I have been a leader for most of my life, long before I ever supervised a team or sat in an executive meeting. I was a big sister. That role shaped my instincts: protect, guide, tell the truth, hold confidences, and create space for others to grow. Big sisters lead in the moments when no one is watching. We step in when someone is scared to call for help. We see what others miss. We carry responsibility early.

I didn’t have the language for it then, but that was my first leadership model. It was rooted in service and care. It was leadership that multiplied rather than controlled.

Years later, I sat in a meeting watching a leader deliver direction with precision and authority. The expectations were clear, but with every exchange, the employee retreated further into themselves. The big sister in me felt it immediately. I wanted to help the employee feel capable enough to meet the expectations. I wanted accountability delivered in a way that preserved confidence rather than eroded it.

That moment clarified something I had been sensing for years. The leadership I was witnessing was the opposite of the leadership I had lived.

When I entered the workplace, I learned leadership through observation and formal training.

Many of the models I encountered emphasized command presence, decisiveness, and certainty. They rewarded the person with the answers, the one who carried the organization on their shoulders. Some of those lessons were useful. Many were not.

Over time, I realized those models did not align with my lived experience. They reflected a heroic view of leadership that placed the leader at the center of every solution. But the leader I had been becoming since childhood looked very different.

Women in leadership often receive mixed messages. Be confident, but not too confident. Be collaborative, but decisive. Be authentic, but only in ways that feel familiar to others. For women of color, those expectations can feel even narrower.

Yet those expectations never aligned with the leader I already was.

The big sister in me did not disappear when I entered the workplace.

She came with me. She listened. She told the truth. She created space. She helped people find their footing when they were unsure. And people responded to that across race, gender, and role. They trusted it because it was real.

For years, I believed leadership required me to become a version of someone I had studied. But the more I led, the clearer it became that my strength was not in performing authority. It was in creating space.

I am a leader who listens, who multiplies, and who builds environments where people feel seen, valued, and capable. That is not softness. It is impact.

The heroic model I had been shown asked me to lead from above. My leadership has always worked from beside, grounded in honesty, transparency, and accountability. It challenges people while helping them grow. It creates conditions where others can contribute, lead, and succeed.

For me, power was never found in becoming someone else.

It was found in embracing the leader I had been becoming all along.

In time, I realized that the leader I am today is the same leader I was as a big sister. The one who protects without controlling. The one who tells the truth with care. The one who creates room for others to rise.

Leadership only works when it is rooted in who you are, not whom you are expected to be. I stopped trying to carry a model that was never built for me and settled into the leader I already was.

I lead like a big sister. And that is the voice that makes me the leader I am.

Author Quisha A. Light serves as the interim director of Portland, Oregon's Housing Bureau.