Carla Miller 00:00
If you've ever looked at other women that seems super confident and thought, wow, I wish I could be more like them, and I just don't know how to get there, then this is the episode for you. Because not only am I going to share the seven things that confident women do things that you can learn to do skills, you can adopt attitudes, mindsets, things that you're going to be able to put into action after this podcast. But also, we're going to talk about what's really going on for those women that you think are super confident, because you may not be as far from that confident woman that you want to be, as you think you are. Welcome to the influence and impact podcast for female leaders.

My name is Carla Miller, and I'm a leadership coach who helps female leaders to tackle self doubt, become brilliant influencing and make more impact at work. I've created this podcast to help you to become a more inspiring and impactful leader. And I want to become the leadership BFF that you didn't know you were missing until now. Now, before we get onto that, I woke up at four o'clock this morning, for reasons unknown to me. And eventually I gave up on sleep, grabbed my phone and saw the news that Jacinda Ardern had stepped back. And she has resigned from her position as Prime Minister of New Zealand inserted today, I'm announcing that I will not be seeking reelection. And then my TELUS Prime Minister will conclude no later than the seventh of February. I know what this job takes. And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank, to do it justice. It's that simple.

And even the way in which she resigns, has made me admire her more. So she was asked how she'd like New Zealanders to remember her leadership. And she said, as someone who always tries to be kind, I hope I leave New Zealanders with the belief that you can be kind, but strong, empathetic, but decisive, optimistic, but focused, and that you can be your own kind of leader, and one who knows when it's time to go. Now, I love all of that. And I appreciate that any political leader is going to be making decisions that are unpopular, I appreciate that perhaps her reputation, internationally and domestically are a bit different. But what I also know is that despite facing the multiple crises that she's had to face, during her time in leadership, she has faced them with empathy, with courage with an honesty, and a level of integrity that I think is incredibly rare in politics. And I for one, I really wish that we had her or someone like her in charge over here in the UK. I also love that she has really championed this idea of being your own kind of leader. And that's one of the things that I am so passionate about, I would much rather you were the best possible version of yourself as a leader than trying to be what is essentially a crappy version of someone else. Because you think that's what leadership should look like, or you wish you were more like some of those leaders that you look to. So I love that she has championed that I love that she's shown what it's like when a woman confidently leads and leads like a woman with that empathy, with humour with compassion.

Often those things are seen as weakness in leadership and in politics. And they're not they aren't massive, massive strength. And she's just even been honest about why she's going. She says she has no fuel left in the tank, and the job deserves someone who has the fuel in the tank. To do it. I think many of us can probably relate to that. I've certainly loved jobs that I've loved that I've achieved a lot in that that I adore the team, because I've had no fuel left in my tank. And those jobs were not half as stressful as the job that she's had. So it's been brilliant for the last few years to be able to have to hand this amazing female role model to mention when we're talking about leadership and women in leadership, and I'm sure there are probably hundreds of 1000s maybe even millions of women out there that are leading like that, let's get better at celebrating those and noticing them and recognising them, celebrating them and I also suspect that a lot of you listening are also leading that way. Whilst I'm sure you never give yourselves a pat on the back for showing up with integrity with honesty, trying to do your best every day and not be power grabbing, I am giving you a pat on the back for that now we need more women like to Jacinda, in positions of power in leadership roles in organisations with influence. And we need more women like you in those positions as well.

Okay, so I'll get off my little soapbox. Now, when it comes to leadership and politics, how are you getting used to this having my episodes every two weeks rather than every week? Did you miss me last week? If you did, there is a huge backlog. Not backlog has a huge back catalogue of episodes, I think this episode is number 126. There is so much in there. So if you're thinking I miss my fix of inspiration, or just talking about this stuff, or hearing my lovely voice on a Monday morning, then do go and look at some of the previous episodes, we have had some incredible guests who've been really, really generous with their knowledge and wisdom. I will give you at the end, I'll give you a little update on what else is going on in the world. For now, I would love to do is to roll with this episode.

