Low diatribe

The board member looked me up and down — eighteen, hair shaved on the sides and back with the top grown out, wearing a suit three sizes too big and combat boots to a fancy dress party — and questioned the hire.

In my mind, I was projecting David Byrne energy. In reality, I probably looked more like Beaker from the Muppet Show.

Either way, I stuck out amongst the crowd of donors and board members at the gala celebrating the opening of the Science Center's new building.

Doc didn't hesitate: "There's a direct correlation between the amount of eccentricities tolerated and the talent of an individual. As you can see, this young man is very talented."

I'd volunteered as an Explainer at the interactive science museum through my last two years of high school. That's what they called us folk who staffed the floor and explained the exhibits — Explainers. When they received a major grant and moved into the new space, they had budget to not only pay the Explainers, but also hire a full-time Explainer Coordinator. They'd chosen me. My first job out of high school was hiring and supervising all the part-time Explainers.

Doc was a distinguished scientist from Fermilab, and the interactive center was his passion project. The board was split between scientists from Fermi or Argonne and prominent local business and political leaders. The scientists knew how to read signal through static. This board member was not a scientist. He saw a post-punk teenager who didn't look the part. Doc saw someone who'd shown up every weekend, learned the exhibits cold, and could explain complex physics to eight-year-olds without talking down to them.

What Doc understood — what I was just beginning to learn — was that eccentricity isn't tolerated despite talent. It's a weight that talent has to carry.

The exchange rate

Growing up in the post-punk era, I was the typical teenage rebel: new wave and industrial music, anti-establishment sentiment, the whole aesthetic. I thought rebellion was the point. Doc taught me something different: being yourself isn't rebellion. It's a cost.

Your skill has to be strong enough to carry the extra load.

The exchange rate is continuous. You don't earn the right to be yourself once and keep it forever. Every new context, every new role, every new team resets the equation. You have to prove the capability before you can spend it on authenticity.

What skill buys you

I learned this viscerally that summer. I was fresh out of high school, managing college students home for break and volunteers with advanced degrees. My appearance was a constant negotiation. Every decision I made, every schedule I set, every conflict I mediated — it all had to be good enough to justify the fact that I didn't look like what they expected a coordinator to look like.

The skill bought me permission. But only just enough.

If I'd been mediocre at the job, my appearance would have been the explanation for why. If I'd been merely competent, it would have been a distraction. I had to be good enough that my eccentricities became irrelevant — or better yet, reframed as evidence of the same independent thinking that made me effective.

This is the reality of earned eccentricity: you can't just be as good as everyone else. You have to be better. The weight of being different requires extra strength to carry.

It's not fair. But it's the physics of the situation.

The danger of the correlation

Doc's insight was profound, but it came with a hidden danger: if there's a correlation between eccentricity and talent, it's easy to mistake which direction the causation runs.

Eccentricity doesn't create talent. Talent creates the conditions where eccentricity can survive.

I've watched people get this backwards. They see successful people who are authentically themselves — who dress differently, think differently, work differently — and conclude that the difference is the source of the success. So they adopt the surface markers without building the underlying capability. They pick up weight they can't carry.

The result is predictable: they struggle, they fail, and everyone around them blames the eccentricity. Which reinforces the belief that conformity is safer. Which makes it harder for people with genuine capability to take the risk of being themselves.

The internal exchange rate

But there's another gap that's harder to see: the gap between having earned something and feeling like you've earned it.

Doc saw capability in me that I was still learning to see in myself. The skill was there — I'd proven it weekend after weekend, exhibit after exhibit. But the feeling lagged behind the reality.

This is the internal version of the exchange rate. It's not just about whether others accept your eccentricities. It's about whether you believe you've earned the right to carry them.

I've watched this play out in two directions, and both are dangerous.

Some people have the capability but can't feel it. They've earned the weight but don't believe they're strong enough to carry it. So they either hide who they are or exhaust themselves trying to prove they deserve to be there. The skill is real, but the confidence lags so far behind that they can't access what they've actually built.

Others feel capable but haven't built the foundation. They pick up weight they can't carry because they don't yet know enough to recognize how heavy it is. The confidence is real, but the skill lags so far behind that they mistake the feeling for the fact.

Both gaps are about misalignment between perception and reality. But they fail in opposite directions.

When you have the capability but can't feel it, the gap doesn't close just because you prove yourself once. I felt it that summer at eighteen. I felt it in every leadership role since. The pattern is always the same: I have the capability, others see it, and I'm still waiting to feel like I've earned it.

Here's what I've learned: the feeling doesn't catch up. I won't suddenly wake up one day and think, "Yes, I've earned this." The gap is permanent. What changes is your relationship to it.

I had the skill and I felt like an imposter. The skill was enough to do the work. The feeling was irrelevant.

When you feel capable but haven't built the foundation, the gap collapses fast — but not in the way you want. You show up with the aesthetic but not the mastery. You think being different is enough because you don't yet understand how much skill it takes to carry that weight. Then reality hits. The work is harder than you thought. The weight is heavier than you expected. And everyone around you sees the gap you couldn't see yourself.

The collapse stings because it's public. You don't just learn you weren't ready — everyone else learns it too. And now your eccentricity isn't evidence of talent. It's evidence of overconfidence.

Both gaps are calibration problems. You're trying to align three things: how you see yourself, how others see you, and what you're actually capable of.

The goal isn't to eliminate the gap. The goal is to trust the external signal more than the internal feeling. When Doc defended my hire, he wasn't asking me if I felt ready. He was telling the board that the capability was already there. When someone picks up weight they haven't earned, the work reveals it just as clearly.

Carrying forward

Thirty-five years later, I still think about Doc's defense of me. Not because it gave me permission to be myself — though it did — but because it taught me the terms of the exchange.

Being yourself isn't free. It costs credibility, attention, patience from others. You have to be good enough to pay that cost and still have enough left over to do the work.

This connects to everything I've learned about leadership since. Authentic vulnerability requires competence. You can't lead with your full self if you haven't built the credibility to support it. People will follow someone who's real, but only if they trust that person can actually get them where they need to go.

The skill comes first. The authenticity is what you do with the surplus.

I've had great success in creating environments where that barrier is lowered, allowing us a faster path to authentic connection. But there's still vulnerability in sharing your full self.

I still feel the gap. I still show up to new situations wondering if I've earned the right to be myself. The feeling hasn't caught up to the reality.

But I've learned to trust the external signal. When people see capability, when the work gets done, when the weight stays carried — that's the reality. The feeling is just lag.

The danger is when you trust the feeling more than the signal. When you let the gap stop you from carrying weight you've actually earned. Or when you let it convince you to pick up weight you can't yet carry.

I still don't conform to expectations. I still show up as myself. But I'm always aware of the weight I'm asking my capability to carry. And I'm always working to make sure I'm strong enough to carry it.

The gap doesn't close. But you learn to work inside it — trusting the work more than the feeling, carrying the weight even when you don't feel ready, and recognizing when it's too heavy before you pick it up.

I've spent my career trying to prove Doc right.

Thanks Doc.

The question isn't whether you can be yourself. The question is whether you're good enough to afford it.