Rewriting Your Leadership Narrative
You don’t have to live with imposter syndrome - and you don’t deserve to!
How to shift limiting leadership beliefs into growth mindsets
As a leader, the way you see yourself directly shapes how you show up for your team. If your internal narrative is filled with self-doubt, hesitation, or imposter syndrome, it can hold you back from making confident decisions, inspiring your team and fully stepping into your leadership potential. It also feels, well, yucky, to wonder all day every day if you’re enough. The TL;DR here: You are good enough. Believe in yourself. If you’re going to need a little more support rewriting your leadership story, though, read on.
When you are able to consciously recognize and slowly shift limiting beliefs into a growth mindset, you can transform the way you lead. Limiting beliefs are the internal stories we tell ourselves that create unnecessary barriers. They often sound like:
✔“I’m not experienced enough to lead this team.”
✔“If I don’t have all the answers, people will lose respect for me.”
✔“I’m not a ‘natural’ leader.”
These beliefs don’t just exist in your mind - they come out and influence your behaviors, reactions, and interactions with colleagues. When you believe you’re not capable, you hesitate. When you think you need all the answers, you micromanage. When you’re afraid of being bold, you miss opportunity. These patterns create leadership roadblocks that keep you stuck and unhappy.
A reflection
During leadership coaching sessions, we often try to identify the self-limiting beliefs that clients carry around (they aren’t always clear or conscious!)
To do it on your own, take five minutes to write down beliefs you hold about yourself as a leader and a professional. During this activity, don’t stop to question them, just write.
Once your five minutes are up, pick a couple of the more negative beliefs. For each, ask:
Is this belief based on facts? Whose version of the truth is this?
Whose voice is this belief?
How is this belief helping or hindering my leadership?
What would change if I believed the opposite?
Shifting to a growth mindset
A growth mindset, as coined by psychologist Carol Dweck, is the belief that abilities and intelligence can be developed through effort, learning and perseverance. Leaders with a growth mindset see challenges as opportunities, welcome feedback and focus on continuous improvement.
Take the self-limiting belief you focused on and see if you can reframe it.
Write that growth mindset reframe down somewhere visible and remind yourself of it daily. Really. Say it out loud. What we speak becomes truth and there’s power in that.
Still having trouble silencing your inner critic?
The stories you tell yourself shape the leader you become, but it’s normal to struggle to find these stories alone. A coach can help you identify the patterns that are holding you back, support you with reframing them for yourself, and be your biggest champion as you step into your true leadership story.
