Jen Coken

The night before a CEO interview, I sat with a leader who was about to walk into the biggest room of his career. He was qualified. He knew it. The people who invited him knew it too. And he looked at me and said, "I keep thinking, who am I to do this?" I wasn't surprised. I almost never am. That voice shows up like clockwork when someone is about to be evaluated. It isn't loudest while you're doing the work. It's loudest the night before someone looks at it. You may know this one personally....

At 21, broke and needing to pay off a debt, I found myself working the 5 AM to 8 AM shift at a local junkyard run by a guy named Frank. Rows of metal shelves stacked with parts going back twenty years. Dust and exhaust grime on everything, including me. By the time the real morning rush hit, I was already blowing black boogers out of my nose. Frank got a kick out of leaving me alone up front when the big guys came in looking for parts. "Where's Frank?" they'd ask. "The girl's gotcha," he'd...

I sat on my own book for a year. Then my name went up in Times Square, forty feet tall, and I finally understood why. It wasn't about urgent or important. It was one question I'd been using for years, just never turned on myself.