Unlearning for Women's Professional Growth

The first leadership lessons many women in healthcare are taught are wrong. Not intentionally. But consistently. Be available. Be agreeable. Be selfless. Be everything to everyone. It looks like professionalism. It looks like dedication. It gets rewarded early. But over time? It becomes the very thing that limits your leadership. Because those same behaviours: Blur your boundaries. Dilute your authority. And quietly push you towards burnout. The hardest shift for many women in healthcare leadership isn’t learning new skills. It’s unlearning what made them successful in the first place. Unlearning that leadership means saying yes to everything. Unlearning that being liked is the goal. Unlearning that exhaustion proves commitment. Because the leaders who create real impact don’t lead this way. They protect their time. They make clear decisions. They say no when it matters. They prioritise sustainability over approval. And they understand something most people learn too late: Leadership isn’t about how much you can carry. It’s about what you choose not to. Which of these leadership myths have you had to unlearn?

Most career plateaus do not happen because a woman lacks skill. They happen because she stayed loyal to a version of herself she has already outgrown. Early in your career, effort opens doors. Availability builds trust. Reliability creates opportunity. But those same traits, when left unexamined, quietly limit progression later. I see it often. Senior women who are excellent at execution but hesitant to claim direction. Women who manage complexity effortlessly but struggle to step out of operational gravity. Women who are respected but not fully recognised. The shift from high performer to senior leader is not automatic. It requires unlearning. Unlearning the belief that saying yes proves commitment. Unlearning the reflex to absorb every problem. Unlearning the idea that humility means invisibility. Leadership maturity is not about becoming louder. It is about becoming clearer. Clear about your value. Clear about your lane. Clear about what no longer belongs to you. If your career feels heavy, it may not be because the load is too much. It may be because some of it is no longer yours to carry. Growth begins when clarity replaces loyalty to old patterns.

How to unlearn what the world teaches women and replace it with 7 lessons that actually build power. We’re taught early: → to be nice before we’re taught to be strong → to be liked before we’re taught to lead → to be grateful before we’re taught to ask for more But here’s the truth: You don’t need to be “more confident.” You need to be more competent, informed, and grounded in your values. The 7 lessons that change everything 👇 1️⃣ Speak clearly, not softly: Stop shrinking your voice with “just,” “sorry,” “I might be wrong but…” Clarity > volume. Say what you mean, directly. Power respects precision. 2️⃣ Understand money: Budgeting, investing, negotiating - this is your independence kit. No one is coming to rescue you. Build your own safety net and your leverage. 3️⃣ Say no without guilt: “No” is a full sentence. Your time, energy, and peace are finite resources. Protect them with boundaries that don’t need justification. 4️⃣ Choose yourself 💛 Don’t wait to be picked. Start the project. Leave the job. Walk away. The moment you stop outsourcing your worth, you create real freedom. 5️⃣ Trust your own voice: The world will always have opinions. Build time for reflection - journal, walk, unplug. The more you listen inward, the louder your own wisdom gets. 6️⃣ Build something of your own: A business, a side hustle, a creative project (like personal brand). Ownership = confidence. When you create, you’re no longer waiting to be included - you set the table. 7️⃣ Support other women: We’re not competition, we’re mirrors. Share the opportunity. Celebrate loudly. Lift as you climb. Success multiplied is success sustained. Confidence isn’t the goal. It’s the result. It comes when you know your skills, your worth, and your voice.

