Breaking The Chains Of Self-Doubt: Six Powerful Strategies To Triumph Over Imposter Syndrome

Forbes Coaches Council

Originally published on Forbes.com

Marty, a rising star in a prestigious tech company, stood at the pinnacle of success and had garnered an impressive number of achievements. However, beneath the veneer of accomplishment, a persistent sense of inadequacy haunted him. Like a relentless whisper, impostor syndrome sowed seeds of doubt and fueled fears of exposure as a fraud.

"Am I doing enough? Do I have the smarts for this role? How can I possibly compete with my incredible peers?" Marty's internal inquiry echoed as he meticulously scrutinized his projects. The burden of overanalysis and self-doubt paralyzed him, instilling a profound fear of making mistakes. In meetings, Marty lingered in silence, reluctant to share his ideas, fearing dismissal or criticism, deeming them unworthy.

Marty's inclination to stay in the shadows, avoiding the spotlight, emanated from a deep-seated fear of failure. Despite his flawless execution of tasks, Marty struggled to view his achievements as anything beyond strokes of luck. The further he moved up in the organization, the more his fears increased. And there he was, again, tethered to the office by the chains of another late-night stint. The dim glow of the computer screen cast eerie shadows on his weary face as he wrestled with the gnawing question that clawed at the recesses of his consciousness: How was he ever going to succeed? The hum of fluorescent lights overhead provided a dissonant soundtrack to Marty's internal struggle, punctuated by the occasional creaks of the office settling into its nightly silence.

Imposter syndrome, a common challenge numerous leaders face, is indeed conquerable. Let's unveil six powerful strategies to help you take charge and propel yourself toward success:

1. Strategic Thinking And Thoughtful Planning

Incorporate these into your routine

Add strategic thinking and planning to your to-do list, allocating dedicated time.

Recognize the importance of addressing long-term aspects of projects.

Embrace planning and preparation as indispensable allies in confronting challenges.

2. Positive Mindset And Decision-Making

Create an empowering mental space

Foster a mental environment that champions your abilities, leaving no room for perceived shortcomings.

Make decisions decisively, understanding that action is a potent antidote to paralysis.

Consciously inundate your mind with positive thoughts and influences—whether from podcasts, books, blogs or videos.

3. External Support And Mentorship

Harness valuable perspectives

Enlist a mentor and seek coaching for invaluable perspectives.

Learn the art of graciously accepting feedback and praise as essential professional growth components.

Recognize the significance of seeking external support; you don't have to navigate challenges alone.

4. Celebrating Successes

Establish a ritual of acknowledgment

Implement a regular practice of celebrating every success, big or small.

Acknowledge and appreciate accomplishments, be it a well-received presentation or the successful launch of a project.

Maintain a file of past recognition, revisiting it periodically as a tangible reminder of your competence.

5. Leveraging Your Strengths

Discover and capitalize on your innate abilities

Identify your unique strengths and talents that set you apart.

Embrace opportunities that allow you to showcase and leverage these strengths.

Use your strengths as a foundation for tackling challenges and achieving success.

6. Mindfulness Practices

Integrate these practices into daily life

Make mindfulness an integral part of your daily routine.

Engage in meditation and self-reflection to cultivate a heightened awareness of thoughts and emotions.

Leverage mindfulness to navigate the challenges of impostor syndrome, fostering resilience.

Getting back to Marty's story: As he embraced these strategies, the shackles of self-doubt began to loosen. Confidence began to emanate from him in meetings as he spoke with conviction. He began sharing more of his innovative ideas. The once-hidden talent emerged from the shadows, not as an imposter, but as a capable and accomplished leader, a testament to the transformative power of strategic self-reflection and proactive measures.

Want help addressing your leadership challenges? Contact us to schedule a consultation so we help you move to BOLD, excuse-proof & goal rushing!

18 Powerful Ways Leaders Can Create A Respectful, Productive Workplace

Forbes Coaches Council

Originally published on Forbes.com

Creating a culture of respect has become a priority for leaders seeking to create productive and harmonious work environments in today’s business world. The need for increased civility in the workplace is more pressing than ever, as a hostile, unsupportive atmosphere can quickly lead to poor teamwork, lower morale, reduced productivity and higher turnover rates.

