Here's where it became interesting, and where Rebecca did something I'd never seen in that particular institution before.

She didn't go it alone.

Rebecca found the one other person who could see through the ‘wishful thinking’ as clearly as she could.

It had to be someone equally honest about what could and couldn't be delivered. 

When she found him, they teamed up and decided to run together.

That was a real departure.

The Chair role had always been held by a single person.

But the two of them looked at the size of the job honestly and concluded it was too big for one person.

Indeed, if they were being kind, going solo may well have been part of why their predecessors had struggled.

So they proposed to share it.

Think about what that move signals, set against William?

He was one charismatic person promising he could deliver the world.

By comparison, they were two clear-eyed people openly admitting the task was large enough to need both of them.

One is a ‘performance’. The other? A ‘plan’.

And in their conversations with stakeholders, and in the final presentation, they didn't trash William.

They simply reminded people of Rebecca's reputation for consistent, if under-celebrated, delivery, and let that sit next to a track record of over-optimistic projects that had let teams down before.

No names. Just the Emperor's New Clothes, gently pointed at.

Rebecca and her co-chair won.

When it came to it, enough people decided they couldn't afford to be swayed by promises they suspected wouldn't hold.

The honesty that had felt, going in, like Rebecca's disadvantage in a charisma contest turned out to be the whole reason she won.

She didn't beat William at his game.

She simply changed the game to one where substance counted.

Then she and her partner trusted the room to know the difference.

If you've ever stood across from someone whose confidence outruns their delivery, and felt you had to either match them or lose,  there's often a third option.

Your discomfort with over-promising isn't a weakness to overcome.

It's actually valuable information to you.

Often it's the exact thing the quieter half of the room is feeling too, and waiting for someone to say out loud.

If these are the kind of dilemmas you turn over, my newsletter is where I write about it first, usually before I've worked out the tidy version.

You can subscribe on the front page of this website.

And if you're somewhere where someone else's confidence keeps winning the room that should be yours, that's the work I do one to one.

There's a free chemistry call you can ask me about.