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In my debut episode, I’m diving into a big barrier I see amongst leaders: waiting until we feel “ready” to step into new opportunities. Drawing from both personal stories and experiences from my clients, my hope is to encourage you to take that first step, act on your ambitions, and trust that the readiness will come.
Transcript:
This episode is about readiness. And what I mean by that is that we and I'm talking leaders, I'm talking women, men, everyone.
We have this real tendency to wait until we are ready or to wait until we are experienced before we try something new. An example of that is that I have wanted to start a podcast for years, literally years. I am using this fancy pants microphone that I bought maybe two years ago, almost two years ago. Have I ever used it?
No, in fact I couldn't even figure out how to plug it in to start doing this episode now that I'm ready to do this podcast. We wait until we are until we have experience in something before we will do that something which doesn't make sense.
This came to me when I was working, I had a couple of clients in the same week share something so similar that resonated so much with me and really prompted me to just get out of my own way and do this. So one of them is a team leader and her manager was leaving and there was this opportunity for her to become the manager of the broader team. She said to me "if it was in six months time, I think I'd be ready, I think I would do it because when I look at the list of requirements for that role, when I look at the position description, I haven't done those things before and so I'm not qualified, I'm not ready."
Not surprisingly, my response was, "why would you have done those things before if you haven't actually done that role yet?"
So that was a few weeks ago, when I spoke with her last, and she said that the new person has moved into the manager role and now I know and I see who got that role, I'm kicking myself that I didn't go for it. I am actually more experienced than them and I've had multiple people ask me why I didn't go for it because they feel that I would be perfect for the role. But she didn't have the confidence and she "wasn't ready." In the same week, I had another wonderful client who had been promoted into an executive role. So something that she had been actively working towards was really excited about, really wanted. And the focus of our leadership coaching conversation was, I'm not confident.
And when we really drilled down with "Why aren't you confident? What's stopping you from feeling as though you're ready to take on this role? The rest of the executive team have looked at you and tapped you on the shoulder and said, "Hey, you're ready. We want to put you into this role." And she said, "Well, I'm not confident because I haven't done, you know, strategy X, Y, Z. I haven't done these things before."
And again, why would you have? You haven't been on the executive team before. This is your first time.
And then I found myself having that same internal dialogue for myself. I really want to do a podcast. I've had friends that have said, "Jac, you've got to get on here and do a podcast. It would be so good." I'm a talker, obviously – well, if it's not obvious now, it will be. "Why haven't you done a podcast yet?"
And my answer either to them or even in my own head, is I will do one when I feel confident, when I feel ready or when I have any experience doing a podcast. But guys, how would I get that experience if I don't get off my ass get and out of my way and actually do it? And so that is why I thought, "What a great topic for the first episode of the podcast!"
So I want to talk about this idea of readiness and how it prevents us from trying something new.
This is such a common phenomenon where especially women and I specialise in women in leadership or minority groups in leadership, but I do think that this is relevant for all leaders because we have such a restriction on ourselves moving into a more senior role because we haven't done those specific tasks before.
And it really is a mindset shift. Because how do we grow? How do we innovate? How do we test and learn if we are fearful of trying something new? Because that perfect moment, that perfect skill set, the stars may never align. And what I feel really strongly about is getting to the end of my life – whether it's the end of my career or the end of life, you know, for me it's always in my 80s. I don't want to be in my 80s looking back and going, gosh there was a lot of stuff that I wish I did. But I didn't because I was scared or because I didn't feel ready.
So why do we do this? I have some thoughts on that. I think we're fearful of failure and our brains are geared that way. Our brains are wired that way to avoid risk, to avoid failure. So I'm a bit of a neuroscience nerd and you will find as we work through, episodes of this poddy, I'm going to sprinkle in some neuroscience because I just think it's so helpful and so interesting. And so our brain takes on any new stimulus, whether it's a new person that we're meeting, a new environment, a new task that we're being asked to do a new job, doing a podcast – whatever. And our brain will tag it as either this is safe, I can approach it, I'm comfortable with this, or this is unsafe, I need to avoid it, I'm uncomfortable with this. So this is called the approach avoid phenomenon.
The reason that our brain does that is because our brains actually use 20 to 25 percent of our entire body's energy. And if every time we take on a new stimulus we have to assess it on its merit it takes too much energy and so it's more efficient for us to tag it really quickly. We're talking like a quarter of a second our brain will go that's not safe don't do it. And what influences how our brain tags these new stimuli, is previous lived experience. So if I have put myself out there tried something new and failed, let's say in childhood, then my brain is going to go, ''Hang on a minute, this is going to require us to put ourselves out there and try something new, and we've done that before and it is a high risk thing – don't do it, avoid!"
If we have put ourselves out there, tried something new and been successful, then our brain is more likely to tag it as, "Approach, this is safe and I'm happy to do that."
And that in part is what drives whether we are risk adverse or whether we are comfortable with risk. So remember, it's our brain's way of trying to keep us safe.
Unfortunately what that means, is our lived experience can really hold us back. So here's a sort of personal example. When I was growing up, I went to a lot of different schools. We moved around a lot. It's a long story. It's pretty boring, we moved around a lot and were meeting new people.