So, we're talking about the seven things that confident women do. And first of all, I think I just like to change up a little bit the myth of what a confident woman looks like. Because I think sometimes when we think about a confident woman, we think about someone who just never doubts themselves, who seems on it all the time who has every answer at the tip of their tongue in a meeting, who is able to be super assertive and clear all the time. And whilst those people do exist, what you're seeing is they're completely sorted outside. And I guarantee you because I coach, a lot of these women, I coach a lot of senior women, including chief execs, I guarantee you that underneath that exterior, that appear super confident, there is still self-doubt going on there. So we can be confident in our abilities confident in our judgement in our decisions in our knowledge. And we can still experience self-doubt, we can still experience impostor feelings. So I just want to sort sort of change up maybe that picture that you've got in your head of what it looks like to be a confident woman. Because perhaps you're thinking, well, it looks quite different from me and my natural personality type. So I'm never going to be like that. Or perhaps you're thinking well, I experienced quite a lot of self-doubt. So I'm clearly not confident enough. There's obviously something wrong with me. And both of those things are completely untrue. There is no one way to show up as a confident woman. And the one I'm going to share in this episode are some things that I have noticed confident women do. And they are all things that we have weaved into my be bolder four week confidence and assertiveness course, which is for women at all levels. Because whilst your confidence grows with your experience, when you've been doing something for 10 years, you probably have built up a level of confidence in what you do. What we really need is for earlier career women to feel confident as well, because the first place where we start really seeing that gender inequity and the gender pay gap happening substantially is that we have less women being promoted into their first management positions than men. And it happens a lot lot slower for us. And one of the reasons that happens is because in many organisations, confidence and competence are often mistaken for the same thing.

So there is a brilliant book called Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? And the answer to that is basically because they appear very confident. And because they appear confident, it is assumed that they are competent. Now we can all probably think of at least one person we know who is Uber confident, really not that competent at all and just seems to either have no self awareness or no sense of shame on that. And what the book argues is that in organisations, we are valuing the wrong thing. And that in leaders, we are often valuing and looking for the wrong leadership traits when we're promoting people. So we're looking for confidence when we should be looking for competence. Plenty of studies show that actually whilst women don't rate themselves as Highly on their leadership ability, everyone else rates the more highly than men on their leadership ability, it probably won't surprise you to know that that is the other way around for men.

So whilst we absolutely need to change what we value in leadership and in organisations, and we absolutely need to be focusing more on competence than we are on confidence, at the moment, we operate in a world where confidence is rewarded, where confidence is seen as an essential leadership trait. And so I want to help you to really step into the most confident version of you. So, shall we talk about these seven things.

So number one, the first thing confident women do is they recognise that self-doubt, is just part of the human experience. And it doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with them. So I often have phone calls with people who are interested in coaching with me. And they will often say I have a really loud, what coaches called inner critic, that negative mental chatter in your head, they will say mine is just super, super loud. And you've probably not ever coached someone whose inner critic is as loud as mine is. And then they go on to essentially shame themselves for that, to think that there's something wrong with them, because they've got a really loud inner critic, and maybe some of you listening, have had that experience or are doing that to yourselves. We all have an inner critic, and there is nothing wrong with having an inner critic, there is nothing wrong with experiencing self-doubt. We all do, I coach and teach this stuff. And I still experience self-doubt. But what we want to be able to do is to not let those impostor feelings not let self-doubt be running the show, in our mind, so not let it be the thing that is making our decisions for us not let it be the narrative that is dominating our internal thoughts, our internal thoughts are very repetitive, and some of them are negative. And what we want to do is to try and break that cycle a bit. But if you're going into a new situation, meeting new people, you've got a new boss, you're taking on a new project, anything at all, it will for many of us create a sense of unease, a sense of worry, a sense of can I do this, what will people think of me? Will I be good enough. So if you're experiencing that I want you to know, completely normal. It's why I love reading groups of women together, because by the end of the first session, for example, in Be Bolder, where we talk about tackling impostor feelings and self-doubt, by the end, the feedback that I get is things like, I'm not alone, I'm completely normal. There's nothing wrong with me. And there is nothing wrong with you, you do not need fixing. So the first thing that confident women do is recognise that self-doubt is just part of that human experience. And it doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with them.

