In this episode, Sarah dives into one of the biggest challenges leaders face: leadership confidence. Whether you’re leading a team, presenting to the board, or navigating new territory in your role, confidence wobbles are completely normal.

Sarah shares practical tools and mindset shifts to help you strengthen your inner confidence “core,” reframe limiting beliefs, and build an authentic leadership identity that inspires trust and impact.

Show Notes

[00:00:00] Welcome and Introduction

[00:02:00] The Pressure of Leadership

Leaders face constant expectations from all directions - team, boss, board, and clients. This pressure, coupled with people-pleasing tendencies or imposter feelings, can shake your confidence.

[00:04:30] Normalising the “Confidence Wobble”

Everyone, even the most confident leader, experiences self-doubt. Understand why these wobbles happen and why they’re a natural part of leadership growth.

[00:05:30] The Importance of Inner Work

Lasting leadership confidence starts within. Understand how it's comparable to building your physical core strength - once your inner foundation is strong, everything else becomes easier.

[00:06:30] What Is “Inner Work”?

Confidence grows when you understand your beliefs and stories about who you are as a leader. A client example of a Head of HR who discovered that being “too professional” was limiting her authenticity and connection at work.

[00:08:30] Understanding Limiting Beliefs

Many of our beliefs were shaped early in life or career. Understand how to spot them, why they persist, and how to reframe them to create new, empowering beliefs.

[00:09:30] Spotting Your Triggers

If something or someone keeps triggering you, it’s a clue to an underlying belief. Hear the story of a Head of Marketing who uncovered a belief about not being “sharp enough” and how awareness led to growth.

[00:11:00] Rewriting Your Leadership Narrative

Notice the stories you tell yourself - both positive and negative. Bringing these narratives into awareness allows you to rewrite them in a more confident, compassionate way.

[00:12:30] Sarah’s Own Experience

Sarah shares her personal journey of self-doubt as an HR Director and how doing her own inner work helped her lead with resilience and authenticity.

[00:13:00] The Leadership Brand Exercise

Through her Ambition Plan programme, Sarah helps clients explore their leadership brand - what they’re known for and what makes them unique. One client’s lightbulb moment revealed how her “challenging” style was actually her greatest strength.

[00:14:30] Owning Your Leadership Identity

Authenticity, self-awareness, and amplifying your unique strengths build trust and make you a more effective, confident leader.

[00:15:00] Practical Takeaways

• Notice when and why your confidence feels wobbly.
• Identify what’s triggering you and what belief might be behind it.
• Pay attention to your inner narrative — and consciously reshape it.
• Reflect on your leadership brand: what makes you unique?
• Recognise that a confidence dip might mean you’re growing as a leader.

[00:16:30] Closing Reflections

Confidence work takes courage, but you don’t have to do it alone. Sarah invites listeners to reach out for coaching support and explore her free resources.

Final Inspiration

“Remember, you’re capable of more than you know. Shine brightly. Lead boldly. And unlock the extraordinary potential within you. Be unstoppable.”

Useful Links

Sign up for Weekly Career Inspiration

Learn about Leadership & Advancement Coaching Programmes

Book a Free 121 Clarity Call

Join The Love What You Do Facebook Group

Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn

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If you found this episode of Unstuck & Unstoppable helpful, please do rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

If you're kind enough to leave a review, please do let Sarah know so she can say thank you. You can always reach her at: sarah@careertreecoaching.co.uk

Mentioned in this episode:

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Welcome to Unstuck and Unstoppable,

the podcast for ambitious female

2

leaders who want to create more impact,

income, and influence in their careers.

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feel connected to their passion

and purpose, but without

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selling out or burning out.

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I'm Sarah Archer, a leadership coach

and career strategist, helping women

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like you thrive in leadership roles

while staying true to your values.

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I'm the founder of CareerTree

Coaching and have over 15 years of

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coaching experience and significant HR

leadership experience to share with you.

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I know as a female leader it can

be hard to find time to focus

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on your career aspirations.

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The day job can be all consuming.

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Plus, no matter how senior you are,

there are always going to be times

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when you feel stuck, when you have

self doubt, or feel like an imposter.

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And that's where unstuck

and unstoppable comes in.

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Each week I'll be sharing practical

strategies, insightful interviews and

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inspiring stories to help you boost

your confidence, lead with purpose

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and achieve sustainable success.

