Untapped Leadership

What if our most effective leaders are the ones we've overlooked? In Untapped Leadership: Harnessing the Power of Underrepresented Leaders, Jenny Vazquez-Newsum asks readers to reconsider everything we think we know about leadership. Through rigorous critique and lived testimony, she argues that traditional leadership models—rooted in the experiences of powerful white men—have left us with a partial story. To build inclusive, agile organizations, we must learn from those who lead in environments never designed for their success—leaders of color, women, LGBTQ+ professionals, and others who have skillfully navigated oppressive systems.

Vazquez-Newsum’s core argument is bold and clear: marginalized leaders possess unique capacities that have been ignored because our dominant frameworks of leadership are exclusionary by design. While most leadership theories—from the 19th-century Great Man Theory to modern situational and trait models—assume neutral universality, she reveals how deeply they are rooted in racial, gender, and class biases. Real leadership, she contends, emerges from navigating inequity, adapting to hostile conditions, and cultivating community resilience. These are the capabilities we need most today.

Rebuilding a Faulty Foundation

In Part I: Leadership in Context, Vazquez-Newsum takes readers below the surface of conventional leadership frameworks to expose their eroded foundations. She traces how theories developed by men like Thomas Carlyle and Francis Galton established a myth of innate greatness tied to race, gender, and heredity. Even when later frameworks—behavioral, situational, and trait theories—claimed to evolve toward inclusivity, they still excluded diverse perspectives from study populations. The foundation of leadership, she suggests, has always been shaky, privileging those whose identities align with the dominant group. The imagery of buildings and trees throughout these chapters underscores how our current structures are both fragile and outdated—they look sturdy but are actually rotting from underneath.

By calling this the “shaky foundation,” Vazquez-Newsum reframes leadership as a system that must be rebuilt from the ground up. Her critique of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and similar assessments illustrates how these tools perpetuate eugenic ideas of innate traits—even as organizations use them to categorize employees. These systems, she warns, have become powerful in shaping who gets hired, promoted, and deemed “leadership material.”

Uncovering the Capacities of Marginalized Leaders

The book’s heart lies in Part II: The Capacities of Underrepresented Leaders. Here Vazquez-Newsum moves from critique to celebration. She introduces five essential capacities developed by leaders from marginalized backgrounds: Stealth Mode, Contortion, the Untruth of Imposter Syndrome, Leadership Privilege and Purpose, and The Inequitable Load. Each capacity reveals how underrepresented leaders adapt and thrive in inequitable organizations.

For instance, “Stealth Mode” explores how leaders of color operate strategically “under the radar” to succeed in systems that scrutinize their every move. The analogy to stealth aircrafts highlights how these leaders master situational awareness and careful decision-making. “Contortion” describes the daily bending and reshaping of authentic selves to fit dominant expectations of professionalism—an emotional and physical toll that white counterparts rarely face. In “The Deceiving Narrative of Imposter Syndrome,” Vazquez-Newsum dismantles the idea that marginalized leaders’ self-doubt is an internal weakness; instead, it is a systemic reaction to exclusion. When 70% of professionals experience imposter feelings, she argues, it’s not personal pathology—it’s an indictment of workplaces that silence difference.

Reclaiming Leadership Authority

Part I ends with a call for a “necessary shift in leadership authority.” Drawing on standpoint theory (Sandra Harding), Vazquez-Newsum explains that those at the top of hierarchies often misunderstand human realities precisely because of their distance from them. Marginalized leaders, on the other hand, develop richer insights into relational and systemic dynamics because they must navigate both privilege and oppression. Just as Black and brown professionals in her interviews describe seeing “what’s not being said,” underrepresented perspectives reveal blind spots in organizational decision-making. This standpoint, she argues, offers better data for leadership—if only organizations would listen.

From Individual Lessons to Systemic Shifts

The book’s final section, Part III: Leadership Lessons from an Essential Standpoint, translates these insights into actionable frameworks. Chapters on “Untapped Capacity,” “Contextual Agility,” and “Pacing toward Purpose” teach readers how to apply lessons from marginalized leaders to their own practice. Instead of relying on prescriptive checklists, Vazquez-Newsum advocates for descriptive, contextually sensitive leadership—one that reads the room, the history, and the moment simultaneously. This approach emphasizes connection, purpose, and humanity over power, hierarchy, and control.

