A theme in my conversations this month has been the urge to stay small to feel safe in professional settings. What does that even mean?!

A client admitted that she regularly asks her boss if they want to hire a “real CFO” to replace her, out of fear that she will be found out as not being competent despite her many years of experience executing finance initiatives.

Another client shared that since being promoted she dreads having to present in meetings with executives for fear she will say something that might not be correct. She works with over 100,000 other humans?! I could feel her fear floating through the zoom camera. And I thought, “How can you possibly be expected to be 100% correct about what is taking place with that many moving pieces?” Answer: you can’t.

A mentor of mine recently addressed this mostly female phenomena by asking a group of healer business owners “Who told us there is a right and wrong way to be and to speak? How are we censoring ourselves to appear more professional? And WHY?” As I pondered this prompt, I considered all the times I have raised a question in a meeting or sent an email to clarify something, only to be met with a response that felt like the equivalent to “Well, duh”. 

I also recalled the many times I have blurted out something that had occurred to me as either relevant or amusing and immediately wished I could suck it back into my brain for fear of seeming dumb or inappropriate. I once said the word “haphazard” in a presentation, only I pronounced it “halfhazard” because that was how I thought it was spelled! The President of the company corrected me, and I thought I would never recover from the embarrassment. 

Our culture is increasingly focused on outing one another as wrong or bad to further our own causes or justify our own seat at the table of decision-making power. I am guilty myself. I remember disagreeing with a proposal presented by two female colleagues at a board meeting. I peppered them with questions aimed at undermining their poor data. Thinking back, I was threatened by their presence. Even though this company was 70% women owned, the power structure during my tenure was male dominated. The culture was fraught with intellectual and political competition and one upmanship. I felt my competence as the head of HR regularly called into question. My expectation to be a decision maker in a physician owned company was often met with confusion and disbelief. I’m cringing at myself for choosing to emulate this dynamic during that meeting. 

Memories like that remind me that we all can buy into this toxic, competitive behavior. A technique that helps me and my clients when we feel this instinct to limit ourselves out of fear is to imagine how we would advise our daughter or sister or best friend if they were in the same circumstance. My client who keeps offering to take a demotion did an exercise where she had to answer, “Why NOT me?” instead of the inverse which is often our default, “Why me?” Even if she came up with reasons she was not qualified to be in her job, we could examine the evidence and poke holes in her reasoning together. We also came up with strategies for her to increase her confidence so she would feel safer, and less likely to self-sabotage. 

Another confidence building hack that I use with myself and with clients I learned from the show Ted Lasso. The character Rebecca Welton had to walk into a hostile board meeting full of powerful men after a messy divorce. She was terrified but determined to exude power and confidence. She told another character that she gets up on the couch, stands as tall and as wide as she can to take up maximum space when she is intimidated. Doing this is a mood lifter AND confidence builder. I do it every week in the senior fitness class I teach. It works! Give it a try and next time your inner critic sends you a memo to “stay small”, tell her its ok, you are safe. She means well, but she is not in charge, you are.