EP120: The 5 Power Leaks Every Woman MUST Seal Now

This week, I dismantle the myths about women’s power and expose the five most common ways ambitious women leak it every day. From the language we use to the labor we absorb, the loyalty we misplace, and the likability we chase, let me show you how these patterns quietly erode authority, visibility, and influence.

Through two decades of experience working with executives, founders, and change-makers, I bring a brutally honest lens to how power is lost — and how to reclaim it. This isn’t about being louder or more aggressive. It’s about remembering who you are before the world taught you to shrink.

You’ll learn:

• The five “Power Leaks” that drain women’s authority: language, labor, loyalty, likability, and lens.
• Why invisible work will never lead to visible advancement.
• How loyalty and likability are often traps dressed up as virtue.
• The difference between performed power and remembered power — and how to shift into the latter.

And, I share what’s coming next: 50 Days of Power — a daily exploration of what embodied leadership really looks like, starting November 3rd. (Make sure you're following on social media so you don't miss a single day!)

If you’ve ever wondered why brilliance hasn’t translated into the recognition or influence you deserve, this episode is your wake-up call.

Chapters

• 0:01 Welcome And Purpose
• 0:41 Defining Real Power
• 2:41 The Five Power Leaks Overview
• 3:13 Leak One: Language
• 5:16 Leak Two: Labor
• 6:49 Leak Three: Loyalty
• 8:04 Leak Four: Likability
• 9:31 Leak Five: Lens
• 11:05 Why These Leaks Exist
• 11:24 Introducing 50 Days Of Power
• 12:35 What Real Power Looks Like
• 15:00 Embodied Power In Practice
• 17:05 Reclaiming What’s Always Been Yours
• 18:09 Daily Insights And How To Engage

