What Do You Mean I'm Not in Grace-land Already?
When power dulls awareness: a tutu, a leap and how I learned to lead with humanity.
Image created by Cathy Bernatt using Midjourney
The Tutu and the Elephant
As I squeezed into the tutu, three sizes too small, all eyes on me, I fantasized donning Harry Potter's invisibility cloak and disappearing between the floorboards.
When my turn came, I launched awkwardly into the air. Every step toward the leap filled me with dread. I landed with the thud of a full-grown elephant, as far from a ballerina as one could be.
The room froze. No one knew quite what to do. This humiliation had a backstory.
How I Got Here
For eight years in Japan, I worked for a company with three Directors, my bosses. The ad that first drew me in, tucked into the Japan Times, called for someone playful, creative, and intelligent to join an innovative team of educators. My core values aligned beautifully: making learning fun, freedom to innovate, striving for top quality. They agreed.
The first years were wonderful. I had room to be creative, found real joy in teaching and facilitating, and was well paid. Company leaders who were my students told me our work reshaped how they thought, gave them confidence, and changed how they engaged with others.
Around the four-year mark, something shifted.
I'd arrive at the office with ideas and watch them die in meetings. I'd see my students struggling with changes their companies weren't preparing them for: lifetime employment dissolving, Western management philosophies flooding in, younger generations rejecting the paths their parents had walked. The ground was moving beneath everyone's feet.
I proposed we expand into leadership and organizational development. The Directors said no. They believed the system they'd built years earlier was enough.
Their students were changing. The market was changing. But they weren't.
Enter Park
One of my three bosses, Park, brought this tension into sharp relief.
Park was brilliant, baffling, and beyond comprehension in equal measure. He spoke seven languages fluently and through a unique framework he'd developed, he grew me into a mini-linguist. Our relationship was riddled with conflict. Alongside praise for my facilitation and teaching, he made comments that left me highly reactive and deeply unsettled.
One day over lunch, he said:
"You're great, dynamic, funny, highly engaging, a gifted facilitator and teacher."
Then came the blow.
"But you lack grace. Ballet will make you more feminine and graceful."
My chest tightened. My breathing stopped. I almost laughed out loud. The irony was, I didn't feel I lacked grace at all. I believed I was already living in Grace-land. Grace and I were friends.
But he wasn't finished. He had a plan. I would study ballet with his wife, a professional ballerina. This would begin my "education in grace" to strip away what he perceived as clumsy, awkward, even unsexy, and replace it with something more feminine.
In that collision between my fury and his positional power, mixed with his expressed "wanting the best for me and caring for me," I succumbed.
After the Fall
Over lunch afterward, I thanked him politely, still reeling from the humiliation. As he grew more animated with excitement at my gratitude, I steadied myself and broke the news: it had been a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I would not be returning.
The air at the table grew thick, his disappointment palpable.
Yet for me, it was an audacious moment of reclaiming ground, however small. A refusal to keep surrendering my personal power.
But Park wasn't done educating me.
Fashion Advice and White-Water Rapids
Another time, while I was on holiday in Canada, he called to ask if I'd shopped for clothes yet. Surprised, I said no. He suggested I model my wardrobe after Hillary Clinton.
Had he said k.d. lang, Tracy Chapman, or Billie Eilish, I'd have been all over it. But Hillary Clinton and me? Not even fraternal fashion twins.
So off I went shopping, determined to dress for success on my terms. For me, that meant my definition of graceful, classy comfort.
Meanwhile, back at the office, my three bosses sometimes hosted a multiple-personality party about what I wore. One called me in to say I looked better without scarves and should remove the one I was wearing. Later that same day, another told me how good I looked with that very same scarf.
It was like living in a white-water kayak navigating a wild river. One moment I was paddling confidently through the rapids. The next I was submerged, overcome with doubt, sadness, and anger, unable to right myself.
After the ballet debacle, my audacity grew deeper roots. More often now, I steadied myself, stayed upright through the rapids, and confidently offered counter-perspectives that challenged the status quo, no longer remaining silent.
