Episode 224 Transcript:

0:00:00 Ramona Shaw: Welcome to this episode of The Manager Track podcast. We’re going to talk about the confidence paradox, why capable people doubt themselves.

0:00:09 Ramona Shaw: Here’s the how do you successfully transition into your first official leadership role? Build the confidence and competence to lead your team successfully and establish yourself as a respected and trusted leader across the organization? That’s the question, and this show provides the answers. Welcome to The Manager Track podcast. I’m your host, Ramona Shaw. And I’m automation to create workplaces where work is not seen as a source of stress and dread, but as a source of contribution, connection and fulfillment.

0:00:37 Ramona Shaw: And this transition starts with developing a new generation of leaders who know how to lead so everyone wins and grows. In this show, you learn how to think, communicate, and act as the confident and competent leader you know you can be.

0:00:52 Ramona Shaw: Hey there, glad that you tune into The Manage Track podcast. You can either, for those of you who don’t know, watch us on YouTube or obviously download the episode on any of the podcast apps. Now, today I’m going to talk about the confidence paradox. This is something that I talk about in my book, the confident and competent new manager when we step into a new leadership role, or by the way, even up the ladder. So stepping from a director role, into a vp role, or into an executive role, or just doubling the team or whatever that may be, where you’re increasing the scope of your responsibilities.

0:01:28 Ramona Shaw: Some of us step into these kind of situations with a lot of confidence. We think we got this. We’ve done similar things or other challenging things in the past, and we can do this as well. We’re going to learn on the go, and it’s not going to be that big of a deal. We’ll figure this out, and some other people will look at such situations with a lot more self doubt and concern of whether or not they’re going to be good at it.

0:01:57 Ramona Shaw: And what I find, and we’re going to talk about this here, is that those who go into such challenging situation with a healthy degree of doubt are actually preparing themselves better to be successful. From my personal experience stepping into a leadership role for the first time and being overly confident, I thought this is not going to be such a challenging task. I felt like I got along with my team members, my peers.

0:02:23 Ramona Shaw: I thought they were doing a great job in their respective roles. And so me moving into the leadership role and now sort of directing or leading the team wouldn’t be that hard. And I quickly learned that that’s not the case. But if I had had some more doubt in me, healthy doubt, I would have probably invested more time figuring out what are some of the blind spots that I might have, what are some of the challenges that I need to prepare for, and I’ve been better equipped to handle those.

0:02:52 Ramona Shaw: But what we’re talking about here today is the confidence paradox that sort of guides many of us throughout our careers, where we are fairly capable or very capable, and yet we still have this internal dialogue of self doubt. I want to talk about where this comes from, what the internal and external factors are that fuel this kind of inner dialogue, these doubts. Then we’ll talk about how this impacts leaders, including you, in your day to day behaviors, and then we’ll talk about how to manage it so that you’re using the doubts in order to increase awareness and be better prepared, but you’re not letting it overtake you where it’s going to reduce your effectiveness as a leader.

0:03:41 Ramona Shaw: I want to share a quick story here as we dive in. A former client of mine, who is a very high performing senior leader, that client was telling me in one of our sessions how earlier that week they got an email from the CEO asking for an impromptu meeting, and it was kind of a crypt of invitation. And my client shared that the first thought that came to their mind was, oh, my gosh, I’m going to get fired.

0:04:11 Ramona Shaw: And nothing leading up to that moment would have been any indication of them being fired. They never had a serious performance review or feedback conversation that would have indicated that maybe their job is at stake. There were no conversations around layoffs or restructuring. There was nothing, no big issue that was currently happening that would have been a cause to let someone go. So they were performing well.

0:04:40 Ramona Shaw: Most of the projects were going according to plan, and they were executing successfully. And yet that first instinct was, oh, crap, I’m going to get fired. And this is a perfect example of the confidence paradox. Very capable people having this intense self doubt pop up. So let’s talk about what some of the psychological factors are that lead to this. If you can relate to this story or otherwise, where you notice you have doubts despite not really have any evidence, I invite you to think about these psychological factors and look at what here might apply to you.

