The Table I Built

"Just be patient. Your time will come."

I heard that sentence so many times in my career that I started to wonder if patience was the only quality anyone thought I had.

I was patient. I was also qualified, experienced, and consistently delivering results that outpaced my title. But somehow, the seat at the table always seemed to go to someone else. Someone louder. Someone who looked more like the people already sitting there.

So I stopped waiting. And I built my own table.

The Myth of the Seat at the Table

There's a well-meaning piece of advice that gets passed around in women's leadership circles: get a seat at the table. Fight for your place. Make yourself visible.

It's not wrong, exactly. But it assumes the table is worth sitting at.

What I've come to understand — after years of fighting for seats I was never really going to be given — is that the table itself is often the problem. The table was built by people who didn't have me in mind. The rules of engagement, the culture, the unspoken hierarchy — all of it was designed before I arrived, and none of it was designed for me.

Waiting for a seat at that table meant waiting to be accepted on terms I hadn't set. It meant shrinking myself to fit a space that was never shaped for me.

What Building Your Own Table Actually Looks Like

I'm not talking about quitting your job and starting a company (though if that's your path, go for it). Building your own table can happen inside an organisation, inside a team, inside a single project.

It looks like this: you stop asking for permission to lead and you start leading. You create the room where the real conversations happen. You invite the people who've been overlooked. You set the agenda.

For me, it started with a small working group I pulled together without anyone's blessing. Six women across different departments, meeting monthly over lunch. No formal mandate. No budget. Just a shared commitment to helping each other navigate the organisation.

Within a year, that group had influenced three major policy changes. Two of us had been promoted. One had launched a new initiative that became a flagship programme.

Nobody gave us a seat. We built the table, set the chairs, and started doing the work.

The Leadership Shift That Nobody Talks About

When you stop waiting to be chosen and start choosing yourself, something shifts in how you carry yourself.

You stop performing confidence and start feeling it. Because you're no longer trying to convince someone else you belong — you already know you do. You built the space. You set the terms.

You stop competing with other women and start collaborating with them. Because you understand now that the scarcity was manufactured. There was never only one seat. There was just one table — and it was the wrong one.

You start making decisions from a place of abundance rather than anxiety. Because you're no longer afraid of being found out, passed over, or pushed aside. You've already proven to yourself that you can create what you need.

The Imposter at the Head of the Table

Here's the part I didn't expect: even after I built my own table, the imposter showed up.

Who am I to lead this? What if people figure out I don't have all the answers? What if this whole thing falls apart and it's my fault?

The difference was that this time, I had evidence. I had a track record. I had a room full of women who'd chosen to show up because of something I'd created.

The imposter voice got quieter. Not silent — it never goes fully silent. But quieter.

And I learned that leadership isn't about having all the answers. It's about creating the conditions for the right questions to be asked.

You Don't Have to Wait

If you're sitting in a meeting right now, watching someone less qualified hold the floor, wondering when it's going to be your turn — I want you to hear this.

You don't have to wait.

You can start building today. It doesn't have to be grand. It can be a conversation, a working group, a project you propose, a space you create for the people around you who are also waiting.

The table you build will be shaped by you. It will have room for the people who've been overlooked. It will run on different rules.

And one day, someone will walk into that room and think: this is exactly where I belong.

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The full story of how I stopped waiting and started building — including the moments I nearly gave up — is in Confessions of an Imposter. Available now on Amazon — and the audiobook is live this week too. Listen to the audiobook on Audible — narrated by the brilliant Sarah Kowalchuck.