Some of the most capable leaders question themselves the most. In this month's blog, I explore why experienced leaders can reach a point where they no longer believe in their own ability, the difference between looking confident and trusting yourself, and why confidence follows self-trust rather than the other way around.
Some of the most capable leaders I've worked with have also been the ones questioning themselves the most.
They're experienced, knowledgeable and respected by their colleagues. They're managing teams, making decisions, dealing with challenges and delivering results.
From the outside, everything suggests they're doing a good job.
Yet privately, they're questioning whether they're good enough, whether they're making the impact they should be making and whether they're still capable of doing the job they've spent years working towards.
I've seen this repeatedly throughout my career in HR and now in my work as a leadership coach. I've also experienced it myself.
What interests me is how someone can have years of evidence that they're capable yet reach a point where they no longer believe it. I think part of the answer lies in what we've come to believe confidence should look like, and what happens when the demands of leadership gradually pull us away from the leader we naturally are.
Think about the working day of a typical senior leader.
Their diary is full of meetings, they're supporting their team, responding to questions, solving problems and managing whatever the business throws at them.
The work that requires thinking, planning and making strategic decisions gets pushed further down the list. Often, it ends up being done in the evenings, once everyone else has finished for the day.
They work harder, take on more and keep delivering. Yet they increasingly feel they're not achieving what they should be.
I see this particularly with experienced leaders who have worked hard to establish their careers and now find themselves spending much of their time reacting to what's happening around them. They know they're capable of more, but they're struggling to find the time and energy to demonstrate it and over time, that gap between the leader they want to be and the way they're actually working can begin to affect their confidence.
This is when they start questioning themselves rather than questioning what's happening around them.
We tend to associate confidence with competence.
We notice the leader who speaks first in meetings, has an answer ready, makes decisions quickly and appears comfortable with uncertainty. Meanwhile, the leader who pauses to think, considers different perspectives or admits they don't know something can appear less confident.
Yet neither behaviour tells us very much about someone's actual capability.
A considered response may demonstrate good judgement, being willing to acknowledge what you don't know can be a strength, particularly when you're leading others. The difficulty comes when we compare what we see in other people with what we're experiencing inside ourselves.
We see their certainty but not their doubts. We hear their answers but not the internal conversations that came before them. Then we look at our own hesitation, our need to prepare or our uncertainty and interpret those feelings as evidence that we're somehow less capable.
This is where I believe a lot of traditional confidence advice falls short.
We tell people they need to be more confident, speak up more, believe in themselves and step outside their comfort zones and whilst there's nothing inherently wrong with those suggestions, they don't necessarily address why someone who was previously confident has started doubting themselves.
When I resigned from my senior HR role, I was exhausted and had lost so much confidence in myself that I genuinely questioned whether I knew how to do my job anymore.
This was despite having more than twenty years of experience and significant professional qualifications. I'd spent years adapting to what I believed was expected of me as a leader. I worked harder, took on more responsibility and increasingly looked outside myself for reassurance that I was doing a good job.
The more pressure I experienced, the less I trusted my own judgement.
At the time, I thought I needed to leave my career. Looking back, I can see that what needed to change wasn't necessarily my career, it was the way I'd come to lead and the expectations I'd placed on myself.
When I later stepped into another senior role, I approached things very differently.
There were responsibilities I'd never had before and situations I didn't have previous experience to draw on. In the past, that would have sent me into a panic. I'd have focused on everything I didn't know and questioned whether I was capable of doing the job. This time, I was able to recognise that I didn't need to know everything before I started. I trusted that I could learn, ask questions, draw on my experience and work things out as I went along.
I still experienced doubt, the difference was that I no longer treated it as evidence that I wasn't capable.
I'd started trusting myself again and that felt completely different.
This is an important distinction I explore in my forthcoming book, Exhausted, Not Broken.
There's a difference between looking confident and trusting yourself.
Performed confidence is when we concern ourselves with how others see us. We want people to believe we know what we're doing, approve of our decisions and recognise us as capable.
Self-trust is different.
It's knowing that you have experience and strengths to draw on, that you can make considered decisions without having every answer, and that you'll find a way to respond when things don't go as planned.
It doesn't mean you'll never experience uncertainty or make a mistake, but it means those experiences don't automatically cause you to question everything you know about yourself.
I see the difference in my coaching work.
One leader I worked with was spending so much of her time supporting her team that she had very little left for the strategic work she wanted to do. She believed being a good leader meant being available, having regular one-to-ones and being involved when people needed support. Through our work together, she began questioning some of those assumptions.
She reduced unnecessary meetings, delegated more, gave her team greater ownership and protected time for her own priorities. She began to make a greater strategic contribution, while her team had more opportunity to develop. She also found she could finish work and enjoy her evenings with her family.
What changed wasn't her underlying leadership capability, she was already a great and experienced leader, it was how she was using it and what she believed she needed to do to be a good leader.
She was creating opportunities to experience herself as the capable leader she already was.
When you've spent years second-guessing yourself, it's tempting to think you need to feel more confident before you can start making changes.
Perhaps you'll speak up in the next meeting when you feel more certain, delegate more when you know everything will be done correctly or apply for the next role when you feel completely ready.
But waiting to feel confident can keep you doing the very things that are maintaining your self-doubt.
Self-trust develops when we begin changing those patterns and recognise the evidence that we can handle what happens. That might mean contributing your perspective without rehearsing every possible response beforehand or allowing someone else to take responsibility rather than stepping in to make sure everything gets done your way.
Or it might mean protecting time for your strategic priorities, even when other people are asking for your attention.
These aren't necessarily easy changes, particularly when you've spent years working in a particular way. However, every time you do something differently and discover you're able to handle the outcome, you have another piece of evidence that you can trust yourself.
And over time, that evidence becomes something to use to build that trust that you are capable.
If you've started questioning your leadership capability, I'd encourage you to think about what's really happening underneath those feelings.
Then consider one thing you've been promising yourself you'll do differently. Perhaps it's speaking up, delegating, setting a boundary or making space to think.
What's stopping you from doing it, and what would happen if you trusted yourself enough to give it a go?
One of the things I've come to understand through my own experience and my work with leaders is that confidence can be gradually eroded without our capability disappearing.
We can become so focused on doing the job, meeting expectations and trying to get everything right that we lose sight of the experience, strengths and judgement we've spent years developing. Sometimes we become so busy trying to be the leader we think we should be that we stop recognising the leader we already are.
Rebuilding that belief starts with understanding what's caused you to stop trusting yourself, reconnecting with the evidence of your capability and learning to lead in a way that allows you to use it.
You may not have lost your ability to lead. You may have stopped trusting yourself to use it.
If you've recognised yourself in this article and you're tired of constantly questioning your capability, perhaps it's time to start doing something differently.
You don't have to work out how to rebuild that confidence on your own.
Book a free discovery call with me, and we can talk through what's been affecting your confidence, what you'd like to change and how coaching could help you get back to trusting yourself as a leader.
Join me on Tuesday 24 November for my free masterclass, The Confidence Myth, where we'll explore why experienced leaders start doubting themselves and how self-trust plays a part in rebuilding confidence.
You can also pre-register for my forthcoming book, Exhausted, Not Broken, where I explore why capable leaders start doubting themselves and introduce the six-phase NooWay® approach to rebuilding self-belief.
Join my free monthly masterclass series: twelve live sessions for experienced leaders who want to stop doubting themselves and trust their judgement again, with the replay if you can't make it live. Or pre-register for my book, Exhausted, Not Broken, publishing in January 2027.
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