Your Confidence Is Hiding In Plain Sight

Congratulations! You are a part of history -- my inaugural newsletter. Writing has been a sneaky thing. I've fumbled around with the pressure to get it "right" rather than to just "write". One perspective is this dilly-dallying delayed the process. Another perspective is that it's all a part of the process.Learning is sneaky, too. We receive messages from all directions with mottos like "never make the same mistake twice" which, to me, is bologna. I've learned from a career in sales that repetition is not failure. Repetition is polishing, honing, mastering a craft. Some clients expect to discover a new perspective or framework, and then that's it! We're good. I'll just go do this now. But that's not quite how our growth unfolds. We experiment, maybe something works and something doesn't. We tinker. We have the courage to try again and again until we're who we want to be more of the time.

Themes in my practice include giving and receiving feedback, powerful storytelling, building consensus across diverse stakeholders, and self-care. What has surfaced from working with dozens of leaders across the globe, coaching and facilitating at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Berkeley Executive Ed, and in my private practice, is that people don't want to feel alone in their leadership challenges. And leadership can feel quite lonely.

So, know you're not alone! My hope is this newsletter lets us stay connected and stay tuned.

1. Blog Post

Your Confidence Is Hiding in Plain Sight

What are you talking about?

A common theme in my practice is leaders wanting more “executive presence.”

My interest piques whenever I hear that term because I generally have no idea what it means. At its worst executive presence is an opaque term used as a rationale for not promoting someone who has met the rest of the well-defined criteria.

The term is not useful if it is not defined. When I ask clients to translate it, they most often share some version of “I want to inspire confidence in others”. We soon arrive at the realization that what they actually want is to inspire confidence in themselves.

Where is this confidence? Where is it hiding? Is it under a rock? Is it in a sock? Is in a tree? Or at the bottom of the sea?

Confidence can be elusive, especially when we search for it outside of ourselves. No matter how many books we read or mentors we have, it can remain maddeningly out of reach.

Some resort to a Fake It ‘Til You Make It approach. I resist this perspective because the phrase suggests that we don’t have “It”. The pretending nature doesn’t match the deep desire for authentic self-expression I hear from so many I work with.

Time to let you in on a secret. You don’t have to fake it because you already have it. It’s just hiding in plain sight.

Experiment: Define Your Confidence

On a scale of 1-10, how confident do you feel in your role? 1=not at all; 10=super duper

Now think: when is your confidence at a 10? When do you feel most yourself? Some call it a state of flow or presence.

Some examples from clients include:

It’s me having pizza on a Friday night with my kids.
It’s me organizing a happy hour with my team last minute.
It’s me dancing salsa.
It’s me rock climbing.
It’s me filling out my family tree.

Really dive in here. No one's watching. Close your eyes if it helps. I'll share the science behind the exercise in a minute. Imagine you are there, where you feel most yourself. What do you see? Who is around you? What sounds do you hear? What smells are present? What kind of energy do you have? What do you believe when you're here? What impact do you have on others?

Let's give this version of you a name. I call this your Inner Leader.

Some examples from clients include:

Outdoor bliss
Curious-mode
Owning it
Running free
Zen-me

What happens to you right now as you connect to this moment? What happens to your breath? What happens to your body? What happens to your mind? What else shifts?

There it is. You’ve defined the confidence you seek. Not only that, you’ve recognized it in yourself and accessed it in this moment.

Confidence is relational, contextual. The situation matters. Our mindset can be powerfully affected by subtle cues. The music we hear in grocery stores can affect what products we buy. Merely smelling all purpose cleaner can inspire us to include more cleaning-related activities on our to-do list for the day and be less messy eaters.

I offer this exercise as one way to tap into the power of our senses and recognize how resourced we are. Engaging our senses to connect with the situation when we feel most ourselves and then naming it gives us a shortcut to visualize and embody that energy. The practice is to connect with this version of ourselves over and over, until it becomes more of who we are more of the time. We make hundreds of decisions a day. Each moment is a choice to bring more Inner Leader to the table.

2. Recommendation

The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo

"I want to meditate daily" is often followed by a BUT...I don't have time. I forget. Life gets in the way. etc. etc. Reading The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo as I enjoy my morning brew has been my most successful run at a daily meditation. After suffering from cancer, he seems to have gotten to the heart of what matters. His piercing lines give me a good chuckle, illuminating the absurdities we put ourselves through. I'm reminded that sometimes what I need in order to show up how I want to, is to slow down, take a breath, and remember the fallibility that connects us as humans. There are short meditative exercises offered each day, which I mostly don't do. The experience of reading his prose is meditative enough. Below is one of my favorites from February so far.

February 5

Beneath most headaches is a heartache

Often we find it easier to think our way around things rather than to feel our way through them: What can we do to pull ourselves out of a bad mood? What can we buy, remove, or repair that will reduce or solve a loved one’s anger or sadness?

In retrospect, I realize I have spent many hours problem-solving emotional facts I just needed to feel. I know now that many frequent labors to understand what went wrong, while somewhat useful, often were distractions from feeling the sadness and disappointment necessary to heal and move on.

It’s all very human. No one wants to feel pain, especially when you can’t quite point to a specific cut or wound. So it is with the heart. There’s nothing to show or stitch up, yet everything is affected.

The truth is that while analyzing and strategizing and preparing ourselves can occupy our minds, and may even help prevent us from being hurt the same way twice, there is no substitute for giving the wound air, which in the case of the heart means saying deeply, without aversion or self-pity, “Ouch.”

3. The Goings On

My Interview with The Starting Line

The Starting Line is a LinkedIn newsletter focused on the first-generation community. Felicia Hou, its editor, and I laughed about my initial resistance to sales. I essentially had to be dragged into the role by a persuasive manager who promised me sales would be the most intellectually challenging and dynamic role I could imagine. Spoiler alert: he was right. In Why selling yourself doesn't have to be selfish, we talk about how to embrace first-gen values while still asking for what we want and receiving due credit.

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