0:05:19 Ramona Shaw: After that, I’m going to talk about some external factors which are also relevant. So just write this down or have a bit of an internal checklist that you start creating as I talk about this. First of all, self doubt is correlated to imposter syndrome. The imposter syndrome is this feeling that we’re kind of an imposter, a fraud. We don’t belong, they’re going to find out that I’m not really capable, that I don’t really know what I’m talking about, that I kind of don’t belong, that I don’t know as much as others do, that I’m not as well equipped as they may think, and so forth.

0:05:51 Ramona Shaw: So that, again, are a lot of self doubts that pop up very closely correlated to what we’re talking about here. So if you find yourself thinking that you don’t belong or that you are sort of that imposter, or that you’re going to be found out, and that luck was the reason why you got into the position that you’re in versus your effort and your skills, then mark that down. Another one is the desire for perfectionism, sort of wanting to have things be done perfectly.

0:06:23 Ramona Shaw: Most often it’s attached to some internal fear or insecurity of what happens if it isn’t perfect. What would that less than perfect result say about me? And here’s where the insecurity comes up. For some other people, it’s a fear of failure. So failing, the worry of what failing would mean to them, their identity, their reputation, then leads to a lot of doubts where we. We just don’t want to get ourselves in a situation where we might fail.

0:06:55 Ramona Shaw: So we start to question and doubt ourselves. And a lot of things around us. Sometimes it’s a fear of embarrassment. Some of us have had experiences in the past, often in our early childhood, where we might have been embarrassed. And in our minds we sort of had this imprinted stamp that when we kind of had a stamp that got imprinted of don’t ever let yourself be disembarrassed again. And we start to create strategies in order to not embarrass ourselves anymore.

0:07:27 Ramona Shaw: And so again, the doubts are becoming a mechanism to ensure we’re not embarrassing ourselves, to ensure we’re not failing. It’s like a tool, a strategy to achieve that result. The not failing, the not being embarrassed. It can also be internalized criticism. Maybe you’ve heard someone say something mean about you or just something really harsh about you, from a parent, from a teacher, from a peer, or from a superior.

0:07:55 Ramona Shaw: And those things that get imprinted, they can lead us to start to question ourselves. And by the way, when we’re in relationships at work, often in a. With a boss that gives, has sort of the mandate to give us feedback, and they start to overly criticize us or to micromanage us. And we start to feel like we doubt ourselves way more than we used to that confidence that we’ll figure things out, that will make it work, that we’re good, that starts to erode and disappear.

0:08:25 Ramona Shaw: And instead we already have the voice from our boss in our ears constantly questioning us and our abilities. These experiences start to, even if it’s just a number of small things, but they start to add up and accumulate, and over time, we start to feel a whole lot of self doubt internally. So these are psychological factors that can lead to this confidence paradox, where highly capable people start to doubt themselves quite a bit.

0:08:52 Ramona Shaw: External factors that can lead to the confidence paradox are work environments or work cultures. Sometimes it’s just the way that the culture is that we don’t feel like we belong or we don’t understand or we don’t have the same values. That then leads to us questioning ourselves a lot more. It could be ineffective feedback. So again, the feedback is being personalized versus staying task focused. It could also be a lack of recognition.

0:09:22 Ramona Shaw: And that sometimes happens, especially for highly capable people, where their manager may think, hey, I have this high performer on my team. They’re doing a great job. The cool thing about that is, one, they know that they’re a high performer, so they assume, and two, I don’t have to deal with them. They’re kind of just running their own show and everything is great and everyone loves them. Wonderful.

