Confidence After a Setback: What Being (Almost) Fired Taught Me

Have you ever built more confidence after a setback than you ever built by playing it safe? Confidence after a setback doesn’t usually feel like confidence while it’s happening. It feels like the floor dropping out. It’s less about what just happened, and more about what you next that matters. I found that out the […]

Fight, Flight, or Freeze: What’s Your Stress Response at Work?

Does your stress response at work follow the same pattern every time something gets tense? Most of us have a default stress response at work — a pattern we fall into under pressure before we’ve had a chance to think it through. I recently watched three people respond to the exact same workplace conflict in […]

Good Leadership Starts With Confidence, Not Certainty

Leading with confidence has less to do with having the right answer than with how you handle the moment before you answer someone. Leading with confidence isn’t a personality trait, and it isn’t the same thing as always knowing what to do. It’s the ability to manage your own reaction first — so you’re actually […]

Have You Lost Confidence After a Mistake at Work?

Everyone makes mistakes, but not everyone loses confidence after a mistake at work. The difference is in how you handle the mistake. What you when you realize what went wrong is what actually gets remembered — it will either rebuild your confidence and other people’s trust in you, or damage both. I had a client […]

The Confidence to Stay Steady When Your Boss Isn’t

Have you ever had to deal with your boss’s stress at work, and wondered if you were the one who did something wrong? A client of mine called me one Monday to tell me about her weekend dealing with her boss’s stress at work. Her boss had phoned her late on Saturday night. He talked […]

Why Hiding Your Imperfections Lowers Your Confidence

Have you ever struggled with self-acceptance at work by hiding something about yourself because you were afraid it would cost you credibility? Confidence at work comes from self-acceptance at work. The ability to accept yourself fully — the good, the bad, and everything in between — is the source of your authenticity. When you try […]

Why Just Speaking Up Doesn’t Work (And What Actually Does)

Have you ever hesitated about speaking up at work, even when you knew exactly what to say? Christina hesitated about speaking up at work, and her hesitation haunted her for years. She was a nurse on a team caring for two premature twins, born at just 27 weeks. In a recent training, she’d learned that […]

Confidence Doesn’t Mean the Doubt Goes Away

Have you ever wrestled with confidence and self-doubt at work at the same time — and wondered if you could really have both? Holding confidence and self-doubt at work at the same time can push you to dig deeper and get more done. When a boss is too distant or too nice to give tough […]

Why You’re Redoing Your Team’s Work (It’s Not About Them)

Have you ever quietly fixed something a member of your team already turned in, instead of sending it back? Recently a client came to me second guessing herself and wondering if she was confident and delegating the right way. A teammate had turned in a quarterly report with a few real errors and some rough […]