📚 In her 3rd. month as a Director, Lina still hadn’t spoken in a single cross-functional leadership meeting. She arrived with colour-coded notes, backup slides, and scenarios mapped three steps deep. When the discussion opened, her brain lit up. Her mouth stayed shut. 🧠 “I’ll speak when I’m ready,” she told herself. But psychologically, “ready” was code for something else: “when there is zero chance of being exposed, rejected, or wrong.” In other words: never. 🪤 This is the perfection trap: it looks like high standards, but it functions like self-protection. Saying “I’m not ready yet” is often just the more elegant version of “I don’t want to be exposed” And honestly, it’s the easier way out. It is easier to keep sharpening the thought in your head than to put a rough version into a room that might push back. 🧬 Many women are trained into this early. Be the clever one, not the loud one. Get it right, don’t make a scene. Anticipate what others need. Don’t make people uncomfortable. Over time, the bar shifts from “do good work” to “make as few people as possible disappointed in you.” Perfection becomes less about excellence and more about managing other people’s imaginary reactions. 🧯 At some point we have to admit: This isn’t just “the system.” This is us, too. Our conditioning. Our habits. Our choice to protect our image more fiercely than our ambitions. the good news is that what comes from conditioning can be unlearned. What comes from us can be changed by us. So if you recognise yourself in Lina, try a different experiment: 🪞 Say one thing out loud in every meeting: a question, a risk, or a clear stance. No exceptions. 🪞 Put your 80% thought on the table in one clean sentence, then stop talking and let the room react. 🪞 When your brain says “I’m not ready,” translate it to “I’m scared of their reaction” and speak anyway, 🎤 Influence doesn’t come to the person with the most tabs open in their brain. It goes to the person who is willing to be heard, and therefore to be misread, disagreed with, and still remain in the conversation. 🚀 If you’re thinking about a career move in 2026, up, sideways or into your own thing, this is the pivot point. Career moves don’t “come naturally” with time served & more preparation. They come when people in power can clearly feel your voice, your judgment, and your value in the room. 📆 That’s why we’re running “How to Be Seen and Heard – The Career Move Edition” on 26 Nov. at 7:30pm Singapore time, our last live session of the year. Join here: https://lnkd.in/gp2qU5yD We’ll work on practical shifts: how you enter a room, when you speak, how you frame your ideas so they carry weight, and how you stop hiding behind being “thorough” when what you really need is to be unmistakably visible. 🧨 Because people can’t open doors for you when you’re the best-kept secret in every meeting.

For years, being a topper had shaped my identity. It meant being celebrated. It meant being relied on. It meant being told I was “the best.” So naturally, I thought the workplace would be the same. I believed that hard work, discipline, and having the “right answers” would automatically set me apart. It backfired. In my first job, I realised very quickly that no one cared about my academic rank. No one asked what grades I had. What mattered was whether I could: 👉 Collaborate with my team 👉 Explain my ideas with clarity 👉 Handle criticism without breaking down 👉 Keep learning when I didn’t know the answers That’s when I came face to face with what I now call the Topper Fallacy! The belief that being academically excellent automatically translates into career excellence. It doesn’t. At work, the rules were different. Success wasn’t about topping an exam. It was about resilience, adaptability, and communication - The kind of skills no marksheet had ever tested me on. Unlearning that was tough. But it was also liberating. Because once I let go of the badge of being a topper. I started building the skills that truly move careers forward. Because, you need to unlearn a lot of things to start learning the essentials. And that, to me, has been the biggest shift from classroom to career. What have you unlearned in your career? #career #leadership #experiences #thoughts

Her third promotion in four years left her more anxious than fulfilled. From the outside, she was winning. But inside? She was second-guessing every decision, obsessing over tiny mistakes, and secretly wondering if she even deserved her seat at the table. She didn’t need another strategy or productivity hack. She needed to pause—and understand what was really driving her. Through coaching, she uncovered something deeper: She had been carrying unspoken rules from childhood into her leadership: ➡️ Don’t make mistakes ➡️ Keep everyone happy ➡️ Work hard enough and you’ll finally feel worthy And that’s the part of coaching we don’t talk about enough. Coaching isn’t just about moving forward—it’s about untangling the past so you can move forward with awareness, not anxiety. Because unhealed childhood patterns don’t stay buried. They show up in: 👉 Disagreements 👉 Negotiation meetings 👉 Performance reviews 👉 Feedback sessions 👉 Visibility 👉 Goal setting Forward momentum without inner clarity can lead to burnout, misalignment, or repeating the same painful lesson in a shinier role. The most empowered leaders I work with aren’t the ones who have it all figured out. They’re the ones brave enough to look inward. Growth isn’t just about asking, “Where am I going?” Real growth happens when you ask, “What am I still carrying that no longer serves me?” What belief or pattern did you have to unlearn on your growth journey? Follow Rituu A Saraswat for insights on #GrowthMindset, #InnerChildHealing, and #ConsciousLeadership. LinkedIn LinkedIn News India LinkedIn Guide to Creating LinkedIn for Learning

