I just finished a coaching session with a client from a Fortune 500 company – and something we were talking about really stuck with me.
This client – we’ll call her Mary – was a new team manager. She was well-liked and respected in her company.
But any time she had to speak up in a meeting with senior management – she would freeze.
This was standing in the way of her promotion: if she didn’t speak up, she stayed invisible.
This is what we uncovered:
We all love being praised because we love feeling validated.
We want others to tell us how good we are because we want to feel good about ourselves.
But in doing that you’re giving so much power to things outside your control.
If you don’t get praised –
If you don’t get that promotion –
If you don’t get that deal –
You immediately feel like you’re worthless.
Or at least, you do if you’ve used to basing your self-image on how others see you.
This is what was going on:
Mary excelled at her work. She would get praised for it, which would feed her sense of self-worth. But when she got criticized, it would make her question her capabilities.
So she would hesitate speaking up in critical meetings because of the fear of being criticized.
This is exactly how I used to feel.
We all need that validation.
But if you always depend on what others think of you for your sense of self-worth – you’ll have low self-esteem like I did for 30+ years.
The idea is not to remove that feedback loop but to learn to give yourself feedback.
This way, you take back control of how you feel:
Now you’re giving yourself either negative or positive feedback -so you’ve already learned to be in control of what impacts your feelings.
Mary learned to first give herself feedback on how well she did and how she can improve.
She took that positive reinforcement into her own hands. So now she felt confident before and after every meeting: she listened to her own voice the MOST.
You don’t need to rely on someone else’s praise to feel good about yourself.
But figuring out how to give yourself internal validation does more than that.
Because now you’re in control of how you feel, you’re more in control of your next steps.
Now you’re more motivated to improve – because the results are in YOUR control, not anyone else’s.
In Mary’s case – she first learned that when she spoke up, the most important person judging her was HERSELF.
And then, once we figured out how Mary could give herself feedback – she knew if she did something differently next time, she would be the best judge of how well she did.
This internal feedback loop is what drives the top 1% performers to excel at whatever they do – regardless of whether they succeed or fail in the short-term.
You never need to put your confidence in the hands of things you can’t control.
This is exactly what we’ll learn in the NEW Speak as a Leader program that I’m building for you.
🔥 Be the first to find out about the NEW Speak as a Leader program
(coming April 2025)
