Noo Coaching

One of the most confusing things about losing confidence later in your career is the timing.

You have more experience than you did ten years ago. You've handled difficult situations, led teams, made decisions, recovered from mistakes and built a career that gives you plenty of evidence that you are capable.

So why can self-doubt creep in now?

Because experience doesn't make us immune to years of pressure. The more senior you become, the more time you've spent operating under pressure.

The more visible some decisions are and the consequences can feel greater. Organisational politics become more complex and you've probably spent years being the person who's expected to know, cope, respond and keep things moving.

Gradually, without really noticing, you can start second guessing yourself more.

• Was that the right decision?
• Did I say too much?
• Not enough?
• What did they mean by that comment?
• Should I check with someone else?

None of this means you've somehow become less capable with age or seniority. It may mean you've spent a long time operating under conditions that have taught you to question yourself more than you used to.

Instead of asking, "Why don't I feel confident anymore?" try asking, "What's happened that made my own judgement harder to trust?"

Then trust that evidence - just one small shift in your thinking can change how you're feeling so much.

Access the Leadership Compass in Bio to find out how.

Be more Oakley.

This has been my personal moto for years, it brings my mind back to what's important in life.

So today, on National Dog Day, I'm celebrating Oakley, my 12 year old Cocker Spaniel.

I could write a list of all the things he's taught me about life, but the thing that relates most to my career, and now my work is to be authenticly you.

No masking.

Not being afraid to show feelings.

Ask for what you need without embarrassment.

Be excited by learning new things rather than thinking you should know everything by now.

Know you need help with some things and don't ne afraid to ask for it.

Use your strengths, don't apologise for them.

Just be you.

# 🧡

We often treat confidence as though it's proof of how capable someone is.

When we feel confident, we assume we're doing well, so it's natural that the opposite is that when we feel uncertain, we start looking for what must be missing.

But confidence is a feeling which moves.

You can feel completely clear about a decision on Monday and question yourself after one tricky conversation on Tuesday.

You can feel confident in one meeting and uncertain in another.

None of that means your experience disappeared overnight. The problem begins when the feeling becomes the evidence.

➡️ "I feel unsure" quietly becomes "I'm not good enough."

➡️ "I found that meeting tough" becomes "Maybe I’m not ready for this role."

➡️ "I made a mistake" becomes "I can't do this"

This is one of the patterns I see in capable senior leaders who have been worn down over time.

Maybe instead of asking "How do I make myself feel more confident?"

We can change it instead to "What do I know about my capability?" and learning to trust that.

That takes you somewhere very different in how you feel about your capability.

Start with the Leadership Compass.

-trust

I asked a question to my network this week:

“How do you want to feel in your career as a leader?”

The answers were interesting because, underneath them, I could see two different needs.

“I need to see the value I create.”

And

“I need to experience evidence that other people see that value too.”

We need both.

We need to be able to recognise our own contribution. To know what we bring, the difference we make and the value we create.

But we're also human. We need a sense of belonging and connection. We need to feel that what we do matters to other people.

Feeling valued builds confidence and reinforces our sense of worth. It helps us feel connected to the people and organisation around us.

So, are you letting people know that their work is valued, or are you simply assuming they know?

Because it can be easy to take capable, experienced people for granted.

They're delivering, reliable, don't need much from you. So your attention naturally goes elsewhere.

But that doesn't mean they don't need to know that their contribution is seen.

We need to feel valued, respected, appreciated and heard by the organisations and people we work with.

And when that recognition is consistently missing, particularly alongside sustained pressure, changing expectations or having our judgement repeatedly questioned, it can become harder to hold onto our own sense of value.

Sometimes very simple acts of leadership can have a significant impact on how someone experiences their work.

Meet Jane, you don’t know her, but her story may sound familiar.

Jane is a senior leader whose confidence had fallen despite years of evidence that she was highly capable.

I explore what sat underneath that loss of confidence, how reconnecting with her achievements and strengths helped rebuild self-trust, and why redefining success became an important part of deciding what came next.

