The Context

Jo, a senior manager in an international insurance organisation has recently been promoted to a Director role and had noticed that their confidence was reducing in inverse proportion to their successful performance in the role.  This was obviously very disconcerting and causing anxiety and concerns about whether they could actually do the role to which they had been promoted.

The challenge

Whilst they had been receiving feedback that they were doing a great job, they still had the ‘inner critic’ issuing frequent messages about not being good enough and that one day they would be found out as an imposter.  This inner voice had been running the same script for many years and had increased in volume and frequency in recent months following the promotion to a senior leadership role.

The request through the coaching conversation was to help Jo understand whether to stay in the role or revert back to their previous position where they felt more confident and capable.

The coaching

This is a topic frequently raised within coaching conversations and the first step was to ask them to objectively review the information available from the various sources – repeated positive feedback about capable performance within  the role from their line manager, other senior leaders and internal customers against an inner voice that was, undoubtedly, archaic in its origin and messaging.

We then explored the fact that the human mind has an amazing ability to see what it is looking for and, that if we perceive that we are not good enough, we will tend to see evidence of this whilst ignoring and, for the most part, not even seeing positive evidence to the contrary.

This conversation helped to place things into context and to encourage a balanced perspective that enabled them to see that the feedback they were receiving about good performance was objective, insightful and accurate.  

I then suggested that they keep a journal each evening detailing where they have added value through the day, what positive feedback they had sought and received, and how they felt when they read the journal entry – as a way of providing clear and compelling evidence to counter the inner voice, and to reinforce a level of confidence in their capabilities.

The outcome

Jo kept the journal for 3 months and found that it to be a source of confidence about their capabilities and performance.  It enables a running record of positive feedback and showed that this overly clearly overwhelmed the inner voice in terms of volume, specificity and support for ongoing development.

Importantly when negative feedback was received Jo was able to recognise that this was very specific to certain circumstances and not a general affirmation of the inner voice – in this way they were able to not only rebalance their confidence, but also confidently accept developmental feedback and work on improving their performance without having their confidence derailed.

When we discussed how Jo felt at the end of the three months they reported being “confident, happy and focused on their role and value contribution.”

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