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Welcome to this space where bold truths, real strategies, and unfiltered stories fuel ambitious women who want more power, leadership, and legacy on their turn. Because in too many circles, a woman doing what she wants, how she wants, and winning is a blasphemous. Welcome to Business Blasphemy. Hello, hello, blasphemers. Welcome to Business Blasphemy, the podcast that calls out the status quo, an arms woman with a strategy to build real power and real legacy. I'm Sarah Kahn, speaker, leadership strategist, and your blasphemous host. I want to talk about power today. And I don't mean the kind of power that shows up on your LinkedIn headline or gets announced in some company-wide email because you've done a thing, right? I'm talking about the kind of power that changes the way you walk into a room. The kind that sits in your chest when someone tries to talk over you and you don't flinch. The kind that lets you hold silence without rushing to fill it. Here's what I know after nearly two decades of working with some of the most brilliant women I've ever met: executives, founders, women building movements, women leading change. Most of us don't actually lack power. We leak it. We hemorrhage it in ways we don't even notice anymore. We give it away every single time we overexplain a decision that didn't need defending. Every time we downgrade our own accomplishments because we're worried about making someone else feel small. Every time we wait for permission that we never actually needed in the first place. And the really insidious part is that we have dressed all of that up as a virtue. We call it being humble or collaborative or, ooh, my personal favorite, reading the room. But let me tell you what it actually is. That behavior is conditioning. It's the residue of a world that needed women to be smaller and quieter and easier to manage, right? A world that trained us to be so good at holding everything together that we forgot, hey, you know what? I'm disappearing in the process of that. So this is the conversation we're going to have today. This is about remembering what power actually looks like when it's not performed for an audience or packaged for approval. And what do I mean by performed? Where your focus is trying to impress the people around you. Because power was never about impressing other people. Power has always been about choosing yourself first. So the first thing I want to do is walk you through the five ways, the most common ways that I see women leak their power, often without even realizing that it's happening. And they're not, you know, they're not small things. These are things that erode your sense of self and they add up to you feeling exhausted and overlooked and burnt out and wondering, scratching your head, going, why the hell hasn't my brilliance translated into the recognition and influence I deserve? And I say, deserve, because you deserve recognition and influence. So let's start with leak number one, the language leak. This one shows up in every single conversation, every email, every presentation. It is the way that we have been told to soften our authority with a little linguistic cushion that makes us sound more approachable and everybody else more comfortable, right? But what it really does is teach other people to second guess us because we don't have that level of confidence in what we're saying. I'm talking about the cushions like, I think, or I just wanted to let, you know, or blah, blah, blah. Does that make sense? It's epidemic level. And I get it, right? We've been told our whole lives that being direct makes us sound aggressive. I've been called aggressive so many times in my life. I can't even tell you. And all I was being was direct. We've been told our entire lives that we need to like pad our opinions so they go down easier. But what actually happens when you do that is you train other people to doubt your expertise, often before you've even finished your sentence. There's a massive difference between saying something like, I've led multi-million dollar transformations across three companies, or I've built a seven-figure business as a solopreneur, right? And oh, I've had the opportunity to be involved in some larger projects, right? The first two make people lean in. The other one, the last one, makes people look past you for the person who's actually responsible. Powerful women speak with clarity. They know that the silence after a clear statement, where we often add little bits, right? Those little cushions, that silence after a clear statement is where your authority lives. Powerful women are not apologizing for taking up space in the conversation. They're not asking for permission to be right. They're stating fact and they're letting it land however it lands. And before you say it, no, this is not about being a jerk. There's a huge difference between being aggressive and being assertive. This is about respecting your own knowledge enough to deliver it without that disclaimer we always feel like we have to put on the end of something. Leak number two is the labor leak. And this is all about the work you do that nobody sees. The mentoring, the emotional labor, the fixing of other people's messes, the picking up the slack, the smoothing over of tension in meetings, the remembering birthdays and organizing things that would fall apart without you, but somehow never make it onto a PL or your performance review. This is the invisible labor tax that competent women pay every single freaking day. And I need you to hear this, okay? Invisible work does not lead to visible advancement. It just does not. You can be the most indispensable person in your organization and still get passed over for the promotion because the work you're doing isn't the work that gets celebrated. You cannot lead transformation when you are stuck doing maintenance work yourself. You cannot scale your impact when your time is being consumed by tasks that they don't have a direct ROI and they certainly don't have your fucking name on them. Power means naming what you actually do, claiming credit for it, and setting boundaries around what you're no longer willing to absorb without that credit. And I know what you're thinking, right? Because I have been guilty of this as well. If I don't do it, who will? And that is exactly the question that keeps you trapped. You want to know what the answer is? Not your fucking problem. Let it fall. Let someone else figure it out. Because every hour you spend propping up a system that doesn't acknowledge you is just another hour you're not spending building something that does. Now, leak number three, I call it the loyalty leak. And this one hurts because we've been taught that loyalty is one of the highest virtues. But somewhere along the way, we confused loyalty with self-sacrifice. We started believing that staying in a role, a relationship, a partnership, a business, whatever, long after it stopped serving us was somehow noble, that leaving would make us ungrateful or uncommitted, or one of those people that uh doesn't finish what they start. But what nobody wants to say out loud is that loyalty without some kind of reciprocity is just exploitation with better branding and a better agent. You cannot lead effectively when all your energy is going toward proving your commitment instead of directing your vision. You cannot make bold moves when you are terrified of being seen as disloyal. And you absolutely can't build the career or the life or the business that you truly want when you're still tethered to situations that stopped investing in you years ago. Real loyalty is mutual. It's not one person giving everything while the other person takes it for granted. And the moment you realize that loyalty only runs one direction, that's when you know it's time to redirect your energy towards something or someone that actually values what you bring. Number four is the likability leak. And oh, this one. Oh, every woman in a leadership position knows this one intimately. It's the constant, exhausting calculation of how much honesty you can afford before someone labels you difficult. How assertive you can be before you cross some invisible line into she's too much. So what do we do? We dilute our feedback, we pad our constructive criticism with compliments, we smile through disrespect because we've been trained to believe that our power is conditional on whether people enjoy being around you. Your job, my friend, is not to be liked. Your job is to be trusted. Those are not the same thing. And the minute you start optimizing for likability, you compromise on your ability to lead with integrity. Some people are going to be