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Self-Doubt in Leadership: Where It Starts and How to Handle It · Leading From the Front!

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is a story you tell yourself that you would never say how loud, I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not worthy, I don't belong here, whether you know or do not.
• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: This story is influencing your decisions and holding you back.
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Dr. Gary, and this is leading from the front.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, enough about strengths.
• 0:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've said a lot about that, but I want to get into limitations.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I want to take a deep dive into this to understand what our limitations might be.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because we can talk about the strengths.
• 0:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you take strength, finders, you can actually get a list of the 34 strengths.
• 0:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there's something else that holds every single one of us back.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not gonna go into the psychology of the child and all that stuff.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just wanna use myself as an example of what we have that's deep inside of us that's labeled false limiting beliefs.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, let me give an example.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: When I was nine years old, 10 years old, my father was stationed in Scotland, and he was in the Navy over there on a submarine repair ship and I was attending a Scottish school.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: As an American in a Scottish school, I was the only American in that school
• 1:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: We were not exactly loved over there when you think about the context in the sixties in the Cold War We were in Scotland with nuclear-powered submarines that were going around the Atlantic Ocean And the Soviet Union had a target on that area in case of war started.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Scottish people did not particularly care for the decision that the government made to allow Americans to be there.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: In that environment, one day I was asked to read in front of the class.
• 1:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I started reading and I would stutter a little bit.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was very, very nervous.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would read three quarters of a sentence and I'd get to a word and I would stop in my brain would just click off and I would go back and try to reread that sentence.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Turns out I have a comprehension challenge, now go back to that nine-year-old who was stammering, stuttering, challenge to read because when I read a sentence and I don't comprehend part of it, my brain shuts down and I have to start over again.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well that's stuck with me.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: My false living belief is I'm stupid.
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's how impactful that emotional situation was for me.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And a simple thing like not being able to read made me feel deeply stupid.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: doing research with some other friends in mind, I realized this false limiting belief becomes kind of hardwired that I can actually feel stupid and I look back on my life and I go, wow, I would do things to prove to people, I'm not stupid, I would do things to prove to people that I'm smart and that wasn't real effective as a team player, trust me, I was always trying to prove to people that I'm smart.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, what does this do to us?
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: The key with the false and we believe is to understand what it is.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it can be, I'm stupid.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not worthy.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't belong here.
• 3:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: These things that we said, these mindsets that are hard-wired in us, that causes to think that we're less than we are, that present themselves in ways, because of decisions that we make based on that emotion of less than that sucks the courage out of us
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: that allow us to be effective as a person, as a team member, or as a leader.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: When we become aware of this, I can feel myself in that situation now when it's going to raise itself and I just stop and take a breath and I say, oh, there it is.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: There it is.
• 3:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Feeling stupid right now.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to smile.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll look out the window.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I'll look over a Bailey, remind myself that he loves to run after a ball no matter what.
• 3:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't hold him back.
• 3:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to hold me back.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be effective.
• 3:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to take a breath, and I'm going to engage the person without allowing that false-liming belief to control my emotions and my decisions.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have bad news for everybody.
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: We all have them.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: and they're usually something that happened in their childhood.
• 4:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: But becoming aware of it allows you to not let it control your effectiveness as a person and as a leader.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Don't let your limitations drive you, focus on your strengths, understand your limitations, embrace the fact that you have to work hard and have the grit, the passion and the perseverance to achieve.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you can do that,
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: you're mastering yourself and then you can apply that to your team to have a team that is extremely effective and strong and that is the essence and the core of step three strikes.
• 4:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: In a lot of the coaching that I do, I will share this story because I want people to understand these false lemme beliefs that are holding them back, these limitations and quite often it takes a long time
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have one particular person that exactly I'm coaching now who does have a real challenge with having the courage to make decisions.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: We see this with people, they're holding themselves back because they have to be right.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: They have to be perfect.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Perfection in business is just so expensive.
• 5:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: and it holds us back so much and when we dig into that and understand what's causing the person to think that she has to be perfect.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we'll go back and think about it, you know, how did you do in school?
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I had straight days.
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Did you ever get less than a, no?
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's this fear of being less than or not being worthy if they don't achieve perfection.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what we have to do is ask them some questions and get them to understand what's the story going on up here and what questions are you asking yourself.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: For example, if you're a perfectionist and you really need to make a decision you have to ask the following question, what's the worst that can happen?
