What the Karate Kid taught me in mastering the Bully, the Shadow and becoming a Sensei Leader

How to Stop Carrying Your Professional Bully Scars and Become a Badass Passion Champion

What you do in life and work won’t be remembered as “things”, “launches” and “projects”. It’s the memory you leave and the people you inspire

I’ve been watching re-runs of ‘COBRA KAI’. My twins, who are 12, recently watched the first 3 Karate Kid movies with me, and then we moved on to Cobra Kai. All we watched were 30 minute episodes of how to conquer BULLIES.

And it hit home. Because I carry the scar tissue from battles of truly sucky bully managers and so-called mentors.

They crushed my spirit. They left me with a shadow I carry into new roles, even when I’m a badass boss (the shadow lurks,… telling me, “you’re not good enough, Gilli”).

Felt that? Yeah, I bet.

Well fuck you, bully.

That lingering Shadow I carry…, the anxiety that whispers in my ear, “Don’t trust it,” even when the new boss is smiling, is the baggage I haul into every new role. It’s the constant, exhausting hyper-awareness, waiting for the moment the other shoe drops and the “Champion turns Bully Snake”. That’s because when you’ve been burned, it leaves an indelible ink…. more like a stain.

That feeling, that gut-punch of professional PTSD, is the price we pay for working under the Underminers of the world. It’s this PTSD “Shadow” I carry into every new role, even when I’m the leader of my group. But here’s the deal: as entrepreneurs, creatives, and leaders, we have to recognize that scar tissue, not just to heal it, but to Master the Shadow and learn from it. We have to conquer it, and create our own “Miyagi-Do” in our psyche.

Let me explain what Underminers and Champions are and how you can overcome and master your shadow to become a truly creative passion leader in life and career.

📍 But first, helloooo friend. Thank you for participating in theCrea8ve. As my platform dedicated to inspiring and coaching entrepreneurs, creatives, and professionals to blend artistry with entrepreneurship and turn passion into purpose, here at theCrea8ve we’re constantly talking about transformation, and for this one, transformation of the self - Dojo-style. This post is particularly directed towards the entrepreneur in all of us, but especially leaders and leaders-in-waiting —the one who’s had sucky guides and managers (what we call Underminers) and amazing role models who gave us wind in our sails (called Champions). Read on!

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Why I Need to Write This Today - ichi (いち), ni (に), san (さん)

The things you launch will decay. The projects you ship will be replaced. The true measure of a professional life is not the checklist of things you completed, but the memory you leave in the people you inspire.

My journey, from the Australian bush, via a career in entertainment that felt like a lifetime, to a new life in the C-suite of tech and media giants, taught me this unbreakable truth: the most powerful currency isn’t the projects, launches, and big things you build or do, it’s the memory you leave in the people you inspire, whether you lead, manage, or influence.

As entrepreneurs and creatives, we are constantly conversing with collaborators, managers, mentors, teams, and partners, and ultimately, ourselves. You won’t remember every project you completed, but I guarantee,

You’ll remember the manager or mentor who shaped you, the one who cheered you on, and the one who tried to hold you back.

We all have those two archetypes burned into our story, and understanding them is crucial, because you get to choose which legacy you leave behind. Meaning, how YOU show up going forward is paramount.

Are you going to be the Bully or the Sensei? The Underminer or the Champion?

Let’s see.

1. The Champion: Who Lifts You Up

You never forget the manager or mentor who saw your potential before you did. This is the Champion, and they are everything good for “Passion Leadership” (yes this is something i’ve coined).

Passion Leadership is the profound, purposeful drive to lead others, not by control, but by igniting their potential.

The Champion doesn’t see their role as just management; they see it as human development. This person, whether they were your corporate boss, your artist manager, or your first investor, believed in you fiercely, often handing you projects or opportunities that felt just outside your comfort zone. They did this not to test you for failure, but to give you the space to grow into the challenge. They’re the ones who treat their power as a source of light, not a gate to guard.

They are your Sensei Miyagi.

How the Champion Changes Your Trajectory:

• They Cheer You On: They celebrate your wins publicly, but they also celebrate your grit and resilience when things get messy. They become your personal PR firm, whether that means advocating for your promotion or securing that critical festival spot.

• They Champion Your Best Parts: They pinpoint your unique strengths, your natural creativity, your knack for team motivation, your ability to run with heart, and they actively push you toward opportunities that use those exact qualities. They don’t try to fit you into a generic slot; they help you amplify your authentic self.

They help you amplify your authentic self.