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If you're ready to stop playing

small and unlock the incredible

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potential you have within you and feel

unstoppable, you're in the right place.

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Let's get started.

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Welcome to episode 52.

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I'm really glad you're here today with me.

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We are gonna be talking about how to boost

your leadership confidence today, and

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this is the second episode in my little

kind of mini series around confidence.

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So I really hope that you enjoy

it and obviously if you've

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got questions, do message me.

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I'm more than happy to answer them.

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Enjoy the session today.

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I wanted to talk about this because,

when you are a leader, there are huge

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expectations on you all of the time.

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There's expectations from your

team, from your boss, from the

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senior leadership team, the board

to have impact, to make decisions,

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to move things forward, to deliver.

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And, that can create a

huge amount of pressure.

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Plus the types of decisions you might be

making as a leader have a huge impact.

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Have impact on people, they have

impact on the business, they have

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impact on your team, and that can weigh

heavily and play on your confidence

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. Plus as a leader, you often have

to deal with lots of different

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situations and scenarios, which you

may never have dealt with before.

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You are constantly having to take

on things and take them on without

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maybe saying, I need help with

this, I need support with this.

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I haven't done this before.

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I'm not sure about, the

direction I need to take.

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And.

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Your frame of reference can be role models

of previous leaders you might have worked

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with, some of which you may have been

great, may have been really inspirational,

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and some which may have not been so great.

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That will play into your leadership

confidence as well in terms

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of, who you may have worked

alongside or for in the past.

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And all of this together can make

you question who you are as a

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leader, what your leadership style

is, how effective that style is.

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And it might make you think about how am

I gonna get the results I need to get?

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How do I motivate my team

to be high performing?

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And this altogether can make

your leadership confidence

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feel a bit wobbly at times.

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And that's.

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Completely understandable Wobbliness.

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Because you are having to step out

of your comfort zone on a regular

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basis to take on all these things

that you may not have done before.

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You might be finding that you are

second guessing your decisions.

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Maybe you are thinking, is this

the right thing that I'm doing?

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Am I leading in the right way?

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It might make you feel doubt

about the direction that you're

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embarking on with your team.

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It might.

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If you have people pleasing

tendencies, it might push those to

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the fore because it might feel like

you're trying to please your team.

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Please, your boss, please,

your clients, please the board.

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And again, that can play into

feeling a bit wobbly in terms

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of your leadership confidence.

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It might trigger imposter feelings.

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Who am I to be this leader?

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What do I know about this?

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How can I be the one who you know, makes

the decisions or takes that stance?

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And if you're surrounded by peers

who seem to be on the exterior, very

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confident, then that can exacerbate

your confidence wobbles as well.

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The first thing is to

notice that it's okay.

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We all experience these wobbles and

even those very confident colleagues who

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may look super confident may be having

those inner confidence wobbles as well.

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They might look at you and think you

look super confident and that you don't

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have those wobbles, we all have them.

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I work with lots and lots of female

leaders and all of them will have

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some sort of wobble going on now.

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What you don't want is for that

wobbliness, that confidence.

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Self-doubt.

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Shakiness to be an ongoing thing

because that can really take its toll.

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So if you're noticing your confidence is

wobbling it's important to think about

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the action you need to take to support

yourself and to boost your confidence.

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What I tend to notice with my clients is

that it's the inner work that we need to

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do that will give you the foundation for.

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Ongoing leadership confidence.

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If you do the inner work, then

you're gonna have this inner core of

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self-confidence, which will help you

navigate all of those decisions, the

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direction you're taking, the boundaries

you have to set the saying no around

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the kind of people pleasing that inner

self-confidence will support that.

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Because leadership, confidence, like

any kind of confidence, it's a muscle.

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You have to keep working it.

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It's not something that is just.

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Fixed.

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You have to keep giving yourself

that boost, which is a bit

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like that physical confidence.

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If you work out at the gym, working on

your inner core supports, all the other

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exercises, all the other activities

that you're going to undertake.

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By having that strong inner

core, it's the foundation.

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And it's the same with

your leadership confidence.

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. Doing that inner work means that

it will increase because you'll

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have that inner self-confidence.

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It will increase the trust people

have in you, people around you, your

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team, the board, the management team.

