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Growth Mindset: The Key to Ditching Self-Doubt and Leading with Confidence
0 Playsin 19 hours
Leanna explores the theme of confidence and how it plays a pivotal role in professional success. Focusing specifically on women in the workplace, Leanna shares lessons from her coaching clients and her own journey, highlighting the shift from knowledge-based confidence to belief in one’s problem-solving abilities. Through real-life examples, she explains how a growth mindset can unlock unshakable confidence, especially in environments where women often feel the pressure to have all the answers. For working mothers, this episode offers a gentle but powerful reminder: you don’t have to over prepare or overwork to prove your value. Leanna’s reflections provide actionable tools to help you show up with more ease, authenticity, and impact—both at home and in the office. Whether you're new to a role or navigating the ever-changing demands of life and leadership, this episode will inspire you to trust yourself and embrace the belief that you can solve any problem. Tune in for practical takeaways and the reminder that you already have what it takes.
Full transcript available here.
Connect with Leanna here.
If you're ready for deeper transformation, check out The Executive Mom Reset — Leanna’s six-month coaching program designed to help ambitious moms stop merely surviving and start thriving. Book a consult now!
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to the Executive Coach for Moms podcast, where we support women who are attempting to find balance and joy while simultaneously leading people at work and at home.
Leanna's Background
00:00:15
Speaker
I'm your host, Leanna Lasky-McGrath, former tech exec turned full-time mom, recovering perfectionist and workaholic, and certified executive coach.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Thanks so much for being here today.
Focus on Confidence
00:00:33
Speaker
So for the last several episodes, as you know, i have sharing what's coming up in my coaching sessions, what's coming up in my life, and at work and conversations and just what would be helpful for you, my listener. and recently I've been having a lot of conversations, a lot of coaching sessions on the topic of confidence.
00:01:01
Speaker
And so I started writing ah about some of my clients' situations and takeaways and things that I've learned about confidence so that I could share it with all of you.
00:01:13
Speaker
And I realized that there is so much to cover here. And so I've decided to break it into a few episodes.
Building Confidence Through Action and Mindset
00:01:21
Speaker
So the next few episodes will focus on confidence, especially for women in the workplace.
00:01:29
Speaker
Last week, I had an amazing guest, Dr. Laura Sokola, who talked about how we can use our language to portray more confidence and to have our voices be heard. And I've done a few other episodes kind of related to that topic.
00:01:50
Speaker
And I think that it's important to learn those skills. and also, i think that what I want to focus on, at least today, is peeling back the layers a little bit or going a little bit deeper within ourselves about What we are thinking about ourselves, what we are believing about ourselves, that creates our confidence.
00:02:12
Speaker
I have heard a lot of quotes, I've heard a lot of people talk about that confidence comes from action. That a lot of times we think that we have to become confident before we can take an action, before we can do something.
00:02:28
Speaker
And I agree with the notion that sometimes you just have to start doing it and the doing of it will build the confidence. That's true whenever it comes to like a specific thing that we're trying to learn, that we're trying to be confident about.
00:02:45
Speaker
And also, i do think that there are some different thoughts and mindset shifts available to us to lean into that confidence a bit more.
00:02:57
Speaker
And the
Client's Journey to Confidence
00:02:58
Speaker
one I want to talk about today is the idea of growth mindset, because I believe that one of the keys to confidence, to unshakable confidence, to feeling confident in any situation, not just at the things that we're good at, not just at the things that we have built capability in, but the confidence that goes with us anywhere is really having ah growth mindset.
00:03:31
Speaker
And i was thinking about this because I was coaching a client who recently started a new job. And she was talking about how she had been on site for her first week.
00:03:43
Speaker
And she had taken some time before she started this job to be very intentional and thinking about how she wanted to show up in this new role.
00:03:55
Speaker
looking at how she's shown up in the past. And we've worked through a lot of different things there. And I just loved hearing some of her takeaways and some of the things that happened as a result of her showing up differently.
00:04:09
Speaker
So one of the things that we uncovered was that she has always held this belief that the more you know, the more she collects knowledge, the more research she does, the more data she prepares, the more confident she can be in a meeting, in a presentation.
00:04:29
Speaker
And so what that has led to for her in the past has been a lot of overworking, a lot of overpreparing, a lot of making sure that she just researches ah crap out of everything before she talks about it with another human.