• They Build Confidence: They don’t just delegate; they trust YOU. That trust is a profound gift that builds an unshakeable confidence, preparing you to lead your own teams or manage your own career someday.

The Champion isn’t afraid of your rise—they actively engineer it. They know that their success is intrinsically linked to yours.

The Champion knows you are not there to serve them.

They are there to serve you.

This perspective is everything.

2. The Underminer: Who creates the Shadow of Insecurity

Now, let’s talk about the other figure you can never erase: the Underminer.

Look, this manager or mentor isn’t necessarily a bad person; they’re just trapped by their own stuff

Their fear, their envy, their deep-seated insecurity, it’s pervasive to them and they like to spoil your bliss, like a wet rag. It’s that personal ‘stuff’ that becomes the fog clouding their leadership vision. They see talent as a limited commodity, and if you shine too brightly, they worry it means less light for them. They are your Sensei Kreese. (Cobra Kai fans, you’ll know this person).

Do you know anyone that makes you feel depleted, ‘less-than’, or undermines your capabilities? Welcome to the Underminer.

This dynamic isn’t limited to business (manager-direct report relationship). I saw it early in my entertainment career when a manager, caught in their own insecurity, would micromanage my creative output as an artist, crushing my artistic vision, and essentially try to filter my authentic self out of my own music. Their job was to free me to create, but their fear caused them to try to control the art itself. I’ve seen it in my Corporate career, where my boss micromanaged my work output, crushing my inability to lead, and essentially undermined my own intuitions until I felt gaslighted and insecure.

My boss micromanaged my work output, crushing my inability to lead, and essentially undermined my own intuitions until I felt gaslighted and insecure.

So what’s really going on in this situation?

• 🥅 It’s Subtle: Undermining rarely looks like a shouting match. It’s often quiet micromanagement, constantly moving the goalposts, withholding crucial context, or, the most damaging move, taking credit for your success while leaving you to clean up the messes.

• ✋🏼 The Fear of Being Surpassed: The Underminer is terrified you might surpass them. So, they keep you out of high-visibility meetings, they downplay your achievements in front of senior leaders, and they quietly prune any growth opportunities that might make you too independent.

• 🧠 The Cost is High: The impact on you is devastating. You stop focusing on the company’s mission or your artistic growth and start focusing on managing your boss’s feelings, which is a sure path to burnout and professional frustration. Worst still, you could lose your job or opportunity, and it WASN’T EVEN YOUR FAULT.

My Experience: Living in my own Shadow

This Shadow I talk about: the deep anxiety of waiting for the betrayal, was created by the actual battles and a type of Karate tournament in the backstreets. which I faced rising in my career. I don’t talk much about this because in the professional world, it’s almost like you’re not supposed to admit you carry this kind of burden. But I do carry it. I take that intense, inward guarding of my spirit into every new position I start, even when I’m supposed to be the boss. (And let’s be real: all bosses have a boss above them.)

As a female leader in some very high-powered rooms across the Googles, Yahoos, Paramounts, PayPals, Disneys and some literally crazily moving Startups, plus a lifelong career of entertainment managers and producers kicking my creative vision as a young artist, my self-led determination to put my passion, talent and hard-work out there has been a cost on my psyche.

Sometimes I don’t even know how to move to the next opportunity when I’ve had some hard-ass antagonists, like Sensei Kreese, literally squeezing my self-esteem into a dark box.

I was definitely that young starlet in Hollywood with A&R managers and my own personal manager telling me that I won’t make it because I was too whatever. That’s where the armor started to build.

When I transitioned to Technology, I was definitely the only woman in a male oriented C-suite meeting or the one person having done the hard-prep for a Board meeting - only to see the Underminer managers and mentors take the glory.

I recall a pivotal moment at one Startup. I was a VP of Program Management. That feels pretty boss-like, right? I had an absolutely amazing Champion boss (CTO) at the time, who simply trusted my judgment and let me “do me.” That felt Miyagi-like. But when he left (or, eh hem, pushed out), the replacement CTO stepped in and instantly went full patronizing, arrogant, and condescending Kreese like. He was a real ‘pill’. My job hadn’t changed, but the dynamic shifted violently. I am pretty sure my talent and experience threatened him, and his solution was simple: he chose to move me aside. It was a calculated, career-stalling decision rooted entirely in what I believe was his own fear of me being a f’ing rockstar as I already had proven. And unfortunately, the all-male C-Suite just sided with him, and the time came to give me an HR pep talk and send me on my way, so he could just hire another male mignon that he brought on from his past job. The signs of nepatism were clear. My HR rep was too young and unorganized (Start up!) to even see it herself. And I paid the price. So did my shadow-self. She nagged me for years telling me “Gilli, maybe you chose the wrong industry”.