Now, the other thing I do want to throw in here is that as women, we think studies show that there's sort of a mixture of studies out there, but more recent studies have shown that we experience more self-doubt the men did. I feel very strongly that gender bias gives us self-doubt in the workplace in a number of different ways. And I think that is a whole episode in itself, to be honest. But when we do not feel valued, as much as some of the people around us, when we are not promoted as quickly as the people around us when our voice doesn't feel like it's being heard or respected. As much as our position merits it too. It's really, really easy to start to doubt ourselves. And actually, all of those things can be attributed to gender bias. And also we're trained by society to show up in one way as women and then we get into the workplace, and those are not the same things that are valued in the workplace. So again, we're facing additional barriers there. So that was just sort of getting on my soapbox, again. But I do think it's really important to recognise that this isn't something that we're just doing to ourselves. It's a response to an environment where we have deep down a sense that we don't belong, a because it might be an environment that's dominated by men, or just because the world of work was designed for men by men and if you for example, have a lifestyle that is different from that white straight man in his 50s, in the 1950s, who had a housewife at home, then you will have a sense of not belonging because the workplace was most definitely not designed for you, as a carer in some way, for example. Okay, the second thing that confident women do is they embrace the fact that they don't have all the answers. So we might think, well, confident women, they have all the answers. But actually, we don't need to have all the answers all the time. And a confident woman is able to say, great question, I'd love to go away and think about that. Or, yes, I can absolutely gather that information, or I don't know the answer to that. It's a great question. I think it deserves a bit more reflection, or I'd love to go and analyse this, do some analysis and come back to you on that. Being able to respond powerfully in a meeting is much better than making up some random answer or apologising for not knowing. And that's what we do when we think we have to know all the answers, we go into that place we might go read, we might get flustered, we get stressed, our body reacts in some way, because we're thinking I should have had the answer to this. I'm failing, I'm being judged here, when actually, to be more confident, we want to embrace the fact that we don't have to have all the answers. And indeed, the more senior you become, the more important it is that you get better at asking questions rather than providing answers.

So confident women embrace the fact that they don't have to have all the answers. confident women also support and encourage others because they know it's not a competition. So again, you might think of a confident woman and think of that sort of Queen Bee persona, that woman who's at the top and thinks that the air is scarce up there and has had to fight her battles to get there. And so rather than being an ally for other women, is in fact a bit more of an oppressor for other women. And we've all had those experiences. I think just because someone is a woman doesn't mean that they are supportive of other women. And it's why I love to gather communities of women so that we can undo some of those bad experiences. Perhaps we've had at the hands of bullying bosses, including women. But confident women know that meetings, organisations benefit from lots of diverse thinking from different people in the room, from championing talents, as it comes up through the organisation. They support and encourage others. And that's one really simple way to show up more confidently is to support and encourage others. And from the conversations I have with the women in my programmes, I know that many of you are doing that. Now, the thing that you may not be doing is alongside that being able to own your own strengths, and your own achievements, because society teaches women that we should not have anything that could be in any way construed as ego, because that will be arrogant. So whilst men can confidently say what they're good at, we have not learned that from a young age. And I see this when I run my programmes and ask people to identify and own their strength, it can be really uncomfortable for some of them, even in that super safe environment where we're all there smiling and supporting and laughing together. In fact, we were doing that just yesterday on a Women's Leadership Programme. And some people felt good doing it. And some people felt really uncomfortable or awkward doing that. And that's again, one of the things we work through on be bolder, is identifying your strengths. And it doesn't mean you've got to be better than anyone else in the organisation or the world at that thing for it to be your strength. And being able to own that and own your achievements and receive that positive feedback without deflecting it in some way, which I know many of us do. Now, the next thing that women confident women do is that they are able to have courageous conversations, they're able to have those challenging conversations, to set boundaries to hold those boundaries to say no. When they need to say no rather than automatically saying yes, and then really wishing they hadn't because their workload is so huge.

