Leading with Authenticity

Hello, everybody. Good morning. Happy Monday. I'm popping in just a minute early here so we can hang out for just a little bit here. My name is Jean Mitchells, and I'm excited to be here on this Monday. Hello, Stacy. How are you today? Nice to have you here. Well, hello. Speak, wonder. How are you? It's Monday. We're back. We're kick starting a week. There's always a start and an end. Mondays oftentimes are considered a start. I kind of think that I start to tune in on Sunday nights a little bit sometimes.

But today on Monday. Ooh, northwest Pennsylvania. Dialing in from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Here. I wanted to bring in. It's fascinating. It's professional development day. I love the blue hearts. And leading with authenticity is our topic, and that's, like, our focus point of this series. I might change that up in the next this fall, focus on a new target, but. Good morning, Jules. I am coming off of, like, literally just hung up with one of my coaching clients, and I wanted to bring this conversation into our conversation this morning because I think it's super relevant to each of us as individuals where we have to work with people.

Right. It's. It's a fact. It's the truth. We might work remotely. We might volunteer at an organization. We might have a part time job. We might have a full time job. But at the end of the day, even if we're a writer, we have an editor that we work with or a publisher or somebody. So no matter what, we are always in this circle of life and connection with people. And as I've mentioned in the past, I am a certified strength coach. I work a lot with the strengths vendor inventory. And in that world, based on 40 plus years of research, there's a one in 33 million chance that you and anyone else are going to have the same top five in the same order.

If you're familiar with the strings finder inventory, there's 34 themes. You get an order. You don't get a ranking, but you get an order. So you don't know how strong something is versus another theme. But I'm working with this one manager and a series of their direct reports, and we oftentimes will surround ourselves with people that are very similar to us or very opposite of us. And when I'm working with a team, I try to find people who maybe bridge the gap between both. Maybe they are very opposite of what some of my strengths are, because that helps when we're working as a team to lift up my weaknesses.

So my weaknesses might be somebody else's strengths. And that's really great because in a team, then we can really work together and find those pieces together. Now, when you're a leader, though, you're a manager of people or teams, and you hire people who maybe don't have the same strengths as yours, you can sometimes start to feel imposter syndrome. I don't know if any of you have felt imposter syndrome. I am actually going to read to you what imposter syndrome is as a definition. It's also known as an imposter phenomenon.

And it's a psychological experience of intellectual and professional and fraudulence. It is the subjective experience of perceived self doubts in one's abilities and accomplishments. Now, I wanted to say and read that specifically because I don't know any human that I've worked with that hasn't at some point in time felt like they are an imposter in their role. We get in our own minds that we start to tell ourselves stories that we should, should versus be, be, or we are. And we perceive that what somebody else needs is different than what we have to offer.

And we minimize the gifts that we offer as an individual human, a manager, a leader up here, because we see a spark in someone else that we don't have, and then all of a sudden we feel doubt. We feel inferior. Now, why I'm bringing that in is the coaching conversation that I just had was with the leader I've worked with in the past when they were at a different organization and they're smart, they are passionate, they are compassionate, and they always want the best for their team. And in today's call, it's the third in a series of nine that we're going to have.

She came in full of doubt. She applied to get into a program. She felt insecure that she told a couple of people on her team that she applied because what if she doesn't get into this program? What if they don't get in and now all of a sudden they failed and they told their team and now all of a sudden they're not a good leader because they didn't get into this one program that they applied to. And so the imposter syndrome, the thought spiral of self doubt in who they were or who they are as a leader, started to just unravel on our conversation today.

And quite honestly, I could relate, and I think we can all relate. And so in that conversation I shared that I also am going through a feeling right now of self doubt in my abilities and even the fact that I got tapped on the shoulder to do this experience that I'm not sure I'm qualified to do, but somebody tapped me on the shoulder, and they asked me to do it. And in those moments when we find ourselves in these spirals of self doubt, my ask of you is to take a pause. My ask of her was to take a pause.

And then my next question was, when in your life did you feel this much self doubt in your job? And she shared the story with me about a time when she was thinking farther ahead than what her leadership team was. She didn't have ownership over some work that she was contributing to, and she could see a path forward, but there was no way to get to that path because she hit roadblock after roadblock after roadblock. And so then I asked her, what about today's situation is causing that same self doubt?

