Summary: What if one of the worst moments in your career actually pointed you toward the work you were meant to do? Long before Oprah Winfrey became Oprah, she was a 22-year-old television journalist who moved to Baltimore to co-anchor the evening news at WJZ-TV. Oprah has written and spoken openly about those early years. Her established co-anchor did not welcome the pairing, and she struggled with a style of television journalism that required her to remain emotionally detached from the people whose tragedies she covered. She was often criticized for becoming too emotionally involved, and was eventually removed from the evening anchor desk. Read on to learn why she never gave up and how she found her true calling.
Imagine you’re 22 years old, you just landed a job that’s supposed to prove you’ve made it, and everyone around you is essentially telling you, “You’re not right for this.” Most of us would hear those words and take them as a sign of failure. Oprah heard something else.
When Trying Harder Is the Wrong Answer
One of the great myths of success is that when something isn’t working, we should simply work harder, be more disciplined, adapt, fit in, and prove everyone wrong. There are certainly times when perseverance matters, but there are other times when repeatedly trying to fit into the wrong environment begins to cost us something far more important: ourselves.
Oprah has said that reading television news never felt authentic to her. When interviewing people who had experienced tragedy, she empathized with them and was criticized by her bosses for doing so. Think about that for a moment. The quality she displayed, which was ultimately treated as a professional weakness, was empathy.
Today, it is almost impossible to imagine Oprah Winfrey without the emotional connection that became central to her success. Yet early in her career, she received the message that this part of herself needed to be controlled. How often does that happen at work?
A creative employee is told to stop asking so many questions. An intuitive leader is told to stick to the numbers. A thoughtful executive is told to toughen up. A collaborative manager is told that strong leaders make decisions alone. A sensitive person is told to “suck it up” when they express their feelings about a matter.
Sometimes the advice is useful, and sometimes we begin editing ourselves so thoroughly that we just become successful at being someone we were never meant to be.
The Demotion That Changed Everything
After Oprah was removed from the evening news, WJZ eventually placed her on a local program called People Are Talking. It hardly looked like a promotion, but something happened when she sat down in that chair. She could talk to people and ask the questions she actually wanted to ask. There was now time and space to be curious and connect with others. Basically, she could be herself.
Oprah has described that first experience as feeling as though she had come home. That matters. Because alignment often feels less like becoming somebody new and more like finally stopping the exhausting effort to be somebody you’re not. The demotion hadn’t changed Oprah’s gifts; instead, it changed her environment for the better. That’s a leadership lesson worth remembering.
The Difference Between a Trigger and a GLIMMER
A trigger pulls us toward an automatic reaction. A GLIMMER gives us information. Somewhat paradoxically, the two can occur in the same moment.
Rejection can trigger thoughts like:
- I’ll show them.
- I’m not good enough.
- I need to work harder.
- I’ll become whatever they want me to become.
But beneath that reaction, there may be another signal asking, “Is this where I actually belong?”
That’s where Pattern Awareness becomes important(opens in new tab). Our ingrained patterns often tell us how to respond to rejection before we’ve even thought about it. Pleasers try harder to gain approval. Super-Achievers double down. Rebels decide everyone else is an idiot. Victims conclude there is nothing they can do. Avoiders disappear.
But alignment requires something different. It requires enough self-awareness to ask: What is this experience trying to teach me about myself?
Alignment Is Not the Same as Comfort
There’s an important distinction here. Alignment doesn’t mean everything becomes easy. Oprah didn’t move into daytime television and suddenly encounter a world without difficult bosses, discrimination, unequal treatment, or conflict.
In fact, she later recalled confronting management about pay inequity. In Baltimore, she challenged the fact that her male co-host was paid more for essentially the same job. Later, after her nationally syndicated show became enormously successful, she advocated for raises for the women producing it. That is another part of alignment we don’t discuss enough.
At first, alignment asks: Who am I?
Eventually, leadership asks: Now that I know who I am, what am I willing to stand for?
Those are two very different questions.
What Difficult Bosses Can Teach Us
I recently wrote about dealing with a toxic boss and suggested that we stop rushing to label the person and begin looking at the pattern they keep repeating. Oprah’s story adds another dimension to this.
Sometimes a difficult boss reveals something about our own alignment. Not because the boss is right, and certainly not because we tolerate harmful behavior, but because friction contains information.
Maybe you silence the very quality that makes you effective. Perhaps you’re succeeding according to everyone else’s definition while becoming increasingly disconnected from yourself. Then again, maybe you’ve spent years trying to earn approval from someone who was never going to give it. Most importantly, what if the problem really is yours, and the discomfort is asking you to grow?
Self-awareness means being willing to consider all of those possibilities. That’s why simply calling someone a toxic boss isn’t enough. The more useful question is, “What is this relationship showing me?”
The Leadership Pattern Oprah Changed
What interests me most about Oprah’s story isn’t her eventual fame and success, but that she stopped treating her way of connecting with people as something that needed correction. She aligned her work with who she actually was. And the trait that didn’t fit one environment became an extraordinary strength in another.
That is what can happen when Pattern Awareness becomes more powerful than approval.
We stop asking: How do I become what they want?
And begin asking: Who am I when I am operating at my best?
That question can change a career. It can also change a leader.
Your GLIMMER Moment
Think about a boss, colleague, or workplace situation that is frustrating you right now. Before deciding they’re the problem, ask yourself, “What happens to me around this person?”
Do I become smaller? More defensive? More controlling? Desperate to please? Determined to prove myself?
Then go one step deeper: Is this situation asking me to change a pattern, or asking me to stop abandoning something important about myself?
There is a profound difference. A trigger makes us react to what is happening. A GLIMMER helps us understand what is happening. And sometimes the moment that looks like rejection is actually an invitation toward alignment.
Years later, Oprah returned to Maryland and reflected that her eight years there were among the most significant of her life. Baltimore, she said, was where she began figuring out who she was, and People Are Talking sparked her desire to use television to tell stories that could affect people’s lives. She didn’t simply overcome rejection. That’s the part of the story I love.
Learn From Rejection
So the next time a door closes, or someone tells you that who you are isn’t quite right for the room, don’t automatically push harder against the door. Pay attention. There may be a GLIMMER hiding in the disappointment.
Sometimes rejection isn’t telling you that you’re not good enough; it’s telling you that you’re trying to fit in somewhere that requires you to leave too much of yourself outside the door.
That is the essence of The GLIMMERS Effect™(opens in new tab): recognizing the signals that help us interrupt old patterns, make conscious choices, and lead in greater alignment with who we are.
I explore this more deeply in my upcoming book, GLIMMERS at WORK: The Self-Aware Leader’s Advantage, which you can read the introduction to here(opens in new tab).
To your success,
Sylvia Lafair
