Sabine Lehner - Turnaround Practice

Half of what happens in a coaching session with me isn't talking at all.

Part one is a conscious conversation: wide awake, fully aware. What are your goals, what's been getting in the way.

Part two is subconscious work. You close your eyes, listen to my voice, and tell me which pictures you're seeing in your mind. You're always in control, and can stop at any time.

That's where the pattern running on autopilot starts to loosen its grip. You leave able to catch it when it triggers, and shift to how you want to respond.

One conversation, two parts. You start to see yourself clearly, and walk away feeling lighter.

That's what a session with me actually looks like.

Follow for more on choosing your response instead of running on autopilot.

She walked into the room and nobody questioned whether she belonged.

She'd already decided she was staying. That was enough.

Here's the gap I see most often in my work with leaders across government and corporate Australia.

Confidence gets performed. The straight back, the steady voice, the answer delivered before anyone else speaks up.

Performed confidence is exhausting to hold, and it cracks the moment the pressure rises.

Built confidence is quieter. It's the leader who knows the answer, says it once, and doesn't replay it for three days afterwards.

The women I work with are already capable. Strong track records. The doubt crept in anyway.

And the feedback they've heard is almost always the same. You know your stuff. You need to back yourself more.

Knowing and doing sit very far apart.

So confidence doesn't arrive as a feeling you wait for. You practise it as a decision, one room at a time.

You speak before you feel ready. You let the answer stand without softening it. You stop reviewing yourself once the meeting ends.

That's how it gets built. Practised, quietly, until it holds under pressure.

Follow me for more on how female leaders build confidence that lasts.

She walked out differently than she walked in.

Same person. Same week ahead. But something underneath had let go.

For a long time she'd been managing it.

The second-guessing before she spoke. The replaying afterwards. The quiet effort of holding herself steady in rooms where she already knew the answer.

That's the part most people don't see. The confidence problem isn't loud. It runs underneath, on autopilot, beneath the thinking mind.

And you can manage a pattern like that for years.

What changed for her wasn't willpower. She didn't try harder or push through.

The pattern that had been running simply stopped running.

That's the moment I keep seeing in this work. Not a pep talk that fades by Monday. The thing underneath finally releasing, so there's nothing left to manage.

She still had a big week. She just wasn't carrying it the same way.

Follow me for more on what actually shifts when the confidence work lands.

Every leadership coach will tell you awareness is the first step. I've spent years watching highly aware leaders repeat the exact same patterns anyway.

The leaders who come to me can describe their self-doubt with precision.

They know when it started. They know which meetings trigger it. They know the story they tell themselves at 2am before an important presentation.

And they still freeze. Still shrink in the room where it matters most.

Because awareness without pattern change just means you watch yourself struggle in higher definition.

Most coaching operates at the conscious level. You learn strategies to manage self-doubt when it shows up. Useful, until you realise you're managing the same inner battle at 45 that you were managing at 35.

The pattern is not stored in the part of the brain that reads leadership books. It's stored deeper, in the subconscious responses that fire before your rational mind gets a word in. That's the level it needs to be updated at.

This is why I pair executive coaching with hypnotherapy. Coaching sharpens the strategy. Hypnotherapy changes what's driving the reaction underneath it.

If you've done the work, read the books, hired the coach, and still feel like you're managing the same version of yourself, the gap isn't in your effort. It's in where the intervention is aimed.

Follow me for more on getting out of your head and into action.