Anna came to me because she felt stuck in a loop of lack of confidence. Not only was she scared of making presentations, she found herself being less and less confident in formal meetings and had realised recently that she was even speaking up less in informal social gatherings. It seemed to her that her lack of confidence was growing and really starting to impact many aspects of her life.
This is not unusual. If we develop a lack of confidence in one area and don’t address it, it can spread and generalise. This results in our ‘confident world’ shrinking more and more.
Anna had in fact made a classic mistake many of us make when first realising she was scared: she focused so much on the problem she made it worse. We all do this: by saying “I’m scared of presentations” she found other people around her agreed with her, said they were too – and before you knew it they had spent hours talking about how scary presentations were – making things worse than they were at the start.
First, we did a Confidence Map. Here it is:
What do you notice about it?
The main issues are about feeling inadequate, being seen as a fool or as stupid.
Further discussion revealed that Anna had developed a case of “imposter syndrome” – she believed she had achieved her current quite senior position through luck rather than skill, and now was thinking it was only a matter of time before she was “found out”. This happens to a lot of us who work our way up in a company and gain promotions through experience. As newer people come in with different experiences and/or formal qualifications we feel they are more qualified than us.
One of the keys to this was that her nerves were worse when her Manager was in the audience. In reality, your Manager should be your biggest supporter, and has as much invested in your success as you do. Seeing your Manager in the audience is a great boost for most people, it’s like having a safety net, one person 100% on your team. This was not how Anna was feeling.
Once Anna realised this, she felt a huge sense of relief. Now instead of having an “irrational fear that was growing out of control” she had a name for what was bothering her – and we could work on it.
Anna worked through the IDEAS process next, and identified three key action steps to take. First, she decided to do a formal Project Management qualification. This was not just for the validation it would give her, but also to ensure she was up to date with the latest technology and thinking in the field. Second, she planned a meeting with her Manager to talk openly and honestly about how she was feeling, and her plans for moving forward. In fact, when she had this meeting her Manager was totally surprised by her feelings, impressed by her planning and 100% supportive of her proposals. Thirdly, she decided to follow up on her coaching with becoming a Confidence Coach herself! Having seen the value it gave her, she wanted to be able to help others in her situation.