I was standing on a stage in San Diego watching something happen that I don’t think the panelists even realized they were doing.
Four women — executives in biotech, each with impressive credentials and plenty of reasons to stay safely on-script — were doing something different. They were listening to each other, building on what the person before them had said and sharing things that were true, even when true was uncomfortable. The room, which had started at a polite conference-morning buzz, went quiet. I looked out into the crowd, and they were all leaning in.
I’ve moderated panels before and most of them are perfectly fine. The speakers are prepared, the answers are thoughtful, but they’re rehearsed. And sometimes, it doesn’t feel like the panelists are listening to each other. Someone will say something, and if one of the panelists has a similar. It’s not an active conversation.
Executive Women in Biotech during BIO 2026 was different. It was less about the topic (though you all know I love a conversation about inspiration), it was a group of women that were willing to be vulnerable and authentic sharing their stories in a safe space, and as a result, it created the feeling of self-forgetfulness.
In Sparking Greatness, I write about self-forgetfulness as one of the conditions that makes inspiration possible. It’s that state where you’re so absorbed in something outside yourself that you stop tracking how you’re coming across. Most of us — especially in professional settings — are working pretty hard at managing that impression. We’re monitoring how we sound, whether we’re saying the right thing. When we’re that busy, we’re not actually present. When people are truly present, you can feel the difference in a room. Monday morning in San Diego, I could see it from the stage.
When real connection walks in a room, inspiration often follows right behind it.
I’ve seen it in many other types of rooms, too.
In one of my Vistage groups, a member said something out loud that most leaders keep locked up tight: he struggles with imposter syndrome. He said he sometimes sits at the head of the table wondering when someone’s going to figure out he doesn’t have it all figured out.
I asked the rest of the room to raise their hand if they’d ever felt the same way.
Every single hand went up.
Nothing I could have said that morning would have landed the way that moment did. One person’s honesty gave everyone else permission to exhale. People left differently than they arrived — lighter, more connected, more energized. That’s what inspiration actually looks like when it comes from connection rather than a stage. It doesn’t pump you up. It makes you feel less alone and more capable at the same time.
We tend to talk about inspiration as a solo pursuit — a quiet morning, a walk, a book that catches you off guard and those matter (and the practice of creating that spaciousness also matters.) And, some of the most powerful inspiration I’ve ever witnessed has come from being in a room where the community was generous enough, and real enough, that you forgot to protect yourself.
Connection is a natural habitat for inspiration.
Earlier this year I was part of a Day of Joy with Humble Design. Humble Design is an incredible non-profit that transforms houses into homes by taking empty apartments and fully furnishing them through donated furniture and goods. We hauled in furniture, made beds, hung pictures, and set the table.
At the end of the day, you get to see the family walk through the door and see their new house for the first time. You get to see kids run to their bedrooms and jump on their beds – and these are kids that have never had their own bed before.
I’m tearing up writing that, same as I did that day. There is such joy and such inspiration in being part of something that mattered, surrounded by people who were all feeling it at once. Nobody was thinking about themselves. We were just there, together, inside something bigger than any of us.
Leaders underestimate this. We pour into strategy, skills, and execution. We treat inspiration like a personal responsibility and something you only go looking for when you’re running low. But inspiration is contagious. It moves between people when the conditions are right whether it’s when someone is honest enough to say the hard thing, or when a room full of strangers decides, without planning to, to just be real with each other.
You can’t force that, but you can go first. You can get yourself into rooms where the conversation is good enough to pull you out of your own head.
That’s where the sparks are.