0:09:46 Ramona Shaw: So now I can, as a manager, spend my time working on the people where things aren’t going so well. That manager who thinks this way, and it’s fairly common, by the way, and seems to also make sense of it when you hear it. But there’s two flaws in this. They make the assumption that the high performers knows that they’re a high performer. Flaw one flaw. Two, they think that they’re going to run their own show over here, and the manager’s attention should be with the low performers.

0:10:13 Ramona Shaw: That’s backwards. It should be the other way around, where as a manager, you focus the majority of your time on the high performers, the people that you want to retain and grow and develop. And a smaller part of your time and energy should be directed towards the lower performers on your team. You still want to obviously grow and develop them and in an onboarding phase. Or when someone is on a performance improvement plan, that whole equation doesn’t pan out the same way, but overall, on average, more time at your high performance.

0:10:45 Ramona Shaw: But now let’s go back into the mind of this high performer. They may not think that they’re performing so well, but now they’re not getting any recognition or not even much feedback, and that can start to lead to self doubt because they see the manager spends more time with other people on the team and seems to kind of ignore you or, yeah, you don’t even know if you’re doing a good job or not. And then another one is being in an environment or a team where there’s a lot of competition and a lot of comparison going on.

0:11:16 Ramona Shaw: Women, by the way, just by the way, women’s brains are wired, stereotypically speaking here, tend to compare more than men. And so when you notice that you’re comparing yourself to others, to recognize that as a pattern and something to look into, yes, partially ingrained in women, more so than in men, but that doesn’t mean that we have to accept it as such or that we can’t influence the degree to which we compare ourselves to others.

0:11:44 Ramona Shaw: So these are the internal psychological factors as well as the external factors to keep in mind. And now I hope you’re keeping track of what am I saying here that resonates with you, where you can relate to this. Like, yeah, I definitely felt this way before, or, yes, I can see how this shows up for me or has influenced me in the past, and maybe the reasons for some of these doubts to exist or even the degree of self doubt to be growing over time.

0:12:13 Ramona Shaw: Now, the way that I see this impact leaders is, on one hand, when we doubt ourselves too much, we tend to overanalyze situations before making a decision. So this, I don’t want to make a wrong decision. Hence, let me think about it some more. Let me talk to even more people, let me get more opinions before I can make a decision. And that is going to influence your decisiveness, which is part of executive presence, but also, just generally speaking, makes you less effective as a leader.

0:12:46 Ramona Shaw: Another one is not taking risks. As a leader, you have to get more comfortable taking risks, calculated risk, but taking risks. And instead of looking at did all those things and all those decisions where I took a risk, did they pan out? Well, you want to really focus on did I do a good job in the decision making process? Did I have the rigor to decide when to look at, but also when to stop with my decision making process and just make a decision and stick with it, we will all fail and we will all make a lot of decisions that go nowhere.

0:13:23 Ramona Shaw: I recently read the statistics about, if you look at Apple, for example, how many products that they launched that they discontinued, Amazon, how many initiatives and products and brands that they launched, they cancelled. That is all part of growing as a business it’s growing. As individuals, we do make mistakes and we will have setbacks and failures, and trying to avoid those will prevent you from really living up to your fullest potential.

0:13:53 Ramona Shaw: Another one that I see is sort of trying to follow someone else’s pattern, and often specifically for new managers. This is trying to step into the footsteps of either your boss or whoever was there before and trying to imitate their leadership, even if that doesn’t feel good to you. And when we do so, or when we read a book and we think like, oh, this is the way to lead, because this famous person said, that’s what we should be doing.

0:14:22 Ramona Shaw: And internally we feel a bit of a dissonance of like, but it kind of doesn’t feel right to me. But we don’t listen to that and instead try to follow this guru’s best practice or our boss’s leadership style. The internal friction and dissonance will fuel self. So it’s really important for you to recognize you have your own leadership style. There’s no one else like you. And all the best practices that you’re learning and reading, you have to take them.