uncomfortable with your power, especially if they have benefited from your compliance and your lack of power before. Let them, let them be uncomfortable. That discomfort is where the respect actually grows. Because when you stop performing, right? When you stop trying to impress people, when you stop trying to be agreeable and start showing up as somebody who has really clear boundaries and really high standards, people who matter will respect you more, not less. And the ones who liked you better when you were smaller, they were never rooting for your success anyway. So fuck them. Leak number five is the lens leak. And this is probably the most subtle, but also the most damaging. This is what happens when you start seeing yourself exclusively through other people's eyes. When you walk into a room and instead of being present, you're actually watching yourself from the outside. It's like an out-of-body experience, right? You're you're narrating to yourself how you think you're being perceived by other people. So you start editing yourself in real time. You adjust your tone for this audience, you uh adjust your personality for that audience, you become so skilled at shape shifting that you lose track of what you actually think, what you actually want, what you actually sound like when you're not performing for someone else's comfort. And it may feel good and it may get you like ability, but it's that's not leadership. That's exhausting. And it's certainly not sustainable. Real power comes from internal alignment. It's knowing that who you are doesn't change depending on who's in the room. It's trusting yourself enough that you stop looking for external validation to confirm that you're doing it right. When you start leading from that place, right, from that grounded, unshakable sense of self, the rooms around you will start to adjust instead of the other way around. Your presence becomes the standard instead of the exception. So those are the five leaks: language leak, labor leak, loyalty leak, likability leak, and lens leak. And I want to be really clear about something. These are not happening if you resonated with any of them. They're not happening because you're weak or because you don't know any better. They're happening because you were never given a model of power that looked like you. You were shown a version of leadership that required you to contort yourself into something more palatable, to contort yourself into something that was more acceptable or more digestible for the people who were threatened by the full scope of what you're capable of. And starting on November 3rd, that's next week, I'm gonna be hosting on my social media 50 days of power. And this is what the 50 days of power are gonna be about. I'm gonna show you a different model. One conversation at a time. 50 days of real conversations that I've had with my clients behind closed doors. Gonna strip it of all the polish, and I'm just gonna share the truth. Because this is the work that we need to do. So, what does power actually look like when it's not leaking? Because you need to see the other side of it, right? What does it look like when it is contained and directed and fully yours? Like you truly embody it. Real power for starters does not need a stage. And it does not need an audience. It does not need a title or an introduction or fuck a list of all your credentials. Real power needs one thing and one thing only presence. It is not about how many people follow you on social media or how impressive your resume looks on paper. It's it's about the words that you carry and the weight of them when you speak. It's about walking into any space and having your energy announce that you're not here to fuck around before you even open your mouth, that you're here to make an impact, and everybody in the room can feel it. Power is what happens when you stop competing for visibility and start creating your own standard of recognition, right? When you stop managing other people's emotional reactions and start managing your own capacity. Power is the difference between reacting to what's happening around you and setting the strategy for what comes next. And I think this is the part that gets lost in all the noise about empowerment and leaning in and all the phrases we've turned into marketing slogans. Real power isn't loud. It's not flashy. It doesn't need to announce itself because it's so deeply rooted in knowing who you are that proving it becomes irrelevant. You know you're in your power when you stop needing validation from every room you walk into. When someone's opinion of you, good or bad, doesn't shake your understanding of your own value. When you can hear feedback without collapsing and reject criticism that doesn't serve you without feeling guilty. You're in your power when you stop apologizing for decisions you made with full conviction from your whole chest. When you can sit in silence and let other people scramble to fill it. You are in your power when you set a boundary and don't feel the need to justify it with a paragraph-long explanation. Power looks like walking away from situations that don't honor you without burning everything down on your way out. It's choosing yourself repeatedly, even when it disappoints people who are counting on you to stay small. It's saying no without offering a counteroffer. Because guess what? No is a complete sentence. This is what I mean when I say power is about direction. It's not about dominating. You're not trying to control anyone else. You're not trying to force people to see you in a certain way. You are simply directing your energy, your time, and your attention toward what actually matters to you and letting everything else fall aside. And the shift that happens when you step into that kind of power, that shift is extraordinary. Suddenly, opportunities that felt out of reach start coming to you. The respect you're working so hard for just shows up because you're no longer asking for it. The confidence that you thought you needed to build was already there. You were just too busy performing to notice it. So when I talk about your next evolution, I'm not talking about rebranding yourself or pivoting or reinventing your image or figuring out how to market yourself better. I'm talking about reclaiming what's always been there. I'm talking about remembering that the power you've been searching for outside of yourself has been sitting inside of you this entire time, waiting for you to stop giving it away. That's what this next season of business blasphemy is all about. And that's what the 50 days of power is gonna be about. Reclaiming what's been yours all along. So starting on November 3rd, for 50 days leading up to my 50th birthday, I'm gonna drop one short focused insight every single day. They're not gonna be fluff pieces or motivational quotes or, you know, that you screenshot and then forget about. I have a whole library of those that I've never looked at. They're gonna be real conversations, right? The kind that I have with clients when we're alone in a room and the pressure to be polished is gone. Right? The kind that make you sit back and go, oh, okay, that's what's been happening. I get it now. And each one will build on the last to fundamentally shift the way you see yourself, the way you lead, the way you show up in every area of your life, because leadership isn't a title you get handed in a meeting. It's a practice, it's a series of choices that you make every single day about how much of yourself you're willing to own. And I want you to follow along with intention. Don't just consume it passively. Reflect on it, apply it, make one different choice because of what you heard. That's where transformation actually starts. In the doing, not just the knowing. Because here's the thing about power that nobody talks about. It is not something you acquire, it's not something out there waiting for you to grab it. And it's certainly not something that someone has to grant to you. It's simply something you remember. It's something that has been inside of you since before anyone told you to shrink, before anyone told you to hide it, before anyone told you to apologize for it. Real power is remembered. So let's remember it together. Let me know what you got from this episode. Send me a text message. The link is in the show notes. I'd love to hear your thoughts. And mark your calendar for November 3rd, because I'm gonna do 50 days of power from November 3rd to December 23rd. You can have success without the BS. I'll talk to you next week. Thanks for listening. Hey, do us a favor subscribe to the show, rate your favorite episode, or share it with your friends. And remember, your blasphemy is necessary.