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Mon 7/20 — The executive who thought she had a confidence problem (she didn't)

A senior healthcare executive came to me certain she had a confidence problem. She had just stepped into a bigger role and felt, in her words, like she was second-guessing everything. She wanted to be more decisive, more commanding, more like the leader she thought the job required. The more we talked, the clearer it became that confidence was not the issue. She was decisive. She was deeply competent. What had happened was that her last few years had been spent in a quietly destabilizing environment, and her authority had been worn down without her noticing. She was not lacking something. She was carrying the residue of something. That distinction changed the entire shape of the work. We were not building confidence from scratch. We were restoring authority that had been there all along and had been slowly eroded. A lot of capable leaders get handed the wrong diagnosis, usually by themselves. They are told to be more confident when the real work is recovering what a hard environment took. If you have been trying to fix your confidence and it will not move, it may be worth asking whether confidence was ever the actual problem.