So they've broken through that people pleasing thing, and instead they're able to think about what are their needs? And how do they need to show up to do their job. Wow. And for many women, it's often about what I call claiming the authority that comes with your role, and not just all of the responsibility. And I talk about this in lots of podcasts, we talk about it in be bolder, as well. But that's one way to show up more confidently, is to be able to have those courageous, those challenging conversations. Now, another way that confident women show up differently is that they speak up, even when their inner critic that negative mental chatter is vocal. So I'm not talking about faking it until you make it. But I'm talking about recognising I want to contribute to this meeting. I think I've got something good to say. But then my inner critic is getting really vocal and saying, you'll be judged. What if it's wrong, what if it's a really stupid thing to say, and so I stay quiet. And then after the meeting, my inner critic is beating me up with someone else made that point and got recognised for it. And it was actually a good point. confident women are able to hear that inner critic because it probably still comes up for them until they're really practised, but are able to recognise what it's saying is not helpful or true. And instead focus on how do I want to show up in this meeting? How do I want to be perceived? How do I want to contribute? What does it look like to be at my best in this meeting, and so they're able to speak up, even when their inner critic gets vocal. And one of the things we do within be bolder is that that inner critic is being fueled by some beliefs that we have, it might be a belief, like, I have to be 100% Sure, to speak up, or I have to be incredibly prepared to speak up. It might be I can't afford to look stupid, it might be I have to be perfect. It might be I'm not experienced enough, intelligent enough, knowledgeable enough, analytical enough visionary enough, you know, we enough ourselves far too much. And often those beliefs are what are creating that inner critic in that moment. And so what we do is help you identify which of those beliefs are running in your internal narrative? And how do you want to reframe some of those, and it's not necessarily an overnight switch, but we get more and more practice that going, Oh, hang on, I know what I'm going to say isn't stupid. And I know I can handle responses to it. So I'm going to push through. And I'm going to make my poin

t, which leads me on to the sixth thing that confident women do, which is that they trust themselves. They trust their own judgement, they back themselves. So they're not spending as much time thinking, what if I'm wrong on this, they know that they've got the knowledge, the experience, to be able to make those decisions, whatever level they're at. And one of the ways that can help you to do this is by tuning into what I call your inner leader. So in the same way, as we've all got a an inner critic that makes us feel rubbish about ourselves, we also have an inner leader, which is essentially, I guess, our intuition. It's the calm, wise, confident part of ourselves, that knows what to do. And we all have that it might sometimes feel perhaps, like, you don't have that, but you absolutely do have that you have lived moments like that. And most of us can't actually access it very easily. And so that's one of the things we teach you to do within be bolder, is to access it more easily. So that when you're going into a meeting, you're essentially leaving your inner critic outside the door, and you're stepping in embodying your inner leader and trusting yourself and backing yourself more. And this doesn't mean you don't sometimes get that self-doubt that worry where you have done that, and it felt good at the time. And then at two o'clock in the morning, the next day, you're worrying about how you might have been perceived. That is what self-doubt and worry can look like. And like I said at the beginning, there's a difference between confidence and self-doubt. And then what's the final one?

What's the seventh thing that confident women do? It's that they like themselves, and in fact, they love themselves. Now, I went to an all girls school and at school, one of the biggest criticisms you could make of another girl was to say, she totally loves herself. And how sad is that, that someone actually liking and loving themselves was seen as a negative thing. I think in Australia, they have that tall poppy syndrome, where whenever someone seems like they might be being too successful and too confident, then you have to cut them down. And I think the phrase comes from Australia, not that all Australians are doing that I know lots of lovely, lovely Australians. But isn't it sad that someone who likes and loves themselves and a woman who likes and loves themselves is not something that we're trained to celebrate? It's something that we're trained to criticise. And I know for me, what has made a huge difference to my confidence, and my everyday enjoyment of life is learning to like myself, and to love myself, even when I have moments where perhaps I don't like myself, you know, I will still lose my Shi T, sometimes with my son, and I will regret that and feel horrible. But I will show myself a love and compassion in that at the same time as working out, right? How can I avoid doing that? Again. And this is something I talked about in podcast, we talked about it within the boulder as well. But we have this idea that we sometimes that we have to be perfect to be lovable. And what was a really powerful realisation for me is that is our imperfections, that make us likeable, and lovable. And I think that's a really powerful realisation. And and I'm not sure that it's really going to sink through from hearing it on a podcast, but maybe even if just one person listening to this has that as a little bit of a light bulb moment. And it's something you can perhaps journal on.

