219 Corporate Confessions Part 3: Crisis Meetings, Site Visitors, and The Agar Plate Moment That Ended My Imposter Syndrome

Do you ever doubt your abilities as a woman in senior leadership? Do you find yourself second-guessing yourself despite your experience, despite your achievements, and despite what everybody else says to you? If this sounds like you, or you struggle with imposter syndrome, you’re not alone. And in this week’s episode of the 360 Leadership Podcast, I’m going to be talking about a crisis meeting.

 

site visitors, a plane full of Americans that flew over from the US to Ireland and a surprising supply chain issue and agar plate moment that absolutely ended my imposter syndrome for life. The reason I want to share this with you today is because I think you’re really going to resonate with it and I can’t wait for you to hear this story and end your own imposter syndrome with me. So let’s get into it.

Lucy Gernon (01:44.044)

Hello, lovely lady, and welcome back to part three of my corporate confessions series, where I am sharing some of the most mortifying or transformational moments in my career. If you missed part one, it was all about my disastrous Robert Duckie story and a merc executive. And last week, part two, I was sharing all about a pink suit moment and a VP and how it is really going to help you to lead more authentically. So if you missed either of those episodes, I encourage you to go back and listen to them both. think

 

They’ll give you a bit of a laugh and they’ll also hopefully give you permission to unlock more of who you really are and own your potential to. Trust me, it is worth my cringe in service of you lovely ladies. So today’s confession is I am going to be sharing about the moment that I realized that I didn’t have imposter syndrome, the reason that I actually wasn’t an imposter and that I deserve my place at the table, because like many of you, I had this toxic trait of

 

ignoring my own genius of ignoring my strengths and only focusing, of course, on where I could improve or where I went wrong. And this story today, I think a lot of you will relate to it. involves a supply chain crisis, daily war room meetings, center of excellence visitors and me sitting alone at my desk in the evening time, going back to first principles while everyone else was panicking. So

 

Let me set the scene. Early enough in my career. I was in a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant, I’ve told you guys this before, and I genuinely believed that the only reason that I was hired to lead. So it was a sterility sterile manufacturing plant and I didn’t have any sterile manufacturing experience, but I had a master’s degree in biotechnology and I had worked in, you know.

 

in solid oil dose, which would be your tablets before. And I had worked in other manufacturing companies like Food and Beverage yet earlier. But despite all of that experience, I didn’t really think that I had what it took to work here. OK. And when I got the job, I was like, my God, I’m so lucky. can’t believe they chose me. Totally and utterly thinking that they were doing me a favor. And it wasn’t because I couldn’t do the job.

 

Lucy Gernon (04:06.316)

because I was absolutely killing it. If I do say so myself, my area was always in control. I was super collaborative. I got everything done. But because it was just natural to me, I just and it was easy and my metrics were always green. When a lot of other departments weren’t, I just thought, you know, it’s not that hard. Turns out it is because when I left, I believe they hired three managers. But anyway, we won’t get into that today.

 

So I…

 

was.

 

Ali, cut up his.

 

Lucy Gernon (04:58.574)

So I didn’t look like or act like what you would see a stereotypical professional leader. So, know, the type who are, you know, very reserved, very professional, very data driven and don’t really show that much personality. That’s I would have seen a lot of that. A lot of kind of people not really shown who they really were. Whereas I had done all the work. I’ve told you lots of stories before.

 

So I was progressively being more, you know, more authentic and more vulnerable as the years went on. I’ve been working on it for years. But while they were all like panicking and talking in a lot of these acronyms and terms I didn’t understand. And I remember being in finance meetings and, know, not understanding P &L and not understanding, you know, growth versus net profits and all these things. But I wanted to learn. And I remember actually the the finance leader

 

Afterwards, I called him aside and I said, listen, I don’t really understand finance. I don’t really I need to work on my business acumen. I need to understand this. you teach me? And he did. And he told me afterwards that I was the only one in the whole site of senior leaders who attended. Every leader on the site had to attend this training who asked for additional support. And he said, I know most of them don’t know this because we see it every month in finance. But anyway, so.

 

That was one thing I was like, OK, I’m willing to learn. Does that mean I’m posture? No. But moving on from that particular one is because I wasn’t smart enough, in my opinion, I kept comparing myself to the loudest voices of the ones that sounded the most smart. I didn’t have the language that some of them did. you know, just didn’t have it like I didn’t have the big words. I came from a small town in Ireland and.

 

I didn’t have that kind of exposure. So I thought because I don’t have the language or the big words or the grammar or the presence that I’m not a real leader. Right. So while I was doubting myself all the while, people used to come to me for advice, for support. And I just thought it was because I was relatable, did not think it was because of my knowledge or because of my track record. And then this crisis came that changed everything.