00:04:48
Speaker
Because for her, she believes that she brings the value and she can have the confidence by knowing a lot about the subject matter, by collecting knowledge.
00:05:02
Speaker
And i think that it's true for a lot of people that we get to a point in our career where we realize that we know a lot. And the reality is, is that a lot of times the questions that we might get in a presentation or in a conversation are not necessarily just knowledge-based. They're not things that we can just memorize and make sure that we have the data on hand.
00:05:29
Speaker
Of course, that might be helpful, but I think that what it leads to whenever we are so focused on knowledge only And knowing everything about everything and being fully prepared is that then whenever we get into a conversation, we sound more scripted.
00:05:48
Speaker
We are more in our heads and less in our bodies and in ourselves. and we're less able to connect together. human to human because we're so in our heads and we're so focused on the knowledge.
00:06:02
Speaker
And we're also so scared. There's something in the back of our heads that's saying, what if they ask a question that I don't know? What if I can't answer the question because I don't have the knowledge?
Improving Interpersonal Relationships
00:06:13
Speaker
And so this client in particular was sharing that she decided to go into the first week at her new job, just being a bit more open and curious. And instead of like pretending that she knows everything, going in and, you know, if someone talks about something that she doesn't know, asking them and giving them the opportunity to educate her because she has kind of this confidence in what she does know. And another person might know more about something else. There's no possible way that we could know everything about everything.
00:06:50
Speaker
And so whenever she had that expectation of herself and was more grounded in hey, here's what I know. i know a lot. I'm comfortable with what I know.
00:07:02
Speaker
And i'm just going to show up and be there with the other person, be there with the team and, you know, be open to learning. Then she said she felt so much less pressure.
00:07:13
Speaker
She felt so much less stressed. She was able to really be present instead of like, thinking in her head the next thing she was going to say and trying to sound smart and trying to be impressive.
00:07:26
Speaker
But instead, she was able to just like be there with the other person and connect human to human. And she said it was so fun to see some of these people just like light up about whatever it is they're passionate about, whatever it is that they know their subject matter so deeply.
00:07:44
Speaker
And, you know, they were able to share that with another person. What a gift that is for them. And so really showing up in this way gave her the ability to connect with people in a way that she never has before.
00:07:58
Speaker
And her biggest takeaway was really that thinking about it from like holding the belief that I may not know everything, but I trust myself to figure it out and that I'll be able to, you know, be on the spot. And if I don't have the perfect scripted answer with all of the data and research to back up my findings that that's okay, that that's not a problem, that I'm going to be able to think on my feet and decide i can solve any problem.
00:08:30
Speaker
And so I think what's important to notice here is that there's a much different set of thoughts. So in the thoughts, when we believe that Knowledge is what creates our value.
00:08:40
Speaker
Knowledge is what gives us confidence. We have thoughts that are usually like, what if I don't know enough? What if there's this question that I can't answer? i need to make sure that I am sounding impressive.
00:08:57
Speaker
It's very kind of the thoughts that we have about that. don't really create confidence for us. Don't create that feeling of confidence because we're constantly wondering, do I know enough?
00:09:09
Speaker
Did I do enough? Did I prepare enough? And that's kind of constantly running in the back of our heads. And then we have this kind of hypervigilance of being prepared for whatever questions they might ask, but being afraid that we might not be able to answer them.
00:09:24
Speaker
Whereas on the flip side, when we shift into more of a growth mindset, we're able to think thoughts like, I'm capable of solving any problem.
00:09:36
Speaker
I'm capable of tackling any question, even if I don't know everything about it, but I can instead use my problem-solving skills. And whenever we think things like that, then our confidence becomes much more unshakable.
00:09:52
Speaker
It allows us to be confident no matter where we are, because we believe in our ability to
Adapting in a Fast-Paced World
00:09:59
Speaker
problem solve. We believe in our ability to figure it out. We trust that no matter what, we can solve any problem.
00:10:08
Speaker
Those thoughts create a lot more confidence and allow us to show up much better because like I said, in my client's example, she was able to connect with people so much more.
00:10:21
Speaker
And that's really, really powerful. And I think that The people who are able to do that, who are able to show up to any situation and be present with the circumstances and the problem and the situation that's that's presented and the people that are in the room and solve whatever problems in front of them or figure it out or maybe not solve it right on the spot, but be able to bring in the resources necessary and have the confidence and the humility
00:10:52
Speaker
to say I don't know. i need to grab an expert who knows more about this than I do. i think those are the people that are much more marketable rather than being a complete subject matter expert on something and relying fully on.