One of the things that I consider to be imperfections that actually other people love about me. And it could be anything from like, my mom has a tooth that is a bit twisted. And she said to my dad, should I get rid of it? And my dad was like, No, it's part of who you are. It's part, you know, sometimes, what we see is imperfections are things that make us unique. And we're just not meant to be perfect at everything. And it's okay, that we're not and it's very, very hard to relate to, and actually like someone who is completely perfect at everything, because we just don't feel like we can get that sense of connection, and rapport, because we're all too aware of our own imperfections. So starting, if you haven't already to recognise the things that you like about yourself, and starting to show yourself, love and compassion, starting to treat yourself like you would treat your best friend or your sister or your daughter or your niece or your god daughter, the love that you show them. You deserve it, as well. So we feared a little bit into personal development and self help them we do tend to do that occasionally on this podcast. But I hope that that has been a useful exploration may be expelled a few unhelpful myths about what a confident woman is, maybe you've listened and gone, I am more confident than I think I am. Which would be amazing, I would love that. Or maybe you've listened and thought I would love to be able to do some of these things. I want help with the mechanics of that, in which case, I would love to welcome you on to our be bolder course. And the next one is running in March, you will be with lots of women experiencing the same things as you, you will experience that female solidarity. And there's something very magical and special about that. So do go to my website to find out more about that. And there is a discount available if you work for a charity, or if you're self-funding. So to recap, the things that confident women do.

They recognise that self-doubt is just part of the human experience. And it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them.

They embrace the fact that they don't have all the answers.

They support and encourage others as they know it's not a competition. And as well as doing that they can also own their own strengths and achievements and be able to accept and receive positive feedback. They have the courageous and challenging conversations and they claim the authority that comes with their job title.

They're able to say no when they need to to set and hold boundaries.

They speak up even when their inner critic gets vocal. And they trust and back themselves and they trust their own judgement. And then finally they like and love themselves.

So that's it for today's episode. I promise you a bit of an update on what was going on. And the main thing that's going on is we have Be Boder. Obviously, I'm now taking bookings and people are signing up for that. So I would love to see you in that. We also have a name for our new community that's coming soon, which is called being bolder together. And this is all about gathering this incredible community of women at all levels supporting each other, I am super, super excited about it. I'm combining that with creating what I hope is, or at least one day will be we'll see the world's best career resource for women, I am putting all of my great stuff in there, and there will be a self-funding discount. So I know that people have struggled to self-fund their participation on Be Bolder and Influence and Impact because of the cost of living crisis. And so we have created something with a really generous self-funding discount, so that hopefully many of you can access all of these resources, and monthly calls and try our calls to connect with each other.

There's so much coming anyway, if you want to make sure that you are the first to know about that. And we may have some exciting things happening for people who sign up earlier. Make sure you're on my newsletter.

So if you don't get it, it comes in weekly. It shares what's going on in the podcast, it shares some other insights. And just go to my website, Carla Miller training.com. And you will see on there, I think it's at the bottom of the homepage where you can sign up. So do sign up for the newsletter if that sounds like something you might need in your life, because you will be first to know if you do. Okay, take care.

Have a great couple of weeks and I'll speak to you soon. If you've listened to the podcast and you want to know more about how we can work together, here are a few places you can look.

First of all, I've got a couple more freebies. I've got a free PDF on increasing your leadership impact at work, and I've also got a free masterclass on becoming a more influential leader without letting self-doubt hold you back. So head on over to the website to book yourself a place on the masterclass or to download that PDF.

There are my open programmes Influence and Impact for women at management and leadership level and Be Bolder a four week live assertiveness and confidence course for women at any level. You can preorder my book closing the influence gap, a practical guide for women leaders who want to be heard. You can also work with me one to one particularly if you're a senior leader, and you can hire me to work in house to do talks for awareness weeks, one of workshops, a series of workshops or to run my Influence and Impact programme or Be Bolder programme in house as a women's leadership or women's empowerment offering. If you want to talk about any of those on my website, you can drop me an email or you can also book a quick 15 minute chat so we can talk about what you need and how I might be able to help you or your organisation so I look forward to chatting to you