What studying abroad taught me about leadership
I’ve always had this dream of being fluent in Italian.
Not like “good enough to order pasta”… fluent, really and truly fluent.
The kind of fluency where your inner world speaks the language before your outer world prompts you to say one word.
And for a brief summer in college, I was.
My story
I studied abroad in Milan my senior year and something in my brain switched over — by the end, I wasn’t translating, I was actually thinking in Italian.
I’d jump into conversations, crack jokes, finish my teacher’s sentences.
I’d walk into a fitting room and answer the sales associate without a second thought.
My to-do lists were in Italian.
My automatic pilot became Italian.
Was it perfect? No, but I was fluent enough to feel the ease, the joy, the momentum. And I was surrounded with infinite opportunities to practice.
I had the kind of fluency where your knowledge and capacity to practice builds on itself, where practice unlocks ever more skill, and ever more confidence.
I put myself in a situation where I created a flywheel of momentum for myself.
And then, I came home.
Real life swept in, English filled the air again, and I stopped speaking the language I loved. I told myself, “I know it, I’ll get back to it, life is just so busy right now.”
You know how this story ends…
Maybe you even have one of your own.
Before I knew it, something I adored and was so proud of became more a part of my past than my future.
I stepped out of the flywheel, out of the conditions that supported my inevitable fluency, mastery, growth.
My lesson
What I learned is that no matter what you learn or intend, fluency (in a broader sense, mastery) dissolves in the absence of other voices (in the absence of continued application).
Said another way, if you don’t use it, you lose it.
Fast-forward to last week. I’ve been recruiting alums of our past longer programs (both six week courses and corporate programs) into our Alumni Inner Circle, our highest level, invite-only community. And something crazy happened…
One of our BRAVE alums shared almost THE EXACT SAME STORY… but about BRAVE®.
She told me:
“I learned it. I lived it. I used it everywhere — with my team, with my partner, with my friends. I was fluent. And back then you didn’t have a next step. You didn’t have a room for us to go deeper, apply it in more places, unlock more nuance. So I drifted. I still think of BRAVE®, but I don’t always ‘speak’ it anymore. And that was the most powerful version of myself I’ve ever been.”
She closed her reply with these words:
“Being fluent in BRAVE® was the best thing that ever happened to my relationships. I want that version of me back.”
Which is why I’m so excited to welcome her into our new Alumni Inner Circle!
We’re also welcoming our newest class of BRAVE leaders into our How to Talk to Humans Bootcamp that kicks off next week!
One group is expanding their mastery, the other is just beginning — what an honor to be there with them for the ride!
The vision
When I built BRAVE® and most recently our Alumni Inner Circle, I wasn’t trying to create a “training.” I was trying to create conditions — the kind where mastery (fluency) becomes inevitable.
The same way immersion made Italian effortless: constant reps, real stakes, and a room full of other voices speaking the same language.
That’s what this is designed to be.
Not another “to do”, not a space you have to “show up” for, but after learning BRAVE this is the group that meets every other week to continue applying, speaking, gaining ever more fluency in the language of high performance leadership.
This is the flywheel that creates compounding results, fluency, mastery and momentum.
This is when BRAVE becomes:
How you respond instead of react.
How you say the hard thing without making it harder.
How you stay connected and get results.
How you move through the world with more truth and less armor.
This is where BRAVE becomes who you are, your default setting. This is when fluency unlocks the ease of leadership.
So whether you do a BRAVE program this year or something else, keep an eye out for ways to build and expand your fluency. That period after learning the content is imperative to creating the momentum and ease you seek.
And if there’s anything I want for the ambitious, thoughtful, brilliant leaders I’ve worked with… it’s more ease.
Raising a glass to fulfilling your greatest goals with ever more ease in 2026.
And if you should have gotten an invite to our Inner Circle, but didn’t, let me know. We’d love to create greater results with more ease with you.
Yours bravely,
Elisabeth