I was fine with the first couple of times and then I started to get bullied a little bit and I had some really less than great experiences. And so now I find the idea of walking into a room of people that I don't know nauseating. I find putting myself out there and doing a podcast awful. I've done 180 nervous wees before I came in here and this is just my home office. It's wild the way that our brain is able to drive that sort of behaviour. My point is that when we know this, when our brain gives us those signals of hang on, avoid, this is not safe, what we're able to do when we have knowledge of what's happening is fact check. So we can engage our prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain just up behind your forehead that is responsible for critical thinking. And we can say, "Well, hang on a minute, is this really that unsafe?" Or we can say, "Yep, I'm feeling a little bit of fear here, I'm feeling nervous, I'm feeling anxious, but that's not actually going to stop me. I'm going to do it anyway." And best definition of courage is fear walking, so I feel the fear, I do it anyway. So just because you have those hesitations, just because your brain is telling you, "No, that's not safe," doesn't make it so.
You have the power to choose. So one of the main reasons that we stop ourselves is that idea of failure is that idea of risk. The other really common reason is imposter syndrome. This is where people feel like frauds, despite their success, despite the fact that other people have endorsed and validated them being there. It's that idea that someone's going to find me out. Someone is going to realise that I'm actually not supposed to be in this role, or that I am not qualified, or that I don't know what I'm doing. And research shows that 70 % of people experience imposter syndrome at some point in their career. I would actually suggest from my experience of hundreds of clients, it's higher than that. I would say for women it's over 90 percent. We typically feel as though we have to constantly be proving our worth and we have to be constantly proving that we're supposed to be here and that we're supposed to be where we are, you know, in this role, that we know what we're doing. And that imposter syndrome can really hold us back and frustratingly, it can actually drive us to be less confident, to speak up less in meetings, to not share great ideas that we have, to stay quiet so that we're not seen. And that ends up holding us back because people say, I don't think she's ready for a promotion. She doesn't even speak up in meetings. So it's kind of this self-fulfilling cycle, but really common, really common. I think there's an opportunity for us to reframe imposter syndrome as an indication, as a sign that you are stretching yourself.
There's a reason that we call it a comfort zone – because we feel comfortable in it. Therefore when we're uncomfortable, that would suggest that we are outside of our comfort zone.
That is great, because it means we're stretching ourselves, we're growing and eventually our comfort zone will expand along with it the more that we do it. So imposter syndrome isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's an indication that you are driving progress, you're pushing yourself, you're moving towards your goals. What we need to make sure we're doing, is being conscious of how that impacts on our behavior.
So if we've got imposter syndrome and therefore we stop speaking up, then that might be problematic. Bring that to your level of awareness and make some changes.
I want to just briefly touch on the fact that this idea of readiness and this idea of holding ourselves back, waiting until we're experienced before we do something, is influenced by gender. You've probably heard many, many studies that show that men are more likely to overestimate their ability whereas women are more likely more likely to underestimate our ability. One study in particular found that a male will apply for a job when they meet around 60 % of the assessment criteria, or 60 % of the qualifications that are required of the role.
A woman will only apply for a role when they meet 100 % of the requirements. That holds us back, ladies. I know I've said this before, and yes, I get a bit repetitive and high horse and soapboxy, but the thing is that we're never going to be able to do a job if we wait until we're able to do the job before we do it. It doesn't make sense. One of the things that women tend to do, is get more qualifications.
And if you're a woman listening to this, I bet you anything that you have thought to yourself, I think maybe I am ready for a promotion. I better get my masters, or I better go on a course to do leadership or, or emotional intelligence or, you know, high performing teams, or I wonder if I should do some study into blah, blah, blah. I do it myself all the time to the point where the people around me say, "Jacqui. It's enough. You're busy enough."
Take it from me, you don't need another qualification.
Women feel as though they need to tick all the boxes before they will pursue a promotion, a higher paying role, a more senior position. One of these studies that I came across showed that women are 16 % less likely than men to apply for a job after they've viewed it, even if they are equal in qualifications. This is something that I'm really passionate about because we need more women in leadership. We need more women in decision-making seats to gain parity across the leadership space. And we're holding ourselves back as much as we're being held back.
We know that men are more likely to self promote. Women are humble. If you are working in a leadership role and you have interviewed males and females for the same vacancy, or maybe you work in HR or in recruitment, you may have noticed the difference where in general male candidates are more happy to promote themselves, which they need to. You're in a job interview. Whereas women tend to be more humble and what that shows is that men are promoted around 30 percent more often than women, especially early in their careers. Obviously that's impacted by things broader than just self-promotion, but it is a component.
So the bottom line is we're holding ourselves back – men and women – but I just wanted to highlight the fact that this is so much more prominent for women. We have this opportunity to identify when our brain is trying to keep us safe and small. We are able to fact check and determine whether that's real or whether that's a story that we're telling ourselves, and we are able to feel fear and still take action. Feelings aren't facts. If we feel fear, if we feel hesitation, if we feel anxiety, it doesn't mean we need to stop doing what we're doing. Sometimes it does if we're on the Serengeti plane and there's a saber-toothed tiger coming at us. Then yeah, okay.
But otherwise, if you're looking for a promotion, if you're ready to take the next step, then you may just have to lean in and do it.
Remembering that failure is an opportunity for learning. This is so cliché, I totally acknowledge that, but also I love a cliché, I'm like a walking bumper sticker. And remember that there is no failure, there's winning and there's learning. And so the real failure is just not acting, in my opinion.
So time to move into that growth mindset, time to start taking action.
I know that as you've been reading, there has been at least one thing that you've had in your mind that you've thought, yeah, I haven't done that thing because of all of the reasons that we've outlined. So go and do the thing or at least take a step towards doing the thing. And if you don't win, you'll at least learn.
Listen to the audio on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
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