Drawing from interviews with diverse professionals—like artists, executives, educators, and nonprofit directors—she shows that real leadership is relational, not heroic. Clara, a Latina director of philanthropy, defines leadership as “building with people, not at the expense of people.” Merle, a Black nonprofit CEO, speaks about “power to” and “power within,” countering the notion of power as domination. These voices illustrate the richness of leadership overlooked in traditional models.

Why This Shift Matters

In a world marked by crisis—pandemics, racial injustice, climate emergencies—Vazquez-Newsum insists that the old frameworks can no longer lead us forward. The systems built on Great Man Theory produce leaders who thrive in “clear skies” but falter in turbulence. Marginalized leaders, by contrast, have mastered navigation through storms. Their leadership is nuanced, contextual, and purpose-driven, precisely what the 21st century requires.

This book matters because it does more than critique—it teaches. It invites readers to see how leadership research has mirrored social exclusion and offers a way to repair it. It asks each of us—whether marginalized or not—to examine our own untapped capacities. By recognizing the overlooked strategies of underrepresented leaders, we begin to redefine what leadership could look like: distributed rather than top-down, communal rather than individual, and deeply human at its core.

Vazquez-Newsum begins her exploration with a metaphor of construction: any building is only as strong as its foundation. Our modern leadership structures, she argues, are built on faulty ground. The leadership frameworks that dominate today arose from 19th- and 20th-century research conducted by and for white men. These models—Great Man Theory, Trait Theory, Behavioral Theory, and Situational Leadership—became the canon without adequately considering social context. What we see now is the visible building, but to understand its cracks and instability, we must examine what lies underground.

Great Man Theory and Its Descendants

Thomas Carlyle’s assertion that “the history of the world is but the biography of great men” shaped the early definition of leadership. Carlyle assumed greatness was God-given—a divine selection of powerful men. This worldview excluded women and racial minorities during eras defined by slavery and colonization. Francis Galton’s later eugenic research extended the exclusion further, claiming leadership qualities were hereditary. (Note: Contemporary scholars like Adam Grant and Barbara Kellerman have critiqued this legacy, emphasizing learned behavior over innate ability.) Vazquez-Newsum reminds us that this pseudoscience saturated Western culture’s perceptions of talent and potential.

Behavioral and Situational Theories: Evolution Without Revolution

The 1940s saw the rise of Behavioral Theory, exemplified by the Ohio State studies, which distinguished “task-oriented” from “people-oriented” leaders. Yet even these supposedly universal categories were derived from studies of white men in organizations that excluded Black students and women. Situational Leadership, which emerged during the civil rights era, promised adaptability—leaders succeed depending on context—but ignored the obvious truth that not all contexts afford equal power to all leaders. Chosen samples of white male supervisors could never represent the challenges faced by marginalized professionals navigating bias and limited trust.

Organizational Bias and the Persistence of Myth

Modern workplaces still reward behaviors that align with these early frameworks: charisma, confidence, and command. Vazquez-Newsum contrasts Ohio State’s “revolutionary” label for behavioral research with the exclusionary context—it was revolutionary only for those allowed into the data. When institutions venerate these models uncritically, they perpetuate biased definitions of what leadership “looks like.” Systems built from such research become echo chambers, teaching future generations to worship the same characteristics that exclude difference.

Leadership as Hero Worship

“Leader-as-hero” thinking, Vazquez-Newsum notes, has never died. It fuels our obsession with savior CEOs and charismatic politicians. The problem isn’t heroism itself—it’s the idea that only certain types of people can be heroes. This mindset blinds us to collaborative, community-based forms of leadership that already exist among marginalized groups.

She connects this critique to Ibram X. Kendi’s observation that “the heartbeat of racism is denial.” Denying the influence of discrimination in leadership research sustains that heartbeat. Even today, organizations gravitate toward familiar images: the confident extroverted man on stage, the decisive authoritarian boss. Such imagery perpetuates elitism and narrows what success looks like.