The most jarring undermining came from an unexpected place: a female boss at a large tech company.

She had no idea how to do what I did, and her insecurity about her own lack of domain knowledge caused her to undermine my efforts at every single turn. It was quiet sabotage: withholding context, moving goalposts, and making me feel gaslit and insecure. There was simply no place for me in her world. I felt like a creative entrepreneur trapped in a corporate box, crushed under her fear.

Here’s the raw, powerful truth I learned from all of it: The Underminer’s Shadow isn’t exclusive to one gender. It’s the direct, ugly consequence of personal fear and deep-seated insecurity, regardless of who is wearing the leadership title. And until we acknowledge our own Shadow, the anxiety and the constant sense of danger these people gifted us, we can’t choose a different path for the people we lead. We have to stop letting their painful history define our abundant future.

On the flip side,

I’ve worked with truly great Champions who let me run my organization with heart and trusted my ability to deliver. So much so, I’ve had the opportunity to manage 170 people to their greatness in a role at a large Media company. They understood that their power wasn’t a zero-sum game; it was a boundless resource and we championed, he championed, and I then championed a high-performing team to launch one of the best products I’ve ever been a part of: Paramount+. Thanks Sensei Miyagi :-)

I know my future leadership - hopefully being a Champion - is just beginning. But I still carry the “oh, you’re not good enough” shadow every time I try on a new role and I have to really keep that at bay. I have to continue to think about how I can be a Sensei, guiding others and continuing to be human-centric.

When I remember the impression I can give, that in my control, I can uplift my team and the people around me and that is the legacy I want to leave, and the indelible ink I want to mark.

The Silent Sabotage: Understanding Gaslighting

Those experiences I’ve had, the negative ones, had their fair share of being Gaslit.

It’s not just a feeling; it’s a specific, insidious form of psychological manipulation and emotional abuse that often creates the Underminer’s lasting Shadow on your career.

Gaslighting is when someone, like any other victim, is made to question her perceptions, memory, or sanity. In the workplace, or in a manager-individual dynamic - this is a tactic of bullying used to undermine your credibility, authority, and confidence.

Specific Tactics of Gaslighting Against Women

This behavior is amplified for women leaders due to existing gender biases and power dynamics. There’s a lot of studies to prove it. Gaslighting is especially subtle when aimed at women in leadership because the perpetrator can easily exploit existing gender biases to make their tactics more effective.

The Underminer might:

• Undermine your authority publicly: The gaslighter questions your decisions or performance in front of others. When you challenge them, they dismiss it as “just a joke” or a misunderstanding, making you look humorless or overly sensitive.

• Rewrite history to their advantage: They flatly deny having said or agreed to something, even if you have proof. A gaslighting colleague might say, “I never got that email,” when you know you sent it. This forces you to doubt your reality.

• Trivialize your feelings and concerns: They dismiss your valid concerns as “overreacting” or “being too sensitive.” This weaponizes gender stereotypes to delegitimize your valid emotional responses to a genuinely difficult situation.

• Isolate you from vital information: They exclude you from important meetings or email chains, and then later criticize you for being “out of the loop.” This is designed to set you up for failure and make you feel incompetent.

• Minimize your accomplishments: A gaslighter finds fault with your work no matter how well you perform, using manipulative praise or criticism. This constantly wears down your confidence and makes you question your core competence.

The effects of this psychological abuse are deeply damaging:

• Eroded Self-Confidence: Constant manipulation makes you question your decision-making abilities, even on issues where you have deep expertise.

• Strained Relationships: The gaslighter may spread rumors or turn others against you, leading to isolation and damaging your professional network.

• Internalization and Self-Blame: Over time, you begin to internalize the gaslighter’s narrative, believing you are, in fact, “too sensitive” or “crazy,” causing you to apologize unnecessarily and doubt your own sanity.

Your Choice: Champion or Underminer?

The ultimate lesson is this: You get to choose which ‘Sensei’ you become in your life and your career, whether you are a baddass solo-preneur in creativity or business, or a company leader with a bunch of reports, or somewhere inbetween.

To lead with integrity, you need a proactive plan. Are you a Sensei or are you going to be sucked into the vortex of a bully?

Continue reading and get my blueprint: Mastering the Shadow: 10 Action Steps for Passion Leaders.

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