Time for some "unlearning"? Everyone is talking up the need to learn new skills to future-proof our careers. Yet no one seems to be pointing out the importance of unlearning what might be holding us back. Staying up to date can make us more agile, employable and ready for what is next but it will not automatically fix an old or “broken” mindset. We need to rid ourselves of outdated habits, limiting beliefs and ways of thinking that no longer serve us. Otherwise, all the upskilling in the world will not move us forward. Unlearning is possible when we acknowledge that some of what we have learned is no longer fit for purpose. It starts with asking ourselves: “Why do I still believe this works?” Whether it is the way we lead, manage time or approach teamwork, many of our habits were shaped by past environments that might not reflect how work looks today. Staying curious and humble is also key. When we assume we have all the answers – or that experience automatically equals relevance – we close ourselves off to better ways of doing things. It also helps to surround ourselves with people who think differently. Different perspectives challenge our thinking.  Being exposed to other ways of thinking can gently push us out of patterns we did not even realise we were stuck in. Feedback plays a role, too, though only if we are willing to act on it. It is easy to collect feedback and do nothing with it. The harder work is hearing something uncomfortable, sitting with it and changing course because of it. Unlearning also has a practical element.  Sometimes just doing things another way – just to see – can change how we see the problem or issue. Whether it is delegating differently, changing communication styles or loosening control, experiments help us to test alternatives and gather new evidence about what works. And while professional development is useful, it is not enough on its own. Reading books, attending workshops or gaining qualifications will not mean much unless we take time to reflect critically on how we think and behave. Having a conversation with someone about our thinking can often uncover our blind spots. Simply hearing yourself explain why you do something in a particular way is sometimes enough to expose a gap in your logic or a legacy mindset that is no longer useful. And just like many people find it useful to make a to-do list, it can also help to write down the things you should stop doing. A regular practice of listing behaviours, habits or assumptions that no longer serve a purpose can be a powerful prompt for unlearning. Growth does not always come from adding more – it often starts with letting go. And while unlearning does not get talked about as much as upskilling, it matters just as much. Unlearning is what clears the space for real change. #learning #management #leadership #humanresources #aimwa Cartoon used under licence: CartoonStock

𝗜 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗼𝘂𝗱𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗺. I dressed up every single day for work. I spoke up constantly. I over-prepared. I made sure people knew I was a 𝗰𝗮𝗽𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿, 𝗮 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲𝗿, 𝗮 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗿, 𝗮 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗿. Not because I wanted attention but because I felt like I had something to prove. I wanted to prove I wasn’t in the room because 𝘐’𝘮 𝘢 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘯. Or because of DEI. I wanted to prove I belonged. I proudly showed that I studied at the University of South Florida as proof that talent doesn’t come from just a handful of schools. Now, I’m quieter. Not because I have less to say but because I no longer need to say everything. I dress how I like. I work how I work best. I ask questions without apologizing. I don’t perform confidence anymore I live in it. Here’s what I learned: • Confidence doesn’t need volume • Belonging doesn’t need explanation • And the strongest people in the room don’t rush to prove it 𝗨𝗻𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳 𝗺𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗯𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗳𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵. How about you? Do you still feel like you still have something to prove? You belong! #CareerGrowth #WomenInTech #Confidence #SoftwareEngineering #EarlyCareer

We all celebrate learning as the secret to growth but there’s a powerful truth we don’t acknowledge often enough: you can’t truly learn something new until you are willing to unlearn what’s no longer serving you. Why does unlearning matter? The habits, beliefs, and frameworks that helped us succeed in the past aren’t always the ones that will drive us forward. Research from Harvard Business Review shows that letting go of outdated skills and mindsets is just as essential as mastering new ones. And neuroscience backs it up: when we cling to old models, our brains can actually block new ideas, like trying to pour fresh water into an already full cup. What does this look like at work? Old assumption: seniority = leadership. Reality: leadership today is about empathy, adaptability, and collaboration. Old habit: Networking = handing out as many business cards as possible. Reality: Networking is about building authentic relationships, listening more than talking, and creating mutual value. Old mindset: AI is here to replace us. Reality: the future belongs to those who know how to combine AI with uniquely human skills. How can we practice unlearning? - Challenge your assumptions: Write down one belief about your job or industry that might be outdated. Imagine what if the opposite were true. - Try reverse mentoring: Learn from people who are younger or newer or who come from different backgrounds. They often see things experienced minds miss. - Audit your habits: Notice which routines you stick to out of habit, not relevance. Replace at least one with a smarter, more effective approach. - Practice humility: It’s okay to admit what you don’t know. That’s what creates room for growth. Unlearning isn’t about discarding your past. It’s about making space for what’s next. The teams and leaders who will thrive are those willing to let go, question the familiar, and unlearn courageously. What’s one belief, habit, or practice you had to unlearn recently? #Unlearning #GrowthMindset #Leadership #FutureOfWork #Learning