00:11:09
Speaker
on the knowledge. And then whenever something presents where we don't know something, that we are unable to move forward. That we feel shattered that we don't have that knowledge.
00:11:22
Speaker
That is a much more fixed mindset. And i think especially in the world that we're living in today with the pace of innovation and things constantly changing, that growth mindset is so crucial. And I think we all know that and we all probably in our hiring, our looking for people with a growth mindset, but also it's really important to recognize how it ties to our confidence.
00:11:49
Speaker
And so if you're feeling a lack of confidence in a new role or in a new project or in something you've done for years, but it's changed because of innovation, then just remember to go back to those thoughts about believing in your problem-solving abilities and I can figure this out.
00:12:09
Speaker
I can solve any problem. And if you don't believe that about yourself, that's where the work is. That's where to put your time and energy and effort is in working to build that belief in yourself rather than going and seeking more knowledge and more data.
00:12:26
Speaker
Not that you shouldn't Research, of course, but also understanding that over-researching, over-preparing, and overworking is only going to take you so far.
Enhancing Confidence Through Self-Belief
00:12:39
Speaker
Whereas building the belief of I can do it, I can solve any problem, i can be in any situation, and I believe in myself to find a solution— That is really where the work needs to be if we want to build our confidence in any situation.
00:12:59
Speaker
So I hope that's a helpful thing to think about. Action items from here would be ah to, number one think about, you know, what do I think about myself in terms of my problem-solving abilities, in terms of experience?
00:13:13
Speaker
belief in myself to solve any problem, to bring value to any circumstance, whether or not I am fully knowledgeable about it. And then two, work on building that belief in yourself.
00:13:28
Speaker
Maybe this goes back to the original thing I talked about with confidence comes from doing. Maybe try out not over-preparing, not over-researching, which probably sounds really scary,
00:13:42
Speaker
but going in and being able to think on your feet and practicing that and building that muscle, being able to problem solve. Also looking back on where you can collect evidence of where you have problem solved in the past, where you went into something and you didn't have all of the information, you didn't have all of the knowledge about it, but you were able still to find a solution and you were able still to add value.
00:14:08
Speaker
I actually think about this, that there are some parallels here with coaching. Because sometimes when I'm coaching a client brings something that I don't know anything about, I can still be really present with that.
00:14:21
Speaker
And we can get to a really amazing place just by being fully engaged and present and curious. And then we're able to really solve any problem.
00:14:33
Speaker
So that is a skill set that is available to all of us. And that I would highly recommend if you're struggling with confidence that you see where your belief is about yourself.
00:14:48
Speaker
If you rate that
Engaging with the Audience
00:14:49
Speaker
on a scale of one to 10, ask yourself, how strongly do I believe this about myself that I can solve any problem, that I don't need to have all of the knowledge and background information to be able to show up and be present and make ah solid impact on whatever situations in front of us.
00:15:08
Speaker
And if that number is not 10 or close to a 10, then ah would highly recommend working on building that belief in yourself. Because I think that that is something that really, really, really helps us to build our confidence in any situation.
00:15:24
Speaker
All right. Well, I hope that this first lesson on confidence has been helpful for you. ah would love to hear from you about anything confidence related that you're struggling with or that you'd like to hear about so that I can continue to create some more episodes on this topic because I think it's a really important one for us to be focused on.
00:15:46
Speaker
So thank you all so much. And i will see you next week to talk about confidence some more. Thanks so much, everyone. Have a great day. Bye.
00:16:00
Speaker
If you're loving what you're learning on this podcast, I'd love to invite you to check out the Executive Mom Reset. It's my six month coaching program for ambitious, success-driven, career-focused women who are ready to stop surviving and start thriving.
00:16:15
Speaker
Together, we'll tackle the stress, guilt, and overwhelm that come with being a high achieving executive mom. You'll learn how to set boundaries, prioritize what truly matters, and build the confidence to show up powerfully at work, at home, and for yourself.
00:16:29
Speaker
Head on over to coachleanna.com right now to schedule a free discovery call. We'll spend an hour talking about where you are now, what you want to create and how I can help you get there because every woman deserves to live the life of her dreams.
00:16:43
Speaker
Let's create yours together.