Hi Reader,

I told myself I was going for a hike.

Boots in the back of the car, water bottle filled, a Wednesday afternoon cleared. I drove east out of Seattle and up over Snoqualmie Pass, where the road climbs into the Cascades, and the world turns green and quiet and tall. I did not walk a single trail.

I went for the drive. The mountain, the trailhead, the version of the day where I am the kind of woman who does the whole thing. And then, as I drove home back over the summit, I started thinking about how nobody had put that day on my calendar. Nobody told me I was allowed to take it. I had to know I wanted it, say so, and then actually claim it.

The next day, I had another version of the same thing, driving up the Pacific Northwest coast to see my daughter at university for no reason other than that I wanted to (and sharing a delicious sandwich with her). Two ordinary afternoons that were mine only because I decided they would be.

But this is about more than a drive over the mountains or by the ocean (both were equally beautiful).

For two decades, my work came with the destination already chosen. A number to hit, a date to hit it by, someone else's picture of a good year. You can become genuinely excellent at reaching a place you did not choose, and never once practice the harder thing underneath it: knowing what you actually want, and being willing to say so.

Then you build something of your own, or step into a role big enough that the brief stops arriving, and the practice you skipped becomes the entire job. No one is out front pointing at the goal. No one is behind you either, not until you say something worth standing behind. A want you keep to yourself cannot move you, and it will never move anyone else.

It reminds me of some of my coaching sessions this week.

One client asked me, more or less directly, "What do you think I should do next?" And I felt the pull every coach feels, to hand over an answer. But my answer was never the missing piece. Hers was. The work was her saying out loud, in her own voice, what she actually wants, and then deciding whether she is willing to reach for it.

Another client keeps getting handed more. More scope, more responsibility, more of exactly what she said she wanted, trailed by a quiet "who am I to be doing this?" But look at what is actually happening: they keep expanding her remit. People do not do that with someone they do not trust to deliver. Her next move is not to keep executing beautifully and waiting to be told. It is to step up as the leader she already is, to have an opinion, to name a vision, and to get people behind it, rather than marching to someone else's drumbeat. It starts with declaring where she is taking things.

A third is standing at the edge of "what is my next phase?" with the target unnamed and no boss to name it.

Different doors, same room. Every one of them at the moment where the goal stops being handed to you and starts having to be spoken by you.

This is where I go to the research (you know I love a good reference).

For years, the popular advice was to keep your goals to yourself. New work turns that on its head. In a 2025 set of studies, wonderfully titled "Goals Out Loud," researchers followed more than a thousand people and found that those who told others what they were working toward received more real support and put in more effort than those who stayed quiet. Saying it out loud is not just a declaration. It quietly recruits other people to your corner. The vision that stays in your head gets none of that.

And once it is out of your head, how you say it decides who follows. Andrew Carton at Wharton studied why NASA's people in the 1960s found their work so meaningful, right down to the person mopping the floor who said he was helping put a man on the moon. What Carton found was that a grand vision, on its own, often backfires and breeds cynicism because people cannot see how their Tuesday connects to the moon. The leaders who made it land did two things: they painted the destination in vivid, concrete terms, and they drew a believable line from today's work to that horizon. That is the whole art of getting people behind you. Name where you are going clearly enough that someone can picture it, then show them their part in it.

Put those together, and you have the arc of the entire week. Figure out what you want. Say it out loud, because that is what brings support and momentum. Then hold the vision plainly enough that other people can stand inside it with you.

It is the whole reason I wrote Clarity in Chaos: Lead with Purpose in Disruptive Times. Leading through the noise gets much simpler once you have decided what you are leading toward and can say it in a single sentence.

If this is harder than it sounds, there is a reason. A want you never say out loud can never be turned down. Keep it vague, and it stays safe: still possible, still yours, never actually tested. The moment you say it plainly to another person is the moment it becomes real enough to be refused. Which is the same moment it becomes real enough to happen.

So if you are in that in-between right now, waiting for someone to tell you what you are aiming at, here is my nudge: stop waiting to be told. What feels like being lost is usually just the moment the choosing quietly became yours. So choose. Say what you want to one person.

So, here are some suggestions for you this week, so you can embody these ideas:

Option A: Say it to a person. Don't write it. Don't think harder. Take the thing you have been circling and actually speak it out loud to one human being this week, in a sentence that starts with "I want." Text it, say it on a walk, drop it in an email. The 2025 research is pretty clear about why this works: the moment a real want leaves your head and reaches someone else, you start to draw the encouragement and support that a private wish never attracts.

Option B: Make the vision followable. If you lead anyone, even one person, take the direction you are quietly holding and do two things with it. Say where you are going in vivid, concrete terms, and then show the person in front of you exactly how their work connects to it. That is how a vision stops being yours alone and becomes something people will actually move toward.

Me? I am taking Option A. There is a want I have been circling for months and phrasing far too carefully. This week I am going to say it plainly, out loud, to one person. Not the mountain-hike version of it. The real one.

So, which one is yours this week?

- Megan