0:14:52 Ramona Shaw: Or like the analogy I previously mentioned here, you have to form it and assess what are you going to use and how are you going to use it for yourself. So take the block of clay, spend some time at it to make it something that’s useful to you, and then apply it. But when we skip that process, it starts to not feel good. This internal dissonance, again, that’s a source of doubts. Another one is that we might start to micromanage in order to control as much as we can.

0:15:22 Ramona Shaw: We may also not delegate enough in order to control as much as possible. When we fear failure or embarrassment and we realize as leaders, I’m going to have to be the face of this all. I’m going to have to be the one who’s presenting, or I’m going to have to be the one who takes the blame. At the end of the day, I really fear that I might just control too much and get myself inserted into projects or meetings and tasks that I shouldn’t feels disempowering to those around me.

0:15:56 Ramona Shaw: Another one could be avoiding responsibility. This could be like, oh, I don’t want to be part of this task or this solution or problem. It may be not to put your name in the hat for an upcoming leadership role or a promotion opportunity and wanting to stay safe in your comfort zone and not really reaching up, but also reaching sideways to see how else could you add value to the organization is another signal. And again, none of these are.

0:16:26 Ramona Shaw: It’s not a black or white. I’m just giving you signals that would be worthwhile investigating. Or when you see those behaviors in yourself or in others, it could be like, it could be a result of self doubts that they have and carry with them. And one other point I want to make here is when a manager or leader starts to doubt a lot and they ask a lot of questions in order to, like, satisfy these doubts internally, it can have a ripple effect on other team members as well.

0:17:00 Ramona Shaw: When I know my boss is doubtful and wants to know everything before they make a decision, now suddenly I start to feel uncomfortable with a lack of information or incomplete information, and now I feel like I need to know everything. The ripple effect can actually be quite debilitating for teams. Okay, let’s talk about the fun part. We looked at all these different ways, where it’s coming from, how it shows up. Now let’s talk about what we can do.

0:17:33 Ramona Shaw: Have you checked out our masterclass on how to succeed as a first time manager yet? This is a 40 minutes free session that will help you better understand how you as a first time manager can set high standards without coming across as being pushy or bossy. How to make sure that you’re not failing your team, but you’re really clear on what your role is and you’re living up to it. How do not avoid confrontations or sugarcoat your feedback, but be caring and be direct, as well as how to get yourself out of the weeds and really lean into the leadership position and into the leadership tasks that only you can do. So you’ll perform better at the end of the day, and youre team will be empowered and will deliver greater results as well.

0:18:16 Ramona Shaw: Those are just a few of the topics that we’ll address in this free masterclass. If you haven’t registered yet, head on over to arkoba.org masterclass and we’ll see you there. So first is identify the moments when you have self doubt. Like, when does this tend to happen? I wouldn’t even do anything beyond that. Just pay attention for a couple of weeks. When do you feel most doubtful? What are those moments? Write it down and that’s it.

0:18:42 Ramona Shaw: And then as a second step, start to listen to the internal dialogue. What is coming up when you doubt yourself? What are those sentences running through your head that create the feeling of self doubt? It is our thoughts that create our feelings. So we want to. When we feel the doubts, we want to understand what’s going on up here in our heads. So write down the internal dialogue, and then we can do a couple things. We can fact check and sort of make sure or try to identify. Is there any evidence for what I’m thinking? Is this really true?

0:19:15 Ramona Shaw: That’s one way we can also reframe those thoughts. Recognizing this is just my head spinning in doubts. But a better way to look at this situation or a more useful and effective way for me to go about this situation is to think something different, something that will make me feel more confident. What is it that you could think that would make you feel more confident in any of those situations? So that’s the most direct approach to tackle those moments of self doubt.

0:19:46 Ramona Shaw: Now, a little bit more generically speaking, you can also look at and recognize your wins. Spend some time to write down what are you proud of? What have you accomplished? What moments did you show up as your best self? Recognize those wins. I promise it will help you change that internal image a bit. Another one is to focus on learning, including in setbacks. If you ask yourself after a setback or a failure, if this was always meant to be this way, if it was meant to go wrong, then what is the reason for it? What am I supposed to be learning here that would justify this having been the plan?

