"I don't want to step on anyone's toes." This is a common and reasonable stance in organizational life.
But this mostly logical approach often does more damage than good. If “that’s not my job” tops the list of career-limiting phrases, an overcautious respect for boundaries is equally limiting.
It is particularly damaging if you’re the conscientious type who knows what you’re doing.
Impact often lies in the gray zone between clear authority and clear overreach. Visible constraints like hierarchies, roles, and processes are actually easier to navigate than the invisible ones we create for ourselves.
There's an art to exceeding your authority in ways that build trust, but it feels dangerous. The skill is in thoughtfully testing and expanding the boundaries of your perceived authority.
In today's piece, I explore how to master this critical balance. In my follow-up, I'll share a framework that goes deeper into this nuance.
When silence talks
Imagine you're in a meeting where everyone seems to be skirting around an issue. You understand exactly what's happening, but an internal filter kicks in.
You wonder: Am I the right person to bring this up? So you stay silent.
These moments of hesitation are defining twice over: first in your immediate impact, and second, more lastingly, in how others perceive your abilities.
While these moments may seem to be about risk, potentially leading to embarrassment or appearing overly ambitious, they're actually about legitimacy and leadership.
You're not worried about being wrong. You're concerned about violating some implicit boundary between contribution and overreach. But where did this boundary come from? Who drew it? What would happen if you crossed it thoughtfully?
Zones of authority
While boundaries of authority may seem abstract, they exist in clear patterns across organizations.
Picture them as three circles: your formal authority in the center, a danger zone of clear overreach at the outer edge, and between them, a rich but fuzzy middle zone of potential impact.
Most conscientious professionals understand their formal authority well and recognize clear danger zones.
But, this binary view misses the critical middle ground where leadership is often required.
It's in this fuzzy zone where the greatest opportunities for impact often lie. It's neither clearly within nor outside your authority, but a space where your engagement can add unexpected value. It's how roles naturally evolve, and where future responsibilities are often born.
The challenge is learning to navigate this middle zone wisely. In those moments of hesitation — when you wonder if it's your place to speak up — you're likely standing at the edge of this zone.
Leadership operates in this gray zone by testing boundaries, expanding impact, and creating possibilities. Recognizing that there is in fact a third fuzzy zone increases freedom both literally and metaphorically.
Obedient contributors
Most high performers build their careers on a strong sense of responsibility. They meet expectations, don’t overstep, and know how to be useful without making themselves central.
In early career roles, being a reliable executor is an asset. You build your reputation through consistent delivery, minimal drama, and staying in your lane. You're trusted because you execute without making waves.
But as you rise into leadership, the nature of the work fundamentally shifts.
Ambiguity increases, contradictions multiply, and just execution isn't enough. The role demands a kind of judgment that requires you to navigate beyond the clear boundaries of your position.
You must be comfortable operating at the edges of your formal authority, using influence and discernment instead of pure execution.
The exercise of adaptive leadership is dangerous in part because you always dance on the edge of your scope of authority, at least with respect to some of your authorizers — whether they are your superiors, peers, subordinates, or people outside your organization. You push the limits of what others think you ought to be doing.
— Heifetz, Grashow, Linsky in Practice of Adaptive Leadership
And this is where obedient contributors begin to falter, not from incompetence, but from over-reliance on inherited instincts:
- wait to be asked
- don’t speak unless it’s your area
- avoid tension unless someone else raises it first
These aren’t failures but leftovers from earlier stages of professional identity. But left unexamined, they turn reliability into invisibility.
People trust you to implement, but not someone they look to for direction. Someone they like, but don’t follow.
Conscious challengers
The move from contributor to challenger isn’t marked by loud speech or a bold stance. It’s a subtle shift in how you relate to authority, both your own and others’.
Conscious challengers don’t ask for permission. But they also don’t force their way in. They’ve developed an internal sense of legitimacy. It’s the capacity to hold your perspective as valid, even when it’s not yet recognized by the group.
You learn to shape conversations both from within and without. Your impact is not about volume but orientation. You:
- Ask the unasked question.
- Offer the reframing that resets the discussion.
- Avoid rushing to resolution.
You act not from certainty but from responsibility. Speaking up not because you’re the smartest person in the room but because waiting for someone else to say it is no longer an option.
This turning point isn’t about rash boldness but considered courage. It’s about becoming what Robert Quinn calls self-authoring.
You become someone who can name what the work requires, without being asked, and without apology.
Rewriting the script
Much of what limits us isn’t formal policy. It’s accumulated social conditioning. It’s the scripts we’ve internalized over years of trying to stay useful, professional, and promotable.
- “Don’t challenge leadership.”
- “Stay in your lane.”
- “Don’t question a decided matter.”
- “Don’t point out a problem without a solution.”
- “Don’t be the person who makes things awkward.”
These aren’t written down, but are enforced everywhere through micro-reactions, career folklore, and subtle social cues. The hard part is they’re not irrational. They’re functional and helped you survive earlier seasons of your career.
But their usefulness declines as your scope increases.
What once kept you safe now makes you ineffective. So the work is not to abandon caution but to interrogate the script.
Ask:
- “What belief helped me survive early career but now keeps me small?”
- “Who taught me that, and do I still need it?”
- Does it still fit my current role or the one I’m growing into?
- “Where am I still waiting for permission, when the system might be waiting for me to show up?”
Until we update the script, we’ll keep self-limiting even in rooms that are waiting for us to step in.
Making the shift
The required transformation occurs not through sudden changes but consistent, low-risk experimentation.
You don’t need to confront the CEO or dismantle groupthink on day one. You need to take one step closer to the line than usual.
- Name a tension as a question.
- Frame risk as curiosity.
- Float a hunch instead of locking it into a fully formed position.
- Make an observation instead of declaring a judgment.
None require formal authority.
With repetition, your tolerance increases, legitimacy expands and your voice gains weight. Not because you talk more, but because you speak from a place that’s real.
Your role in the system
As Heifetz noted, going from obedient contributor to conscious challenger is about learning to operate effectively at the edges of your role, where formal authority ends but responsibility continues.
With this shift, your role in the system changes. Now you’re not just a contributor, but a reference point.
- They seek your framing, not because you’re senior, but because you’re clear.
- You’re involved in decisions, not because you demand it, but because you see what others miss.
- Others take cues from you, not because of formal authority, but because you have referent power.
When you stop waiting for permission and start moving from internal legitimacy, you create something valuable: the capacity to see what needs to be done and help others see it as well.
Consider these practical starting points:
- What issue do you see that others are missing?
- What conversation needs to happen that no one is initiating?
- Where could you contribute more if you stopped waiting for permission?
- What permission are you still waiting for?
- What edge of your authority are you not yet exploring?
- Where are you being invited to lead but haven’t yet accepted the role?
It isn't about becoming someone else but bringing more of your insight and capability to the work that matters.
Authority isn't just handed down. It's earned by consistently engaging with what the work really needs, not just what your role allows.