And we had that dialogue because most often when we start to feel that spiral of doubt, that craziness of imposter syndrome, we've been here before, but what's really cool about that is we got through it because we are where we are right now today. So maybe in the past somebody coached you through the conversation. Maybe somewhere in the past somebody asked you a hard question or you learned a hard lesson. But regardless of what it was, self doubt, that imposter syndrome, that point in time where we're so passionate about what we're doing that we're now hitting a blind spot.

And that blind spot is causing us to spiral. And the best way to get through that spiral, in my experience, is to either find somebody who either knew us then and knows us now and share the story with them, because it can probably help remind us how we got through that the last time or start to write down our own set of questions. Questions such as, when was a time that I experienced this last? What was the scenario? What happened? Who supported me? What did I do to get through that scenario? How is today's scenario similar to the scenario before?

Because there's always going to be a commonality that's going to tip us into that spiral. It's not going to be the exact same trigger. Maybe, if you will, if you like that word, some people don't. So I use it cautiously. But we're all going to have something that's going to hit that tipping point, that's going to cause us to go into this place of doubt, this place where we might feel like we aren't enough. And here's the deal. You are where you are today because you are more than enough. And that might be hard to hear, but you are.

You are enough. You are more than enough. Right now, today, all the experiences of the past that you've had that have gotten you to this point here today, you're exactly where you're meant to be. Now, did we hit a number of forks in the road or plot twists along the way? Yes. Could we have chosen a different path? Yes. Does it change that we're where we're at here today? No. We are right here where we're at today. And that's perfect. So if you're having a day where you're in that thought spiral and you're in that space of self doubt, ask yourself the hard questions or give the questions to somebody that you trust and have them ask them of you and allow yourself to go through that experience.

So for me personally, I like to just sit down with paper. I love paper. I miss paper. I love a good paper. I love a good pen. I have stacks of notebooks that I buy at airports because I love them so much. I don't use them all sometimes. Then they're too precious. And I don't want to waste the paper. I want to get the good stuff in there. What's the good stuff? But take the questions, write them down. Write out your answers. Or take the questions, give them someone you trust, a mentor, a best friend, a spouse, a family member, a boss, and have them ask you the questions and be as honest as you feel.

Speak, wonder. I had a feeling you liked the paper because you're a writer. I would love to see your notebooks, too. But allow yourself the opportunity to ask the hard questions, because we will always feel self doubt, especially when we are passionate about what we're doing. The more passionate we are, the more excited about the work, the more tied to whatever it is that we're putting out there. Maybe it's our poetry. Maybe it's writing. Maybe it's public speaking. The more we feel that a part of us is being exposed to whatever it is that we're doing, the more self doubt we open up for, the more self doubt that can come into that door.

Maybe it's being that keynote speaker. And when you're done, instead of saying, yeah, I did that, you go into this spiral of, gosh, I could have done so much better. That is us doubting that what we just did was amazing or what we're about to do is going to be incredible. Will it be as good as insert whoever that icon, that idol is, that leader? Maybe. Maybe it'll be better. Maybe it won't be what we perceive the greatness of somebody else's speech or book is. But again, that's a perception. And we will all run from a place of doubt, especially when we care.

But we all have the opportunity to remember that we got through it. We grew, we learned, we expanded, and we stepped into the next version of ourselves stronger because of it. So when you look back, history is always available to us to help us move forward. So when we're leading with authenticity, sometimes that means we are going to feel like an imposter. Sometimes that means we're going to doubt our abilities. But with my client today, we walk through that whole series of questions today, and with this individual today, we came to the conclusion that to be the best boss, to be the best manager for her, it doesn't mean the same thing to every single person.

And that the action is to, once we're in our head, start to ask the questions. Because she started the conversation saying, I don't think I'm a good enough manager for my people on my team because I am not the strongest public speaker. And my question to her was, do you need to be a great public speaker to be a great manager? And her answer was no. So now she has some questions she needs to go get some answers to for herself. And she's going to have different conversations with her team to explore what they need, better or differently, so that she can move through her spiral.

So for all of you that are out there, I simply invite you and encourage you that when you hit that wall of self doubt, ask yourself when you felt that doubt before and what happened that enabled you to move through that. Because we've all been there, we will go through it again many more times in our life, but we all have the tools that we need to move through it. I hope you have an amazing day. Stay true to you and we'll talk to you soon.