0:20:26 Ramona Shaw: Like, I look at some of my setbacks and I think, if it was meant to go wrong, that was the whole plan from the beginning. Why would that be the plan? What is the lesson I need to learn that would justify for this to go wrong? And those kind of like thought experiments here can really help to reframe the situation. When you get feedback from others, and that is a source of self doubt, remember that feedback that other people give to you is a demonstration that they care.

0:20:55 Ramona Shaw: They did not care about you. They would have stopped giving you feedback. That kind of thinking makes it easier to not take it personal, what they’re saying and to internalize it as self doubt, but to really go at it with a growth mindset and think they care, and this is about helping me. So how can I be as much interested in helping myself as they seem to be? One thing that I really want to call out in this episode is that if you have self doubts and you notice how the self doubts are actually impacting the way that you show up, you don’t have to tolerate that.

0:21:30 Ramona Shaw: I see too many people who just accept the fact that they’re doubtful and they think that’s part of life or just part of who they are, and there’s nothing that they can do about it. That is not true. We all can work on our own brain, our ways of thinking, and then the way that we feel. It’s about uncovering the dialogue and continuously reframing. This is like training a muscle in the gym. No one would say you can’t grow a biceps.

0:21:59 Ramona Shaw: It would be like, that’s not true. We all know, you know, some more than others, but we all could grow our biceps. So if you notice that you’re not going for job assignments or responsibilities, you’re not asking for a promotion, you’re not leading with confidence, and you’re not getting that sense of respect from your team and from others, or you’re just doubting yourself, or it turns into a self fulfilling prophecy. You’re not actually showing up as your best.

0:22:27 Ramona Shaw: Know that this could be addressed. And I hope that either through this episode and you doing your own work, or you joining one of our leadership development programs or signing up for coaching is a solution to address this and start to manage it so it’s no longer holding you back. Know that you’re not alone in this. 80% of people say that at some point in their lives they have felt like an imposter.

0:22:51 Ramona Shaw: That is a whole lot of people. And yes, at some point in their life it’s pretty vague. But know that even very competent, capable people continuously doubt themselves. Imposter syndrome. And if you google all the successful people who admit that they have imposter syndrome, it’s mind blowing. And it is exactly going back to the fact that when you know more, you also become more aware. This is a Dunning Kruger effect.

0:23:17 Ramona Shaw: The Dunning Kruger effect says that people who have high levels of competence, they are more doubtful because they have more knowledge than people who have a low level of competence. Me, as a new manager, low level of competence. I didn’t doubt myself now. And as a leadership coach, I see all the pitfalls. I know all the challenges and the hardship that go along with leading a team. And I’m very aware of it. And I question myself and doubt myself more than I did when I had very low competence.

0:23:52 Ramona Shaw: So that dynamic is, on one hand, hopefully validating to you knowing that, okay, I’m competent and I doubt myself. And that is somewhat normal. At the same time, the goal here is to appreciate what you know and your awareness while using your doubts to learn and to continue to grow without it reducing your effectiveness. That is the goal. And again, if you want help with this, please reach out. Check out the links in the show notes to schedule a strategy call for us to talk about what that process would look like for you so you have a clear picture of how you can grow as a leader and reduce your self doubt.

0:24:32 Ramona Shaw: I hope this sparked some interesting thoughts for you and was a way to self reflect. Thank you for tuning in, and we’ll be back next week with another episode of The Manager Track podcast. Bye for now.0:24:42 Ramona Shaw:  If you enjoyed this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help you become a leader people love to work with. This includes my best selling book, the confident and competent new manager, which you can find on Amazon or@ramonashaw.com book and a free training on how to successfully lead as a new manager. You can check it out@ramonashaw.com masterclass these resources and a couple more you’ll find in the show notes down below.