Read this real story on my website blog

www.noocoaching.co.uk/post/when-success-stops-feeling-like-success

I've created a new free resource for experienced leaders who are still performing, still trusted and still capable, but are increasingly second-guessing themselves and no longer feel quite like themselves at work.

It's called 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐬.

It starts with a possibility to explore - what if confidence is the symptom, rather than the root problem?

The guide helps you look at three things.

1️⃣ Your Leadership Compass - what you are currently using as "north" when you decide whether you're doing well, belong and can trust your judgement.

2️⃣ Your Leadership Armour - the high-performing behaviours that may once have protected and advanced you, but may now be costing more than they give back.

3️⃣ Your Evidence Filter - why one difficult meeting or ambiguous comment can emotionally outweigh years of evidence that you are capable.

There is no score and no diagnosis. It's simply a private reflection guide, with exercises you can work through in your own time, a 10% self-trust experiment and a one-page recalibration you can return to when you notice yourself proving, checking or over-functioning.

I created this because I believe you don't need another map for becoming a better leader, you are already great. Instead you may need to recalibrate the compass you are already using so that you believe your capability again.

Download The Leadership Compass here:
https://lnkd.in/e3QW3Znt

Or link in bio

Three things that a life as a competitive sports person taught me:

1. Consistency
2. Commitment
3. Believing in the process

And that is what I noticed in particular this week.

For a year and a half I've been building and nurturing my coaching business.

It's been tough as well as enjoyable, and despite not having an abundance of new clients knocking at my door, I've kept going, kept showing up and kept on helping others.

Three new enquiries came in this week and in general I'm noticing more approaches, more referrals and more people knowing what I do, more often.

I've also been plugging away with writing my book, a little each day and so excited I'm a third of the way through the first draft, just over 30,000 words, at the end of this week.

Also 15 weeks into my training plan, I ran six miles this morning and didn't feel like I was going to collapse half way through.

So, whatever you're trying to achieve, keep going, believe in yourself and eventually you will get to where you are going.

Feeling overwhelmed with everything you need to achieve at work?

You're not alone.

Many senior leaders raise this at some point in their coaching sessions with me.

• Too much to do.
• Feeling overwhelmed.
• Wanting to improve their time management.

But often, it's not simply the number of tasks or a lack of time that's driving those feelings. It's the balance of what the work is, where it's coming from and, importantly, what's not actually theirs to own.

In Optimise Your Energy, part of the NooWay®, we explore what's draining your energy and what's enabling it.

And very often, that means letting go of things my clients have said yes to when they probably shouldn't have.

Sometimes that's driven by not wanting to let others down, a fear of saying no or difficulty setting boundaries.

Sometimes it's holding onto tasks their team could be doing because they enjoy them, they're good at them and, if we're honest, they provide a little dopamine hit of feeling useful and valuable.

But every time we say yes to something, we're making a choice about where our time and energy go.

So, as we come to the end of the week, take a look at your to-do list and ask yourself:

• What are you doing that's helping someone else achieve their goals, but was never yours to do?

• What are you doing that you could delegate?

• What are you doing that's actually moving you towards your goals?

And if you let go of some of the things that don't need to be yours, what would your to-do list look like next week?

Let me know below how you manage your workload?

My brain this week:

"It will be too busy. We’ll get turned away."

"It’s too hot. It’s too far..."

We’re in Mallorca and tonight we have the chance to experience the total solar eclipse.

And yet, all week, my brain has been busy coming up with reasons why we shouldn’t go.

I realised it had gone into protection mode. If I focused on everything that could go wrong, perhaps I could protect myself from the disappointment of really wanting to see it and then missing out.

So I caught myself and did something I often ask my clients to do in coaching.

I changed the question.

Instead of “What if we don’t get in?” or “What if it’s too busy?”

I asked:

“What if we do see it and it’s amazing?”

Nothing about the situation changed. But my response to it did.

Suddenly, I felt hopeful, excited and wanted to go, rather than finding reasons not to.

Sometimes our brains are so busy trying to protect us from what might go wrong that we forget to leave room for what might go right.

What could you reframe today?