As a follow on from National Enterprise Day and the wonderful events I attended, I was struck by the number of women I met who said they still lacked self-confidence professionally and that they struggled with imposter syndrome.  Not a new topic but one I was surprised to hear, especially as the audience was full of vibrant, successful, ambitious, impactful women.  Why are so many women feeling this way?  I have spoken about this with my own business coach and my supervision team quite often and I have been challenged to consider if really, it’s about the struggles of women speaking up about what they know or believe in. 

From my own experience of over 20 years in global corporate management roles, it has always been my driver to strive to collaborate more effectively, to see internal and external stakeholders’ issues holistically from all sides, to bring my teams with me, rather than create animosity from winning at all costs.  However, in reality I have experienced quite often the frustration of having to accept the establish power culture of winner takes all, the ends justify the means to get the deal over the line.  This had led to frustration, lack of originality and intuition in solutions and a fear of being perceived as ’too soft’ for leadership material.

So what tools worked for me? I believe a proven, effective and simple initiative is business mentoring – this is something I’ve experienced my entire career and I have seen the far-reaching effects mentoring has, especially for women.  Through mentoring, we are immersed in wisdom and insights from others, support with the difficult challenges and courage to rethink our behaviours to really change how we show up as individual contributors, peers and leaders to create an authentically unique mindset where we thrive.

Let me know if you’d like to understand more about how business mentoring works and what it could do for you to support your next step.  Looking forward to hearing from you!

https://www.acexecutivecoach.com