Below, Forbes Coaches Council members share actionable insights on how to address the critical need for more civil, collaborative and trusting work environments across all industries. From implementing inclusive policies to fostering open communication and modeling respectful behavior, these strategies can empower leaders to transform their workplaces into spaces where civility thrives and employees flourish.

…TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE, INCLUDING KIM’S INSIGHT, CLICK HERE .

19 Ways Leaders Can Support Employee Health And Wellness

Forbes Coaches Council

Originally published on Forbes.com

With businesses around the world reopened and employees returning to the office, it’s more important than ever for companies to support the health and wellness of their workforce. The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the need to create safe and healthy workplaces for employees, and because culture starts at the top, it’s up to leaders to continue prioritizing their team members’ health and well-being.

Below, 19 Forbes Coaches Council members offer simple yet effective ways for leaders to promote employee health and wellness in the workplace. From providing healthy snacks to encouraging breaks and physical activity, these actionable tips can help business leaders create a healthy and productive work environment for their teams.

1. Invest In Employees’ Growth And Development

Create an environment where people come to the office to grow. By investing in your employees’ development, you show them that you care. Maintain an active dialogue about their individual goals for the year and how you can help support their progress. Create targeted stretch assignments, and offer training, coaching, mentoring and networking opportunities to support their ongoing development. - Andrea Miller, Veritas Leadership, LLC

2. Adopt ‘Day Breaks’

Every company should adopt what I like to call “day breaks.” I have a client who introduces day breaks to corporations that have office employees. This is where the day-break team takes employees to an off-site meeting and teaches them relaxation routines, such as chair yoga, stretching, nutrition hacks and sleep sessions. Employers and employees can’t wait to call in “well” instead of “sick!” - Katrina Roddy, The Corporate Breakup, LLC

3. Have Better-Quality Conversations

Have better-quality conversations; slow down and make it more human. Expand your practice of empathy and get more deeply curious about your people. Folks navigate life’s complexities and bumps every day. What goes a long way is feeling that you are seen and you are heard. One of leadership’s most valuable gifts is to simply bear witness to your people’s lived experiences and to make space for their voices. - Duncan Skelton, Duncan Skelton Coaching Ltd

4. Be Mindful Of Work Style Preferences

Workforce planning is critical for those coming back to offices. Extroverted people crave being around others, but perhaps other teammates prefer (and excel when) working from home. Being mindful of styles is important. Also, just because people may be in an office setting does not mean that you need more meetings. Encouraging breaks and investing in ergonomics and healthy food choices can help. - Denise Russo, Maxwell Leadership

5. Exemplify Healthy Habits

Leaders first need to be exemplars of healthy behaviors and demonstrate intolerance for unhealthy ones. This includes cultivating lifestyle habits as well as creating a high-performance culture that prioritizes performance and accomplishment over activity. It is also critical to foster an environment of competence and self-direction, where employees are responsible for their own welfare and each other’s. - Philip Liebman, ALPS Leadership

6. Ask Questions And Listen Deeply

The people returning to the office aren’t the same people who left. People have had varying experiences. Some have been greatly impacted personally by the pandemic, while others may appear to have come out relatively unscathed. Ask questions and seek to understand their experience and how to best help them reengage in the office. - Kimberly Svoboda, Aspiration Catalyst®

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Six Critical Steps That Practically Guarantee High Performance

Forbes Coaches Council

Originally published on Forbes.com

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Six Critical Steps That Practically Guarantee High Performance

Kimberly Svoboda, Aspiration Catalyst, Forbes Councils Member

Princeton, a beautiful red Thoroughbred horse, completed the third-round jump-off in the equestrian jumper competition. He easily sailed over the complex sequence of rails, flying in perfect sync with his rider. Completing the jumping course at high speed looked effortless, and they handily won the competition.

How did this beautiful horse and his rider achieve such high performance? Training, reinforcement, time and lots of patience.

Princeton is an off-the-track Thoroughbred (OTTB) and began his life as a racehorse. After a relatively unimpressive track career, he entered his subsequent career as a hunter/jumper show horse. Princeton knew how to run fast and safely without injury but had zero training in jumping. Before we talk about training, you should know that adult horses weigh an average of 1,000 pounds and are prey animals, so flight is their primary method of survival. They are highly perceptive and sensitive. Remember the saying You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink? The same is valid for training them.