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Your clients, it will then give them that

confidence in you because they can see

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that inner core even when you're making

tough decisions that they don't like.

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So the question I'm sure is what does

that actually mean in terms of inner work?

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It starts essentially with our

beliefs that we hold about ourselves

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and the story that we tell ourselves

about who we are as a leader.

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If we don't work on this, then

it's harder for us to be authentic

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and that impacts the trust that

people have in us and around us.

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For example.

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I was working with a head of HR recently,

and when we started to unpack some

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of , the beliefs that she held around

herself what emerged was that she felt

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she had to be super professional all the

time, and that to reveal anything about

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her personal life was a vulnerability

and weakness, and therefore she really

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didn't bring any of her personal

self, her self outside work into work.

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what this meant is that she wasn't

bringing her whole self to work,

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and therefore people around her

found it hard to engage with

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her, hard to connect with her.

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It impacted her relationships,

the strength of her relationships,

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and it meant that for her team,

for her boss, for the stakeholders

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that she was working with.

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Their level of trust in her professionally

was good, but as a person, they

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couldn't find that connection with

her, and therefore it made them

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very hard to, hard for them to.

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I feel she was someone that they could

work alongside, and so she could see that

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it was becoming very limiting for her.

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What we did was we had to work on the

narrative that she was telling herself

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about bringing her whole self to work.

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And then once we'd worked on that

narrative, in that belief, she was then

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able to start to experiment with bringing

more of her personal life into work.

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And the impact was huge

when she started to do that.

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And that then reinforced, the belief work

that we did the reason obviously people

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find the inner work more challenging

is because it is hard to do because

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a lot of the beliefs we hold about

ourselves are unconscious beliefs.

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A lot of them were formed in childhood

or our early life or our early career.

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And what tends to happen with beliefs

is that there can be a result, maybe

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even of a kind of throwaway comment or

a bit of feedback that we've got, and we

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then believe that to be true about us.

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And what we do is we look for

evidence that supports that belief

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that we have about ourself and

therefore we discount the evidence

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that would disprove that belief.

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So we just build up all this kind of.

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Information, evidence about

ourselves that becomes ingrained

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and therefore it becomes more work

to unpack and change that belief.

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But the good news is you can

change those beliefs, you can

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reframe them, and you can start to.

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Embed a new belief about

yourself as a leader.

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, You definitely can work on that.

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And then once you do it, can

be really transformative.

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But because they're unconscious,

, there is a little bit hard to notice.

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And one way of noticing it is

noticing what you're triggered by.

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If you are noticing that certain

things are triggering you and you

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are having maybe quite a impactful or

overwhelming reaction to something that

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can then give you information about,

okay, why is that so important to me?

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Why is that triggering me?

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And underneath it, you

can begin to spot beliefs.

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I had another client.

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He was a head of marketing and , what

she noticed was that she was being

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challenged by a very confident

peer in the management team.

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Who was not really confident.

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She was very direct.

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This peer, she was a very fast decision

maker and my client had a huge reaction

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when she was being put on the spot by

this person around a particular decision

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or a direction that they were taking.

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And it triggered a belief for her when we

unpacked it that she wasn't good enough.

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She wasn't sharp enough, she

wasn't able to think on her feet.

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And so in a way it was helpful that

colleague had enabled my client

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to work out something was going on

because she had such an overwhelming

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reaction to being challenged

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. It made her want to think about

what was happening for her.

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And then what she could start to do

was unpack that belief and start to do

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the work around changing that belief.

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you could think about, am I being

triggered by something or some

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things at the moment, and get

curious about what they may be.

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Because they will be contributing to your

confidence, maybe taking a bit of a dip.

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Then what you can start to do as

well alongside that because they

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are interlinked, is to notice the

story that you might be telling

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yourself about what is happening.

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Because you can change the narrative

and we have narratives that are

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positive about what we do and narratives

that are negative about what we do.

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When something's gone really well,

we might notice that narrative we

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tell ourselves about a leader is

really, positive and up there and,

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we're really great at what we do.

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And then when something doesn't

go well or we're, having to deal

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with a lot of challenging things,

our narrative might change.

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It might be around, how we're not

good enough, or we're not dealing

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with things really well, or we don't

know enough, or, whatever it might be.