Reimagining from the Roots

Rather than suggesting minor reforms, Vazquez-Newsum calls for demolition. “We don’t need to add on to the incomplete and wobbly structure,” she writes. “We need to tear down the house.” To her, rebuilding means integrating the stories and expertise of those who have been omitted—Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, LGBTQ+, and disabled voices. Only then can we create leadership models with a truly stable foundation.

Her conclusion is simple but radical: leadership must begin from the margins, not the center. Historically excluded voices don’t weaken the structure—they anchor it in reality. This foundational shift transforms leadership from dominance and hierarchy into empathy, adaptability, and shared authority.

Imagine flying a mission through hostile terrain where one wrong move could end your career. That’s how Jenny Vazquez-Newsum describes the day-to-day reality of many leaders of color. In her chapter on Stealth Mode, she compares marginalized professionals to stealth aircrafts—large, capable machines designed to move undetected through dangerous skies. They must blend in, deflect scrutiny, and accomplish their objectives without triggering alarms in systems built for others. It’s survival and brilliance entwined.

Situational Awareness: Reading the Room

Leaders of color learn to navigate workplace “radar systems” that constantly scan for discomfort or difference. Every tone, gesture, and decision is scrutinized more harshly than that of white peers. This calls for what Vazquez-Newsum terms stealth awareness—a finely tuned sensitivity to power dynamics and behavioral expectations. Janet, a Black CEO interviewed in the book, describes feeling as though she works “with ghosts.” Allies and detractors hide behind politeness, and marginalized leaders must constantly gauge who’s safe to trust.

“Every day that I show up in a group where people can marginalize me, I’m working through fear and confusion,” Janet says. “And I’ve done it every day of my corporate life.”

Such heightened perception becomes a leadership skill in its own right. Marginalized leaders pick up on subtle organizational signals—who gets airtime in meetings, whose ideas are validated, who holds unseen influence. They excel at scanning environments quickly, an ability that parallels adaptive expertise described by military leaders in high-risk operations. (Note: Similar ideas appear in Herman Melville’s leadership analysis from Moby-Dick—understanding conditions before acting.)

Stealth Decision Making and Cleanup

Leaders in stealth mode blend inclusivity and caution. They build buy-in quietly, cultivating informal networks before making strategic moves. This often means doing twice the emotional labor: producing results and buffering those results through diplomacy. Jennifer, a Black CEO in diversity consulting, notes that marginalized leaders “do things that don’t feel authentic” just to grow, because exclusivity traps them between aspiration and constraint. Vazquez-Newsum shows how these subtle adaptations constitute advanced leadership—strategic patience, alliance building, and coalition management.

She also explores “stealth cleanup,” where women and leaders of color are hired to repair organizational crises created by privileged predecessors. These leaders step into wreckage—broken cultures, ethical scandals, or collapsed morale—and are expected to fix everything without acknowledgment. Their resilience is extraordinary, but these scenarios reinforce inequitable burdens and prove that stealth is often demanded, not chosen.

Invisible Impact

Despite invisibility, stealth leadership leaves profound results. Leaders who cultivate trust under pressure often create stronger teams rooted in empathy and collaboration. They do their work “from the back”—guiding others while deflecting visibility. In organizations addicted to spotlighting loud voices, this quiet form of influence is rarely recognized. Yet, Vazquez-Newsum contends, stealth leadership is foundational to social equity movements, nonprofit growth, and community healing.

Ultimately, “Stealth Mode” transforms what outsiders see as survival into artistry. It celebrates the hidden mastery of marginalized leaders who lead inclusively, read context like radar, and pursue transformation even when unseen. Their stealth isn’t avoidance—it’s skillful resilience in turbulent air.

Every professional knows the urge to fit in—but for marginalized leaders, this isn’t optional. In Contortion, Vazquez-Newsum describes how leaders of color constantly fold, twist, and reshape themselves to meet a workplace standard built on white, masculine norms. Like circus contortionists, they perform impossible feats of balance while appearing effortless. It’s not flexibility for growth—it’s flexibility for survival.