The trainer started from the very beginning with Princeton to teach him his new craft. She utilized concrete, incremental goals; rewards; and lots of practice and praise. He was connected to a long lunge rope and quickly learned simple commands like walk, trot and canter. Eventually, he walked over ground poles and jumped smaller fences. He quickly understood and received positive reinforcement each time he did the right thing.

Next, the rider climbed in the saddle to teach the horse to pay attention to leg signals versus voice commands. Over time, with a lot of positive reinforcement and patience, the rider and the horse jumped beautifully together and could focus on improving technique and speed, leading to winning performances on the equestrian circuit.

This approach is practically the opposite of what leaders do when expecting high performance from their employees and teams. If we applied typical training techniques employed by a corporate leader, the horse would be expected to jump without much training and without the incremental goals to teach, breed confidence and build success. This approach is a recipe for frustration and failure.

What should leaders do to move their employees and teams to high performance?

1. Be clear. Set clear expectations on what good looks like. Invite your team member to share their views on the expectations—do they understand, and are you on the same page? What questions or concerns do they have? What support will they need from you? Come to a shared agreement on what success looks like, and discuss the next steps.

2. Meet people where they are. Princeton wouldn't have had any idea what was expected if they had put his rider on him and set him loose on the jumper course. It would have been dangerous for the horse and rider, and both could have been injured or worse. Instead of setting an impossibly lofty goal and leaving it up to our team members to figure it out, we need to create incremental steps for them and reward them along the way. Explaining the wholesale desired behavior change once and getting frustrated because it doesn't happen is demotivating. Do they have any idea how to get to the new behavior? Get clear on their current level of performance and partner with them to set the right incremental goals to move them gradually toward achieving their highest level of performance.

3. Leverage the strengths of individuals to build high performance. Each person has a unique set of talents that adds value to the team's performance. Leveraging them increases your employee's commitment and enables high performance. (Pro tip: Utilize a strengths assessment to quickly discover the top talents of each team member and help them put their strengths to work. I'm a Certified Gallup CliftonStrengths Coach, and it's one of my favorite tools to use when working with my clients.)

4. Break it down. Recognize and acknowledge the right behaviors. The trainer created a plan with incremental steps and rewarded the small changes in behavior that would ultimately lead to the desired result of making a speedy jumping round. Behavioral change is best accomplished incrementally with humans, too. Take your desired outcome and challenge yourself to break it into ten steps. Start with step one and see how quickly your employees pick up on these incremental steps and make significant progress toward the ultimate goal.

5. Work hard to catch people doing things right. Reward often and celebrate small incremental gains. Small successes will lead to significant achievements. Reinforcing the small wins and steps in the right direction keeps team members motivated and encouraged to keep going.

6. Synchronize your team by having a common goal. Teams that understand they need each other to achieve success collaborate more effectively and achieve more. Each person shares their unique talents with the team and everyone benefits. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

Taking the time to set expectations and help your team members take the steps needed will enable effective behavior change. Small steps add up to big ones. These incremental gains and celebrating success along the way will build confidence. When your entire team exhibits the right behaviors to achieve their "winning round," it will lead to long-term team high performance and success.

15 Strategies For Business Owners To Conquer Distractions And Stay Focused

Forbes Coaches Council

Kim Svoboda, CEO of Aspiration Catalyst® featured in Forbes

15 Strategies For Business Owners To Conquer Distractions And Stay Focused

As an owner, running your own business can feel like a 24/7 job that requires your undivided attention, especially when you’re wearing multiple operational “hats.” Finding and maintaining the focus you need to accomplish your goals can be a challenge when you face constant disruptions.

Rather than allow yourself to be steered off-course, check out the advice below from members of Forbes Coaches Council. Here, 15 members offer their top tips for staying focused on the bigger picture and your primary business objectives in the midst of the many distractions that can interrupt a business owner’s life on a day-to-day basis.

1. Differentiate Between Attention And Awareness

Business owners should understand the difference between attention and awareness. Attention is focusing on what is inside or looking within. Awareness follows from the focusing of that attention. Looking and seeing are two different things. You may look but not see. Cultivating this awareness through deep internal attention can allow business leaders to remain mindful. - Gamini Hewawasam, ManoLead NFP

2. Meet With Yourself

Set up a regular meeting with yourself. Many business owners find they are “always on” for their customers, vendors and employees, overlooking that they are their business’s most important stakeholder. Meetings with oneself are a helpful alternative to focused time blocking. - Joyce Talag, Joyful Transformations LLC

3. Practice Being Mindful

Develop your ability to be mindfully present, whatever you are doing. Stay away from multitasking as well as you can, and take some time for mindfulness practice on a daily basis. It’s the “muscle” you need to develop to stay focused regardless of how much noise there is around you. - Thomas Gelmi, Movadis AG

…TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE, INCLUDING KIM’S INSIGHT, CLICK HERE .