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So again, it's giving yourself

the space to notice what stories

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am I playing out to myself.

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A lot of this is unconscious, but it's

bringing it into our consciousness

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around this is not a helpful

narrative that I'm playing out here.

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I certainly experienced

all of this as well.

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But I've done a lot of inner work, when

I worked as an HR director, having to do

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a lot of things around, restructuring,

redundancies, things I hadn't

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necessarily done before or led before.

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I definitely experienced a lot

of the self-doubt and the beliefs

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about myself and the narrative,

I would tell myself about what

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was working, what wasn't working.

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But I did the inner work.

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I did the inner core work because

I knew I needed to in order to.

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Be resilient as a leader and inspire

confidence in the people around me.

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And you can do that work as well.

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One of the things that I've noticed

recently is I've been working with quite

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a few of my clients in my ambition plan

program, and in that we do some work

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around leadership brand and noticing what

our current leadership brand might be.

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So what are the maybe 10 things

we're known for at the moment?

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With one of my clients, this exercise

was transformative for her because what

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she started to notice is the things about

Headship brand that made her different

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to her peers and were real strengths

in the business that she hadn't been

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valuing and that she'd been telling

herself a story about , because it was

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different to her peers and because it

meant that she had to challenge them

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on certain things because that was her

strength and it linked her specialism.

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And she started to see by us shaping

her leadership brand, how important

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it was to the business and how it was

enabling her peers in the management

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team to be better at what they did

because she brought this strength.

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It was a light bulb moment for her around.

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What was actually unique to her and

a strength to her, and how she could

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change her narrative to actually support

this being something really valuable,

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rather than seeing it as a negative

because her peers found it challenging.

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Sometimes doing that reflective work

can be really helpful at helping

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you understand, , I might be finding

this difficult, but I'm finding it

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difficult because it's a strength

that I'm bringing and it's useful

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to the team and to the business.

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Our goal is for us to be authentic

and to recognize and amplify our

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strengths as a leader and get

comfortable with our vulnerabilities

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but be able to recognize and own and

reinforce our own leadership identity.

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Because what you bring will be unique and

it will be added value to what your peers

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in the leadership team might bring or your

team that you are actually working with.

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The takeaway I'm gonna suggest to

you today are a couple of takeaways.

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So one is to recognize what's going on.

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So is your confidence wobbly at the

moment because you're having to step out

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of your leadership zone a lot because

you're having to take on lots of new

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things that you haven't maybe done

before, and therefore thinking about what

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support you need to help you navigate

those comfort zones, because you can

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ask for support as a leader as well.

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The second thing would be to think about

what might be triggering you, if you are

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being triggered and what that might be

giving you in terms of information about

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some of your beliefs and whether you

want to start doing some belief work to.

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Change some of the unhelpful

beliefs that you might be holding

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about yourself as a leader.

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Similarly, thinking about what's

my awareness around my narrative?

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What do I tell myself that's

positive about myself as a leader?

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What do I tell myself that's

negative about myself as a leader?

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And maybe thinking about the leadership

brand exercise that could then reinforce

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the positive so you could amplify that

leadership narrative about what you

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bring that is unique and different.

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And to get curious about what's going on

around your leadership identity, because

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we always want to be growing as leaders.

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It's never gonna be static.

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And so if you're having a confidence

wobble, it might be that you're

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going through a growth phase in your

leadership identity as well, and

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being okay with that and , not beating

yourself up if you're feeling a little

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bit low in confidence at the moment.

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'cause obviously that's not helpful.

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Confidence work can be challenging.

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So if you felt that you wanted

some support around any of

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the areas I've mentioned today

then please do get in touch.

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I love doing confidence work.

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It's one of my specialisms, particularly

with female leaders helping you.

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Amplify your impact and, really own

your unique leadership identity.

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Thank you so much for listening

to this episode of the Unstuck

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and Unstoppable podcast.

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I have lots of free resources you

can access on my website, ww.career

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tree coaching.co

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uk, and I'll also put

links in the show notes.

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If you found this episode

helpful, then please subscribe

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so you don't miss the next one.

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And please do share it with a

friend and leave me a review

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and I will personally thank you.

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Remember, you're capable of more

than you know, shine brightly.

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Lead boldly and unlock the

extraordinary potential within you.

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Be unstoppable.