent work, never caring if anyone noticed. This was a huge mistake. I began to be loud and proud about my accomplishments, not bragging, but making sure people noticed. I told my leaders about my career intentions and asked for their help to make it happen. And when they couldn’t help me, I left for work in consulting, where I would have a chance to be exposed to many companies, work with top leaders, and beef up my resume in order to make the leap to the next level.

My plan worked. After consulting for a couple years, I landed a coveted role within a Fortune 500 company where I would drive a major strategic initiative. I figured I would roll right into the position, on track to become my version of Miranda Priestly. 

In reality, I felt more like Anne Hathaway’s character on her first day at Runway magazine. 

I felt out of my depth. Unprepared. Constantly on the run to cover up for what I didn’t know or hadn’t experienced before. This feeling plagued me for years. 

Yet I always had the sense I was supposed to be there, that I had something to contribute. In my gut I knew to ask, “Why ‘them’ and not me?” Did others really know so much, and I didn’t?

My tenacity kept me going at work, but I felt blocked, stuck between my ambition and my uncertainty. Despite years of experience and a Master’s degree, I’d review job descriptions that intrigued me, only to discover I didn't meet all the requirements. I worked on projects with senior leaders or subject matter experts and compared my work to theirs, wondering if it stacked up. 

Eventually, I decided to be brutally honest with myself—maybe I wasn't qualified?

At least not according to the traditional playbook. The fundamentals I learned in business school were incredibly difficult to apply when layered with corporate jargon, rampant politics and an ever changing business & technology landscape. My experience in mid-level management was primarily about execution, and that didn’t seem to be enough. While my work was sometimes described as strategic, someone else was really making the big decisions.

Obviously, I was missing something essential.

But Little Did I Know...

I wasn’t missing what I thought I was.

In my past, I had used counseling to work through personal challenges. I thought to myself, “why not apply the same approach to my professional life?” So I enlisted a professional coach. 

I wanted to become a director, and then keep moving up. This goal made it clear that I didn’t need someone who was all about coloring my parachute. Instead, I needed someone who deeply understood the real challenges executives face. Someone who could help me up-level.

Every week my coach and I would review my work agenda: what was I focused on, who was I meeting with, what did I need to accomplish? Then we’d get into the details. Was someone or something blocking me? Where might I be the blocker? 

We dissected the minutiae, the hidden pitfalls, personalities of key stakeholders, how to work around internal politics, and when to listen and when to block the noise. We met weekly over the course of a year. As we worked through my obstacles, I saw more and more how the challenges I faced were external, and I could handle each of them when I applied my problem solving mind. 

Then one day, it hit me like a lightning bolt—I wasn't unqualified. I was highly qualified! Measuring my qualifications against the checklists that old-school corporate mindsets deemed necessary for leadership was what had been holding me back. 

It was time to embrace my unqualified side to unleash my full potential.

I began to step into more strategic roles, and eventually got promoted to director, where just as I’d hoped, I had opportunities to make bigger impacts and tackle more complex challenges. Even better, I gained oversight of innovation initiatives. This was exciting for me, because innovation is where not knowing became the actual key to my success. I again became the go-to person to be thrown at problems no one else seemed able to solve. This type of work brings me great energy and fulfillment, and requires being comfortable in the knowledge you don’t have all the information. 

It became clear that:

• Strategy and innovation starts with understanding an unmet need and defining a problem. 

• Knowing everything is actually the opposite of an effective approach. Instead, you need to ask a lot of questions and seek diverse perspectives. 

• You must be creative with possible solutions and couple that with perseverance to get it right.

From there, my career moved quickly. I was asked to move around the company to take on new and undefined roles, and I got to pave my own way. Releasing my belief in being unqualified allowed me to lean into all my innate strengths, which helped me accelerate further. 

I eventually moved on to another company, where I took on a new, very undefined challenge, helping them figure out how to handle a completely new approach to customer relationships. That role led me to my current company and current position, where I have oversight of the end-to-end customer experience, all the way from marketing and sales to service delivery. Being comfortable with ambiguity is now essential.

Advantages of Being "Unqualified"

As I’ve expanded my leadership role at Better Place Forests during a time of dramatic upheaval and change in the world, I’ve seen first hand how a more modern leadership mindset is necessary. 

The people I work with are flexible, adaptable and continue to help me grow. I find solace in the fact that many are just like me, in that we have more questions than answers. This is why we’re able to break through an age-old industry with our new perspectives and ideas. 

Here are eight lessons I’ve learned about this way of leading, which helped me solve problems, stay versatile, find out of the box solutions, earn the trust of my team, and unleash their potential:

1. Have a Beginner's Mind: Approaching challenges with curiosity, unburdened by preconceived notions, led me to fresh perspectives and innovative solutions.

2. Embrace the Unknown: My lack of expertise enabled me to adapt and learn quickly in unfamiliar situations, ultimately making me a more versatile leader.

3. Let Transferable Skills Trump Qualifications: I discovered that my ability to communicate effectively, learn on the fly, and problem-solve compensated for any specific qualifications I lacked.

4. Leverage a Growth Mindset: Embracing continuous learning and development propelled me forward and keep me agile and adaptable.

5. Seek Diverse Backgrounds, Act Inclusively: Seeking diversity of thought and leading inclusive decision-making drives innovation within my teams.

6. Be Humble and Seek Help: Acknowledging my limitations, I humbly sought guidance and mentorship from other leaders and peers.

7. Spark Creativity: Allowing my lack of qualifications in certain areas to spark my creativity, encouraged outside-the-box thinking and helped me trail-blaze new paths.

8. Be Transparent and Vulnerable: Being honest, open, and true to myself earned my team's trust, allowing me to inspire them to show up the same way, to work collaboratively and to learn together.

Embracing my "unqualified" self unlocked my true potential and paved the way for a successful career. Now, when I doubt my qualifications, I remind myself that I actually have a competitive advantage. There isn’t a problem that I can’t solve, because I know how to figure shit out. 

What’s Next?

As I reflect upon this writing, am I fulfilled? For the moment, yes. I’m working on some big projects to break norms in the end-of-life space. Most days I’m on the edge of my seat and constantly fired up to do more. I’m sure a day will come where I’ll need a new and bigger problem to solve… or maybe my preferences will change, and I will be satisfied in other ways.

For now, as a leader, the key is not to "prove" myself, but to listen, learn, respond, coach, and adapt. I don’t need to meet some arbitrary checklist to gain respect. Instead, I focus on supporting my team so each one of us can feel fulfilled as we solve big problems together.

-Ineke