Authenticity and the Professional Mask

Leadership literature often praises authenticity and vulnerability (see Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead), but Vazquez-Newsum problematizes this advice. Authenticity comes at a cost for those who risk being rated “unprofessional” simply for existing as they are. She cites research behind the 2019 CROWN Act—80% of Black women report altering their hair to conform to workplace norms. This daily contortion, whether changing appearance, tone, or language, communicates that professionalism still means “close to whiteness.”

Jenn, a Black CEO, captures this irony when she asks audiences: “What about my locks isn’t professional?” The answer, of course, reveals whose image of professionalism dominates. Marginalized leaders carry a double burden—excelling at their work while managing others’ discomfort with their identity.

Code-Switching and Mirroring

Code-switching—adjusting speech, mannerisms, or cultural references—becomes a constant act of negotiation. As Ibe, a Black product manager, jokes, “Code-switching is a skill set I can’t put on my resume, but it should be.” He describes changing tone when speaking to CEOs versus partners abroad, illustrating the cognitive burden of always “translating” oneself. Though unseen, this rapid adaptation demands energy that could be spent innovating or leading. For Vazquez-Newsum, code-switching and mirroring reveal an advanced but underrecognized leadership intelligence: the ability to read and meet multiple audiences simultaneously.

Emotion Management and the Risk of Vulnerability

Marginalized leaders must also manage how emotion is perceived. Anger may be labeled “aggression,” assertiveness misread as insubordination. Tammy, an Asian executive, shares how she was told to mirror dominant behaviors to be “effective,” though doing so drained her confidence. These leaders thus regulate tone and affect constantly—emotional intelligence earned through risk.

Vazquez-Newsum calls this contorted professionalism a false equilibrium. While the world celebrates resilience, she encourages readers to ask whether that resilience is freely chosen or forcibly imposed. True inclusion would eliminate the need for such contortion entirely.

Authenticity as Leadership’s New Frontier

The chapter closes with a challenge to organizations: authenticity cannot thrive under surveillance. To stop rewarding conformity disguised as excellence, leaders must transform workplace culture into one that values “windows” instead of “mirrors.” Rather than forcing individuals to reflect dominant norms, companies should create transparency that lets the full humanity of their people be seen. Contortion may bend bodies and spirits—but recognition and reform can finally let them stand tall.

Have you ever felt like you don’t belong in a room despite earning your place there? Jenny Vazquez-Newsum reclaims that feeling, arguing that what we call “imposter syndrome” is not individual weakness but a systemic response to exclusion. In The Deceiving Narrative of Imposter Syndrome, she dismantles decades of psychological discourse that pathologized marginalized professionals’ experiences while ignoring institutional causes.

From Personal Doubt to Structural Design

Originating from a 1978 study of high-achieving women, “imposter phenomenon” was framed as internal self-deception. Today, it’s applied universally—70% of people report the feeling. Vazquez-Newsum asks: if most of us feel like imposters, maybe the structure itself produces impostership. For her, this realization came after years of excelling academically while being the only Black student in classrooms. The silence and scrutiny she endured weren’t psychological flaws—they were environmental messages that she didn’t belong.

Training Imposters into Existence

Throughout education and professional life, marginalized people are “trained” into imposter syndrome. Tanya, a Black professor, recalls how “weed-out” courses at predominantly white institutions taught her to question her worth—even as she succeeded. These environments reward constant over-preparation, reinforcing anxiety rather than trust. Instead of coaching individuals to “fix” their mindset, Vazquez-Newsum insists organizations must change the conditions creating that mindset.

Sara, a South Asian leader, puts it sharply: “Imposter syndrome puts the issue fundamentally at the individual level. It’s sprinkle-glitter therapy for systemic toxicity.”

Reframing the Imposter as Insight

Yet Vazquez-Newsum finds paradoxical beauty in this discomfort. Those who doubt themselves are often more self-aware, cautious, and humble—qualities that antidote the overconfidence plaguing traditional leadership. Imposter feelings highlight the gap between personal integrity and institutional validation. When leaders use this awareness to examine systems, they transform doubt into discernment.

