For a long time, Linh believed that being a good leader meant always being the positive one in the room.
Over more than a decade in sales and business development — navigating multinational corporations, leading teams, exceeding targets — she had built a career on warmth, resilience, and an almost relentless forward momentum. People gravitated toward her energy. She was the one who kept things moving, who lifted others up, who showed up bright even when things were hard.
But underneath that brightness, she had been quietly disappearing.
The culture in her last role was guarded, political. To survive it, she had learned to be guarded too — hiding what she really thought, what she really valued, who she really was. After a while, she started to lose the thread of herself.
"I couldn't be myself. You become very defensive. You hide the things that actually matter to you — your strengths, your values. You just protect yourself."
Linh didn't come to Circle looking for a breakthrough. She came for a fresh perspective — something to help her find her footing before her next chapter. She had expected new frameworks, new tools to add to her leadership toolkit. She had watched an acquaintance transform herself after working with Green Tara Leadership, and was curious to experience it herself.
She was ready to learn. She wasn't ready for what Circle would ask of her.
The mask she arrived with
Day 1, Linh was quiet. Day 2, she was still guarded. Years of operating carefully don't switch off just because you're in a new room with new people.
"I didn't think I'd need to share anything personal. I thought I was there to learn leadership skills. I didn't understand that Circle would go very deep."
Something shifted toward the end of Day 2. Linh began opening up about the exhaustion. The misalignment. The loneliness of holding herself together in an environment that didn't see her.
The response from the group surprised her.
"When I finally shared my story, everyone really listened and tried to understand. They saw things in me — my core values, my strengths — that I had been hiding. I felt truly seen."
It was the first time in a long time that Linh felt deeply seen. Not the polished, always-positive version of herself she usually presented. The full picture — the core of who she actually was.
Moving beyond the positive face
Linh's most visible strength had always been her positivity. People saw her as inspiring, ambitious, maybe even lucky. But underneath the brightness was something she'd been carefully concealing: the times she wanted to quit, the loneliness, the self-doubt.
"Before, I would hide all of that. I thought being positive all the time was what made me a good leader — what made people respect me. I didn't want anyone to see the hard parts."
Circle challenged that assumption. Through the lived experience of sharing and being met by others in real time, Linh discovered something she hadn't expected: it was the struggles, not the successes, that actually connected her to people and made her appear trustworthy as a leader.
"When I started sharing the difficult moments — the times I felt alone, the times I doubted myself, the times I wanted to give up — people were more impacted. They felt it was real. They felt they could relate. Before, people might have been inspired by me, or thought I was ambitious or lucky. But when I showed the full picture, they actually felt connected to me."
She tested this outside Circle, too — in workshops, in speaking engagements, in conversations with younger professionals. Every time she dared to share what had been hardest, the connection deepened. And every time, she had to move through her own resistance first.
"I had to get past my own ego. It's scary to say that I went through a time when I was truly lonely. I doubted myself. I wanted to quit — many times. But when I did say those things, I felt so much more connected to the people I'm talking to."
This is also where her relationship with feedback began to shift. In a guarded, political environment, feedback had often felt threatening — something to defend against, not receive. In Circle, the practice of giving and receiving feedback in real time slowly softened something in her.
She noticed her own defensive patterns. She learned to trust that feedback could come from care, not criticism. She experienced how honesty — when held with good intent — could deepen connection rather than damage it.
Vulnerability and feedback, she realized, were asking for the same thing: the willingness to lower the armor, and to trust that being fully seen was safer and more beautiful than she once believed.
Coming home to herself
Being surrounded by international professionals in Circle — people from different cultures and companies — reminded Linh of what she had always loved about working in global environments. It clarified where she belonged, and where she didn't.
"Circle helped me recognize very clearly: this is who I am, these are my values, this is the kind of environment where I thrive. And this is what doesn't fit. It helped me redirect my energy — instead of investing everything in fighting a system that didn't align with me, I could invest in building something that did."
She continued with 1-1 coaching with Tara after Circle, going deeper into her sense of purpose and emotional awareness, and navigating a major international move that had been years in the making.
Today, Linh leads from the US with the same courage and resilience that defined her early career. But she carries it differently now. She no longer hides the hard parts. She no longer believes that positivity alone is what makes people follow her.
"Other leadership programs, you go and you learn knowledge. Here, you don't just get knowledge. You truly feel seen. And I learned that sharing the struggles, showing the vulnerability is actually what brings people closer. That's the thing that truly connects."