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Can I prepare for the worst if I need to?
• 6:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when I was coaching this woman about her perfectionism, you could just tell the pain on her face when she had to come to the realization that she's not perfect, that she can't be perfect.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And to be able to put that aside, I can honestly say, we'll take a very, very long time,
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: These false living beliefs are not something that you just, oh, one day I understand it, it's gone.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nope, it's with you.
• 6:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: It takes a lot of work, a lot of introspection for some of us, it's journaling to see some patterns.
• 6:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And once we understand those patterns, you can overcome some of these things.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in some cases, quite frankly, you might need therapy.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Talk to a counselor.
• 7:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Talk to somebody who can really draw this out for you, because those are the things that are holding us back the most.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I see it a lot in the coaching that I do, and I think I'll just not tell too many stories, because I don't want people to know that I'm talking about them on the video.
• 7:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to leave it at that and just understand that you have the choice.
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: to go inside be aware and accept who you are, what your strengths, what your limitations are, and have the courage to face it.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I want to wrap up with a couple of things I wanted to say about grit and this idea of passion and perseverance.
• 7:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to give you as a personal story, and then I'm going to talk about somebody else that I know, and the personal story was getting involved in leadership from the time I was 16 and taking all these positions and experiencing management leadership through all the years, working for Stephen Covey and Ken Blanchard, seven, seven habits, highly effective people, situation, leadership, and seeing what they had that I didn't have in starting a business like what I have today.
• 8:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: what they had was terminal degrees, books, they knew how to do research, they had programs, they had staff that worked for them, very, very successful in helping people be more effective as human beings and being leaders.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to do that, but I didn't have any of that.
• 8:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: So in 2003, I went back to school, got my masters and doctorate in five and a half years.
• 8:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have to say that six months before I finished my doctorate, I was standing in the kitchen, talking to my wife.
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was absolutely exhausted.
• 8:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was working as a vice president of sales while I was writing my dissertation, which took me the entire year.
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wrote over 350 days that year, every single day of the year except five or ten days.
• 8:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the reason I did that is I'm a terrible writer.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a good writer, but I was putting stuff together and I had hired an editor to help me write.
• 9:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't have AI back there to help me.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: We didn't have AI back then to help me.
• 9:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I used an editor to help me organize things.
• 9:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was falling apart.
• 9:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I said to my wife at the time, I am exhausted and I'm so glad that I didn't know how hard this was going to be because if I had known I might out of started it.
• 9:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I was five years into it and I wasn't gonna stop.
• 9:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was gonna keep working and get a little bit done every day.
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I stopped worrying about the end goal and just every single day got a little bit more done and a little bit more done and a little bit more done.
• 9:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the progress is what kept me going.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because progress is more motivating than goal achievement.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: goal achievement makes you happy for five or 10 minutes
• 9:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: can be experienced every single day, and that's how I got through that.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I know a particular young man who wrote his family a letter, an email actually.
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Many years ago, he said, I know that this family has supported and helped me in many, many times, many ways, many things.
• 10:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I want you to know that in the last 24 hours, I've worked harder.
• 10:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: in this day, then I worked the entire five years of my college career.
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he says, I don't mean that any given day in the five years, I mean the entire five years.
• 10:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've worked really, really hard.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I want to thank the family and thank everybody for the support and the help that I've been given.
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I finally realized that in order to achieve the things that I wanted to achieve,
• 10:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I needed to work hard and I think that's the message.
• 10:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you want to be a leader, keep working hard, develop your skills, learn how to communicate, be open to feedback from others so that you can use the strength and the limitations that you have you can avoid and fill those limitations in with other people so that the team is strong.
• 11:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you cannot be all things to all people.
• 11:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can't be everything.
• 11:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, you can be everything that you are, but the only way to draw that out is to expand your understanding of yourself, to listen to the perspective and the perception of others, to bring that feedback in, whether you want to hear it or not, because feedback is always a gift and gives you insight.
• 11:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you can do that, you can master step three strengths, understand, accept and grow.
• 11:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is limitations and we talked about false limiting beliefs today.
• 11:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's an area that you can become aware of over time and help you understand how those false limiting beliefs might be affecting your decisions every day.
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: If this resonates with you, please share it with another leader.
• 12:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: It might make a big difference.
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Dr. Gary and this is leading from the front.