 

Lucy Gernon (07:19.95)

So anyone who’s in pharmaceuticals, med tech, or if you’re in anything to do with science, you’ll probably have heard of agar plates. Now, I was a microbiologist and I loved microbiology actually. And if you’re not in pharma, they’re basically agar plates are basically like, you know, you see them on CSI. They’re like petri dishes and inside they have some agar or agar, I think they call it in the US. Shout out to my US listeners. Let me know if I said that right or wrong. And

 

Basically, they they’re used to test if there’s an acceptable level of bacteria in food products, in water, beverages and in pharmaceutical products as well. And if you don’t pass the tests, they can’t release anything. Now, I worked in steroid manufacturing. So, you know, when you get like injections, you are basically bypassing your body’s entire immune system and you’re going straight into your bloodstream, which is highly risky.

 

And so that’s one of the controls that we put in place in the industry is to ensure that the product is sterile. do, you we use these plates to do some tests to make sure the products are safe. But anyway, long story short, there was a huge issue with the supplier and it was hitting, you know, multiple sites globally in multiple different companies. It was a supply chain nightmare for everyone back then in multiple countries and multiple companies.

 

and there was literally like billions of dollars of product at risk. So what ended up happening is like picture this, there was like a daily war room every day at 9 a.m. There was about 20 people in the room. I was looking around gone. Hmm. Okay, why is this person here and why is that person here? And next minute we had like, know, executives flying in from headquarters and everyone was in this full panic mode and there was consultants brought in and they were being

 

you know, charging like five K a day and all this kind of stuff. And I remember sitting there going, hang on a minute, like this is not in my own head. I was like going back to the science. I was like, this is not rocket science. Why is everyone making such a huge deal about this? Why are they bringing over all these people? Like, surely I can solve this. So there was like thousand actions on the board. Everybody was like, you know, trying to do their best.

 

Lucy Gernon (09:39.564)

but nobody could solve the problem about how we were going to release these batches because the batches that we had of these agar plates, we couldn’t stand over at the time. So while everyone was on their like second meeting of the day on day five, strategizing about strategizing, I decided, listen, we’re going around in circles here. I’m just going to go back to first principles and do something different. So I went to my desk and I have ADHD before I was diagnosed. I find it really hard to concentrate.

 

in case you don’t know that about me, but I can get into hyper focus. And when I do, I do my best work. So I got myself in the zone. I was like, right, you’re going to have to sit down, girl, and you’re going to have to get your highlighter. You’re going to have to get your pen and paper and you are going to have to get in the zone and you’re going to have to solve this thing because this was taking me away from my family. Right. This was actually affecting my team. The whole site was stressed. There was patients who are waiting for products that we couldn’t release. And I was like.

 

I cannot rely on these 20 people. Just go back to yourself. So I went back to science journals. I went back to scientific journals. I went back and I got the vendor documents. I went through all their validation reports myself. Everyone else had actions to do these. Like it was gone to supply chain. It was gone. I was like, no, I just I’ll do it myself. I left them off to it. I did all of this on my own time because while everybody was so busy managing the crisis, there was actually nobody solving the problem.

 

And they were given a timeline of like, you need to solve this within the next two weeks. I was like, hell no, I can’t do another two weeks of this. And they were treating the symptoms and I decided to go and really look at, OK, how can we solve this thing? So I was like a proper nerd. It took me about, I’d say, two or three hours of me just sitting there. it was late in the evening and I found a justification that I could use in terms of I’m not going to get into the

 

And for any scientist you want to geek out with moisture content and the agar plates were cracking. And I just knew intuitively that we could justify statistically why it was OK, because I could see the size of the cracks and yadda yadda yadda and all these kind of things. And essentially, I was able to come up with a method, a test method that was that we could validate myself. That wasn’t in any scientific journal, that wasn’t in any industry guidance. It wasn’t in any any of our company guidance.

 

Lucy Gernon (12:02.466)

And I came up with this strategy and I wrote a strategy document and I went to the, think she was like an executive director who was here to help us. She was amazing. Actually. I said, listen, I know you guys are working with your team in the center of excellence, but I really think that this can work. And I handed her my strategy and I went off and I just thought, this is so simple. It can’t be complex enough to be the solution. And long story short, she loved it.

 

We had the consultant review it and he was like, that’s totally scientifically sound. I could stand over it because I was the one who would have been justifying all of this as at the time I was, you know, would have been head of like microbiology and sterility assurance on the site. When it came to an audit, I would have been in for everything. So it would have been me justifying it. And all the while I was sitting there thinking that because I wasn’t smart enough, because my solution was so simple, it must have been stupid. But what I learned is that actually

 

Sometimes simple is best and sometimes because you may have expertise and a way of thinking that nobody else has. And because of that, you think that your idea isn’t good enough or you think that it’s not right because it’s not what they’re saying. But I invite you to flip the script for yourself. What if your idea is exactly what they need? What if you’re not an imposter? What if you are a leader?