I was learning what it meant to hold power without permission.
The Turning Point
Then a request came that changed everything.
A major corporate client asked for leadership training to help their leaders become more powerful, effective presenters.
In a work culture shaped by hierarchy, where obeying those higher up was expected and standing out discouraged, few had the chance to become confident, impromptu communicators. My Canadian childhood had been filled with "show and tell," bringing something from home, standing up in front of class, building courage and learning to think on our feet.
The difference wasn't innate talent. It was cultural conditioning and lived experience. I was confident we could bridge that gap.
When the request came in, I said enthusiastically, "We can totally do this."
The Directors said no.
I chose to pursue it anyway, on my own time and my own dime.
I dove deep, researching everything available in the market and literature at the time, and weaving it through my experiential education frame. What I built was rigorous, hands-on, and unlike anything I had seen: a training experience designed to stretch leaders beyond the familiar. Not theory. Practice. Feedback. Growth.
I thought I was working in obscurity.
Then something puzzling began. My bosses started calling me daily, probing and questioning what I was doing, reminding me they weren't paying me for this work. Their interference was confusing and relentless.
Paradoxically, it sharpened my resolve. The more they tried to rein me in, the more determined I became. I was like a dog with a bone.
The Confrontation
When the program was finished, I asked if they wanted to see what I'd built. They said yes.
As I presented, their body language shifted. Leaning in, eyes captivated. Silence as I moved through each module. When I finished, they looked at each other, then back at me.
They were blown away. They wanted to present it to the very client they had earlier turned away, as soon as possible.
I took a long, steady pause. I was in disbelief. My insides tremored. My inner peacemaker was screaming at me not to do what I was about to do. But I gathered every ounce of personal power I had.
Breathing deeply, I said:
"Actually, this product is mine, not yours. I will present it to the company with your green light and craft a contract on my own. Or we will draw up clear terms together."
Silence. Long silence.
Not the silence of reverence so valued in Japan, but the silence of shock.
I left the company shortly after.
The Threshold
That moment - standing fully in my personal power, claiming what I had created - wasn't new terrain. Navigating challenges of power, conflict, and purpose had been steady companions my whole life.
But this was a threshold. One that made visible what had long been stirring beneath the surface.
It showed me, in no uncertain terms, that leadership isn't about hierarchy or influence. It's about whether we use power with awareness by staying awake to the impact our behaviors have on others.
Within months of leaving Japan, I founded Creating... Twenty-five years ago, in a moment of claiming what was mine, a practice was born: helping leaders to harness power consciously, transform conflict from the inside out, and create systems that don't just perform but make leaders and organizations more humane.
Grace-land, Revisited
Years later, I caught myself about to give unsolicited feedback to a client. The words were on my tongue, helpful, well-intentioned, exactly like Park's ballet suggestion.
I stopped. Asked instead: "What are you noticing?"
The space that opened was more powerful than anything I could have said.
That's when I knew: this work never ends. We don't arrive at Grace-land. We practice our way there.
I still believe in Grace-land, not as a destination, but as a discipline. Grace-land is the ongoing work of leading with awareness, courage, and grace itself, even in the heat of conflict and discomfort.
What began as one awkward leap in a tutu became a lifelong practice in conscious leadership.
Closing Reflection
If you lead, you hold power. The question is not whether you use it, but how.
Do your words and actions clarify, or confuse?
Do they create safety, or diminish it?
Do they unlock possibility, or shut it down?
The more power you carry, the easier it is to become numb to its impact. But leadership is not about numbness. It's about choosing to stay aware.
Because when you harness power with awareness and purpose, you don't just hold authority. You build trust. You grow people. You create futures.
Let’s continue the conversation.
I’d love to hear what resonated for you about this article - and invite your reflections, provocations, and questions over on LinkedIn.
Cathy Bernatt founded Creating... twenty-five years ago. She works with executives and senior leaders who aspire to use their power more consciously.
Connect: connect@creating.bz | (503) 568-1786 | www.creating.bz