15 Big Misconceptions About Leadership (And The Truth Behind Them)

Forbes Coaches Council

Kim Svoboda, CEO of Aspiration Catalyst® featured in Forbes

15 Big Misconceptions About Leadership (And The Truth Behind Them)

For those who have never held an executive, senior leadership or management position, it can be easy to believe that leadership is simply about giving orders and writing reports. However, effective leaders go further, showing compassion and empathy while instilling motivation within their employees.

When a leader demonstrates how the company’s core values align with their own by living them daily, employees are more likely to want to work with that person to help the company succeed. Below, 15 members of Forbes Coaches Council explore some common misconceptions about leadership and what new leaders might actually learn in real time, once they are on the job.

1. Leaders Have All The Answers

Leadership is not about having all the answers; it is about knowing how to get to the best answer. For example, a problem arises, and the leader is turned to for a solution. A true leader will rally the team together to get insights from anyone else who has experienced a similar scenario, discuss critical factors and consider options, with actions and responsibilities clearly defined. - Sherre DeMao, BizGrowth Inc

2. Leadership Communication Isn’t Really ‘Doing’ Anything

Leadership is essentially about communication. The larger your organization gets and/or the more senior you get within it, the more your role becomes purely about communication—reinforcing vision, mission and values and giving context to the team. Many new leaders struggle with this, thinking that they are not “doing” anything. Communication is a vital aspect of leadership. - Mark MacLeod, Mark MacLeod, CEO Coach & Advisor

3. Leadership Is An Outward Command-And-Control Skill

People misunderstand leadership as an outward command-and-control skill. Self-awareness, emotional intelligence and empathy are the leadership strategies that allow us to succeed. These leadership strategies start with a strong foundation of self and allow people to build trust and connection with the leader, leading to higher job satisfaction, lower burnout and an increased bottom line. - Susan Hobson, Elite High Performance

…TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE, INCLUDING KIM’S INSIGHT, CLICK HERE .

How To Help ‘Quiet Quitters’ Set Boundaries And Perform At A High Level

Forbes Coaches Council

Kim Svoboda, CEO of Aspiration Catalyst® featured in Forbes

How To Help ‘Quiet Quitters’ Set Boundaries And Perform At A High Level

Although the media buzz around “quiet quitting” may be relatively new, the concept of unhappy employees barely meeting minimum expectations certainly isn’t. In this new context, quiet quitting means workers only performing the main functions of their jobs, without going above and beyond—and it’s often the result of feeling burned out or underappreciated at work.

A manager who notices an employee seeming less than motivated can take steps to get them reengaged and more motivated to succeed in their role. Below, 15 Forbes Coaches Council members explain how to facilitate the setting of healthy work-life boundaries while still encouraging high performance.

1. Build Trust By Caring About Your Team

Care is an element of trust, and without it, people won’t engage or go the extra mile. If you support your people by caring about who they are, how they feel and where they want to develop, that will not only build the trust for them to share when they’re struggling and need tighter boundaries but also engage them to go the extra mile. - Susan Hobson, Elite High Performance

2. Create A Healthy Work Environment

Managers should treat quiet quitters as individuals who are trying their best and who deserve some respect for that effort. Instead of punishing them (or even pressuring them), managers should focus on creating an environment where employees feel safe enough to set boundaries around their work and personal lives without worrying about being judged or punished by their boss. - Willena Long, Career Boss Academy

3. Assign Tasks Based On Individual Strengths

Quiet quitters are disengaged and feeling hopeless, losing confidence in both themselves and the company. These employees are doing what is expected because they still care about doing their job, yet they don’t feel valued. Take time to assess their individual strengths and competencies, with the intention of assigning tasks that drive performance while acknowledging and reinforcing their value to the company. - Sherre DeMao, BizGrowth Inc

…To read the rest of the article, including Kim’s insight, click here .