 

And just because if you’re new in a role or you feel like an imposter or if you doubt your abilities or if you don’t see yourself how others do, I want to invite you to remind you to remind yourself that you have gifts and talents that only you have. You have got to this stage in your career because you are special, because you have what it takes. And the only thing that is stopping you from where you are now

 

to where you want to be, if you want to, you know, get a promotion, if you want to get more recognition, if you want to get that validation that you need to feel like, okay, I’m doing a good job. The only thing that’s stopping you is you. That’s it. Because while you’re so busy overthinking and second guessing yourself and thinking that your solution is so simple,

 

Lucy Gernon (14:30.606)

that it mustn’t be good enough. And meanwhile, your colleagues are spinning their plates over complicating things and you’re there with your simple solution that could actually move things forward or save the company money. You are doing yourself a disservice and you’re doing a company disservice. In fact, I had a client, her name is Lisa and she’s in 360 and she shared this publicly so I know I can share the story.

 

But we had a similar conversation about the fact that when you have an idea as a female leader and it’s so obvious to you that you may think that because nobody else has said it, it mustn’t be good idea. So Lisa felt this way and she could see an opportunity to save the company. I think it was two point eight million very quickly like that. And she didn’t want to share the idea because she thought it might be stupid. And obviously, you know, she worked with us. She learned.

 

influencing skills, she learned how to own her value, she increased her confidence and she shared this idea and her executives loved it. Not only that, because it was a strategic idea that was simple, they then sought her out for more input into strategic decisions. They wanted her involved in more things because she brought genius to the table that she couldn’t see.

 

You know, the loud guys like in my situation who assembled the war room and got the task force and had everyone fly in and had, you know, the site leadership team at the time were all like, you know, what’s going on? And then they’d come to me and go, is it OK? I’m like, it’s going to be fine. We just need to all work together and resolve this. We need to go back to first principles. You know, it’s it’s just about you owning your worth and remembering that you bring value to the table. So.

 

What I did then after that is I started my principle of creating an achievements archive. I’ve talked to you guys about this before where an achievements archive is where you start to look at all the things you’re delivering on and all the examples of your excellence. So what are the projects? What are the problems you’ve solved? What is consistently, what you consistently deliver on? That’s not a problem, right?

 

Lucy Gernon (16:41.814)

What are your metrics that are consistently green? Do not ignore those either, because like I said, for me, for years, my KPIs, my deliverables were always green. And you know who got the credit? The ones who are in the red and got back into the green, right? So it’s the same for you. Don’t ignore the things that you were doing well. Ask for positive feedback. Collect a book of evidence that you are.

 

of your achievements. And I promise you, you’ll soon start to see if you look at it in black and white, that you are absolutely not an imposter. You have so much to freaking give because when you see your own data, imposter syndrome becomes impossible and you don’t need more confidence. You just need to stop ignoring the evidence. And that’s exactly what I love to do with women in leadership. I love to support you to work on your mindset, to see your brilliance too.

 

shift your limiting beliefs, to get clear on your values, to get your value proposition together, to learn how to be emotionally intelligent, to build your executive presence. All of these things that are going to help you to really unlock your potential all without burning out or missing out on life. So if you’re like, OK, Lucy, this sounds like something I need. I am running a free masterclass, as you know already, which is just finished. And right now we are enrolling a very limited number of

 

new members into 360 Leaders Club and we will be starting on the first Tuesday in February. So there’s not a lot of time. And if you are thinking, OK, I really, really want to do this. I know that I need to work on my development. I am not going to continue into 2026 again, as I did before. I invite you to reach out to me. So all you’ve got to do is head over to 360 Leaders Club dot com and submit your application there to join the club. Or if you’ve got questions for the love of God.

 

You can see I’m real, I’m normal, I’m authentic. I am very approachable. So if you’ve any questions about it, just feel free to send me a DM on Instagram or in LinkedIn, or if you’re watching on YouTube, you can put a comment on YouTube, whatever works for you. Just just don’t be stuck because life is too short to dim your light. And you’re not an imposter. You are just growing and learning and doing your best. And nobody does what you do like you do it. So do not ever forget that.

 

Lucy Gernon (19:03.904)

So that is it for this week’s episode of the podcast. I hope my little agar plate story has given you some perspective about how sometimes the simple solutions are the best ones and how the things that come naturally to you may actually be the things that are going to explode your career. And when you work on yourself, when you develop yourself, so you unlock the next best version of you, so you become the best leader, the best mother, daughter.

 

sister, friend, wife, partner that you can be. That’s where true happiness lies. It lies with you developing you so you get more aligned with who you really are. Instead of looking for validation, start looking internally. And when you start to look internally and when you get the tools you need to influence externally without attachment to what they say or what they think, that is where the game ends.

 

will change for you. And so if you’re ready to lead with more confidence, if you’re ready to build your executive presence so that you can excel in your career all without burning out or missing out on life and you’re ready to invest in coaching and support, please feel free to head over to 360leadersclub.com. You’ll see all the information there. We will link it in the show notes too. Or if you’ve got questions, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram or on LinkedIn.

 

So that’s it for this week. Until next week, that concludes the end of our three part series. I hope you really, really enjoyed it. If you didn’t listen to the others, like I said, go back and listen. I think the rubber duck one was my favorite. And I will see you again next week for something fresh, something new. So until then be safe, be well, and I’ll talk to you then. Take care. Bye for now.