Fired, Not Broken: The Leadership Lesson That Changed My Life
- Jun 7
- 4 min read
By Dr. Jamika Bivens
One of my greatest struggles in leadership has been learning that strength and honesty are not opposites. For a long time, I believed being a strong leader meant always having the answer, always staying composed, and never letting people see the full weight I was carrying. I put tremendous pressure on myself to be capable, disciplined, and steady because I never wanted the people depending on me to feel uncertainty. On the outside, that often looked like confidence. Internally, it sometimes felt like exhaustion.
Part of that pressure came from who I am by nature. I have always been strong-willed, intelligent, and deeply motivated to do things well. I have always wanted to grow, achieve, and become better than I was the day before. But part of that pressure also came from what I experienced early in my career, when I learned firsthand how leadership can be used to uplift people or to diminish them.
One of the most defining moments in my leadership journey happened when I was 25 years old. At the time, I was working for a small business owner whose leadership style was rooted in brute force, intimidation, and unchecked power rather than humility, discipline, and grace. I was the youngest manager in company history, had risen through the ranks faster than anyone, and was the highest-producing leader across five stores. He could not slow my progress, so he seemed determined to do whatever he could to break my spirit. There was no HR department, no real buffer, and no accountability beyond him. It was the wild, wild west.
On Christmas Eve, I received a call from him about a large sale I had made. I was excited and wanted to see whether I could locate the inventory needed to have it delivered the same day. I had not made a mistake and had done my job well. He told me he would not oblige. I did not argue. I simply said okay, already knowing I would likely lose the sale.
When I did not react the way he expected, he began cursing and yelling at me over the phone. Even at 25, I knew that my standard for leadership was higher than that. I asked him not to use profanity when speaking to me, and he refused to stop. So I hung up the phone.
He drove to the store and fired me on the spot for doing so.
As painful and humiliating as that moment could have been, it clarified something in me that I have never forgotten. I knew then and there that I had dignity, and I had a standard that I would not compromise for anyone. I was the youngest person there, and the only Black woman. In that moment, I understood with painful clarity how power can be used to provoke, control, and diminish rather than lead.
Three days later, he asked me to come back to work. That was when I realized even more clearly that firing me had not been about performance. It was a power move. And I declined. I moved on.
What I did not realize then was how often I would encounter versions of that same experience throughout my career. As I continued to rise in leadership, I found myself dealing with people who underestimated me, felt threatened by my ambition, or were unsettled by my desire to do better, be better, and keep growing. That incident was not isolated to one man or one job. It became part of a larger pattern that forced me to wrestle with difficult questions about power, identity, and leadership.
There have been seasons in my leadership journey when I was giving so much of myself to developing others, solving problems, and keeping everything moving forward that I neglected my own need for rest, reflection, and support. I have had moments where I smiled in public, made the hard decisions, encouraged everyone else, and then sat alone carrying the weight of it all in silence. That is a difficult place for any leader to be, especially when people admire your strength but do not always make room for your humanity.
I have also had to confront the reality that high standards, while valuable, can become heavy when they are not balanced with grace. I care deeply about excellence. I care deeply about people. I care deeply about impact. But leadership has humbled me enough to show me that I cannot pour endlessly without being replenished, and I cannot expect myself to carry every burden without acknowledging when it is heavy.
In many ways, those experiences shaped the core of my commitment to understanding leadership at a deeper level. They are one of the main reasons I became so dedicated to studying the power of leadership and developing holistic leadership principles. I saw firsthand how damaging leadership can be when it is driven by ego, force, fear, and insecurity. I also saw how different a person’s career and life can be when leadership is rooted in service, emotional intelligence, integrity, and the sincere desire to uplift others.
What has changed me most is recognizing that vulnerability does not weaken leadership. It deepens it. Being honest about struggle has made me more compassionate, more self-aware, and more intentional about how I lead others. I did not want to become the kind of leader who used power to make people feel small. I wanted to become the kind of leader who used influence to make people feel seen, valued, developed, and strengthened. I did not want to lead from dominance, but rather lead as a servant to those I could uplift.
That conviction has stayed with me ever since.
I became committed to holistic leadership not because power impressed me, but because I survived what power looks like when it is empty of humanity.
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