Healing the Workplace

For Vazquez-Newsum, the cure is structural, not psychological. Companies must create cultures of psychological safety—where questions, mistakes, and difference are welcomed. She proposes support maps, two-way feedback, and onboarding that normalize uncertainty. Until organizations dismantle the biases that make people feel fraudulent, “imposter syndrome” will remain misdiagnosed. The truth, she concludes, is that environments—not individuals—generate imposters, and healing requires collective leadership aware of that deception.

Privilege, Vazquez-Newsum reminds us, is the invisible currency of leadership. In Leadership Privilege and the Power of Purpose, she explores how awareness of this privilege transforms how leaders use their power. For marginalized professionals, earning authority is hard and losing it can be sudden. Recognizing this fragility teaches humility—and invites purpose beyond self-interest.

Privilege as Perspective

When leadership frameworks assume entitlement, power feels perpetual and natural. But underrepresented leaders, aware of how easily privilege can vanish, view power as stewardship. They work not to hoard it but to redistribute it. Jenn, a CEO, describes how access to “behind-closed-door conversations” changed her outlook: “Do not hire with diversity in mind and then tell everyone to assimilate,” she says. True diversity means freedom of expression, not forced conformity.

Purpose Beyond Position

Vazquez-Newsum urges leaders to link privilege with purpose—to move beyond career milestones toward meaning. Purpose doesn’t begin or end with job titles; it’s a motivation to serve, restore, and create collectively. Drawing from her interviews, she highlights how marginalized leaders often define leadership through community. For Ly, an Asian chief strategist, leadership means adding value through giving back. For Clara, a Latinx philanthropist, it’s dismantling oppression through relationship building. This communal lens stands in contrast to the individualism of Great Man Theory.

Connecting Purpose and Systems Change

Purpose guides how we distribute organizational privilege. Leaders driven by service elevate others and model accountability. They resist “check your baggage at the door” professionalism, welcoming personal values into the workplace. Companies can institutionalize this by integrating employees’ personal missions into onboarding and team development. Shared purpose yields trust; trust yields innovation.

Ultimately, Vazquez-Newsum reframes privilege as opportunity—the chance to catalyze equity rather than preserve dominance. Purpose becomes leadership’s moral compass, ensuring that power builds communities instead of empires. For her, leadership without purpose isn’t leadership at all—it’s management. Leadership with purpose, by contrast, is freedom in action.

In one of her most practical chapters, Vazquez-Newsum introduces The Zone of Untapped Capacity, a transformative framework for personal and organizational growth. Here she synthesizes the book’s lessons into a blueprint for reimagined leadership. Building on Gay Hendricks’s idea of the “zone of genius,” she invites readers to explore the intersection between their privilege and their marginalized experiences—the zone where authentic power and overlooked insight meet.

Discovering the Zone

Your untapped capacity exists where difference fuels depth. For Vazquez-Newsum, this meant reckoning with how her own biracial identity had been sidelined in traditional leadership training. Realizing that even she, an expert in leadership education, had conformed to white male frameworks pushed her to rebuild from her standpoint. This awakening led to the creation of the book itself—a product of operating in her zone of untapped capacity.

How to Access It

• Identify how you hold power and privilege—formal, informal, or societal.
• Name where you are marginalized—through identity, voice, or experience.
• Leverage your privilege to amplify those marginalized perspectives at work.

This exercise reveals how leadership potential expands when grounded in self-awareness. Marginalized perspectives are not liabilities but lenses that see what dominant culture misses—context, empathy, and humanity.

Individual Growth and Organizational Application

Vazquez-Newsum urges leaders to audit their authenticity: when do you feel most aligned with who you are, and when not? This “authenticity audit” becomes a compass for finding integration. Organizations, she says, must do the same: redesign meetings, agendas, and feedback processes that elevate diverse voices. She champions productive conflict—seeing disagreement as a tool for clarity rather than chaos.

Operating in your zone of untapped capacity reshapes leadership from performance to embodiment. It replaces scarcity with abundance and unlocks genius long hidden by conformity. This is where the future of leadership lives—in the intersection of power and possibility, belonging and difference.