EP123: Why Identity-Led Leadership Terrifies the System

It's time to dismantle the myth of leadership as a performance and drop the truth about leading from identity. No corporate polish. No institutional obedience. No permission required.

If you’ve ever been praised for your “executive presence” and still felt invisible. If you’ve ever been told to soften your tone, adjust your message, or wait to speak. This conversation cuts through that noise. Let's dive into the uncomfortable truth that leadership without identity isn’t leadership at all — it’s make believe. And the women who are brave enough to lead from identity? They’re the ones who shift culture, reset standards, and redefine what power looks like.

Expect confrontation. Expect self-recognition. Expect clarity on why identity-led leadership is the most disruptive — and powerful — move you can make in a system that rewards compliance over truth.

You’ll walk away knowing exactly what it looks like to stop performing leadership and start living it. And why your identity isn’t a liability but is in fact the foundation of legacy.

Key takeaways:

• What “leading from identity” actually means
• Why performative leadership fails women in the long run
• How identity-led leadership threatens any system built on conformity
• A direct challenge to act on your identity now

Perfect for ambitious women, cultural disruptors, and every leader sick of being told to tone it down.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Premise
• 0:39 The Danger Of Identity-Led Leadership
• 1:23 Performative Leadership Exposed
• 2:30 Identity As Origin And Power
• 4:40 Why Systems Resist Identity
• 5:53 Making It Tangible: Actions To Start
• 8:10 Choose Your Power Over Their Comfort
• 9:24 Closing And Listener CTA

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 the blasphemous as fuck. Welcome to Business Blasphemy. Hello, hello, blasphemers. Welcome back to Business Blasphemy, the podcast that calls out the status quo and then arms women with the real strategy to build real power and real legacy. I'm Sarah Kahn, speaker, leadership strategist, and your blasphemous host. I want to talk about something that has got my knickers in a twist, and it gets tossed around like a cute inspirational phrase or meme, but is actually one of the most subversive high-stakes moves you will ever make as a leader. And that is leading from identity. You want to know why it's so dangerous? Why corporations, industries, even the lauded personal development world avoid this conversation? Because leadership that is built on identity can't be controlled. Influenced, maybe, but never owned outright. And systems hate what they cannot own. Now, most people we call leaders aren't really leading. They are performing leadership. They're performing a version of leadership that we have been told is actual leadership. It's one of the seven models or whatever. They're wearing the role of leadership, like a costume. One they didn't buy, one they didn't choose, but one they are absolutely freaking terrified to take off because it is the only thing that is standing between them and being dismissed, or as we like to say nowadays, canceled. And you know exactly what I'm talking about, right? Leadership in most circles seems to follow this weird script. You be polite, you show you're competent, and you come in with confidence. That's it. Politeness, competence, confidence. And if you're a woman, especially if you are a woman of color, the expectations are tenfold. Be bold, but don't be abrasive. Be direct, but don't be a bitch. Be strategic, but oh, never be smarter than the people in the room. And certainly do not threaten them with your intelligence. They want your brilliance, but they don't want you to stand in your power. And that is the problem with performative leadership. Look at every leadership book on the bestseller list, every fucking keynote at a corporate conference, every LinkedIn thought piece, it's almost always telling women how to adapt better, right? How to communicate better, how to manage better, how to present better, how to embody executive presence. It's this lifelong checklist of behavior management that is designed to make your power actually less disruptive to the status quo. But what leadership should really be is anchored in your identity, anchored in your belief, anchored in the act of showing up as who you actually are, with no intention at all to minimize your truth to make someone else feel comfortable. And that is exactly why it feels so wrong and it feels so dangerous, and so many people avoid it. Leading from your true identity means finally snapping the leash that the system put on your voice so it could walk you into rooms and parade you around, but take credit for your ideas. Leading from identity means no longer being the palatable version of yourself that everybody else prefers. It means stepping fully into who you are and daring them to adjust instead of the other way around. Identity is not branding. It is not the coaching-approved word for personality. Identity is your origin story, right? It's your history, it's your boundaries, it's your lived experience, it's your cultural memory, it's your epigenetic DNA, it's your worldview, all of those things coming together and showing up without apology or edit. You can't lead from identity or say you're leading from identity, but stay in compliance with how the world expects you to lead, how to how it expects you to show up, how it expects you to behave, especially if you're a woman of color. Especially if you're deeply ambitious and deeply self-defined. Especially if the system has taught you to wait for permission before you take up space and make sure other people are comfortable with it. Leading from identity demands that you stop looking for permission entirely. This is why they're afraid of people who embrace their true identity, because identity-led leadership threatens that status quo. It disrupts the hierarchy, it pisses off the patriarchy, it removes gatekeepers, it takes power out of the realm of performance and puts it back into the hands of the people, of the person, individual. Systems, whether they are corporate or academic or entrepreneurial or otherwise, they are all built on predictability. They want leaders that they can anticipate, that they can manage, and that they can position how and where they want. They want you inspirational, but not too inspiring, right? They want you strong, but they still want you malleable. They want you to show your show your success, prove that it can be done, but never to the point where your existence forces them to change. And when a woman leads from identity, all of that bullshit collapses. When she truly embraces the core of who she is, she becomes undeniable and inconvenient and uncontrollable. And that is exactly what impact looks like. So let's make this tangible. Leading from identity, what does it actually mean? How do you start? Well, it starts by saying things others won't say. It looks like being at the forefront of change when it makes everybody in the room uncomfortable. It looks like refusing to translate your voice, your message, how you show up, how you dress, all of that to fit their aesthetic. It looks like walking away from organizations and opportunities and relationships that require you to shrink yourself further and further until you're invisible. And the truth is, you might lose some people, you might lose some status, you might lose some followers, but what you'll gain is an enormous amount of self-respect. And self-respect that shows up. Like people see that. And the influence that you build from that place is gonna outlast every single fucker who underestimated you. And we really need to stop pretending this is just lip service, like this is some theory that seems nice on the surface, but isn't possible because it's not the way the world works. I am challenging you to do something today that aligns your leadership with your identity, not the conditioning that you have lived with your entire life. I want you to choose one thing to do this week, okay? I'm gonna give you three options. Here's the first one. I want you to say the thing. I want you to say whatever thing you have been editing for safety or palatability or uh comfort, but that you have been wanting to say and you wish you could say it, but you're just not sure how people are gonna react. I want you to fucking say it. Just say it and see what happens. The second option is I want you to stop translating your cultural identity, like who you truly are at your root into some sort of version of business or corporate palatability. Show up as the person you really are, the face that you have at home. Or number three, and actually, this one's pretty powerful. I want you to remove your approval, withdraw your approval from all of those spaces and communities and networks that you are in that only value your contribution if it is in line with the compliance that they want. And you know exactly which ones I'm talking about. The friend groups, the networking groups, the communities, the events that you go to, all of the ones that you have to look and act and behave and believe a certain way, or you're just not welcome. Pull yourself the fuck out of there and see what happens. Because it's either their comfort or it's your power. There is never a time when you get to have both. When you are able to lead from identity, that is a rebellion. It is a refusal to continue to follow the status quo. And it is also the only leadership that is worth following, because it's the only leadership that's actually gonna change anything. So if you are ready to make other people clutch their pearls, good, if you're ready to make them whisper your name with discomfort, but grudging respect, even better. Because leadership without identity isn't leadership, it never was, it never will be. It is performance, and I don't know about you, but I did not come here to perform. I came here to fucking lead. So stay bold, stay blasphemous. I'll see 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.