The Boardroom Story: What Self-Trust Actually Looks Like
I'm not a big fan of crying at work.
If you're a crier, absolutely no shade to you, it's just not something I did very often.
But I have cried at work about three times in my career (I'll tell you all the stories one day deal?) and one of those times I was sitting in a boardroom about 6 months after I came back from maternity leave.
I can remember the exact mahogany table under my elbows when my manager, who I loved, told me that my name had come up in someone's exit interview...
And not in a good way, lol.
In a nutshell, the feedback was that because I was working part-time, I wasn't available enough and wasn't able to help him with certain tasks.
I was pretty taken aback by this, thus the tears.
But once I'd had a bit of time to think (OK maybe obsess) over it, I started asking myself some questions.
What meetings had I actually missed because I wasn't working that day?
What work had I failed to do?
What had I genuinely been unavailable for?
Didn't I help him win a $2 mil contract??
And when I looked at the facts, I thought:
I've done every bloody piece of work this guy has ever asked me to do.
Which meant I could actually consider that maybe his opinion wasn't the truth.
Maybe he'd made an assumption about my availability??
Maybe he was pissed off with me?? (likely as I'd called him out on a piece of work he'd done incorrectly a few months before)
Maybe there was something I could have done differently?
But I didn't automatically have to make it mean his feedback was right.
Old me probably would have spent weeks or months obsessing over it, trying to prove myself, making myself more available and trying to get rid of that horrible feeling that I wasn't doing enough.
Instead, I was able to step back, look at what was actually happening and think:
Yeah...I don't actually think he's right.
And then move on with my life.
That's what self-trust at work feels like.
It's not about never getting upset or never questioning yourself (impossible really); it's about being able to look at what's happening, decide what you actually think and trust yourself enough to work out what to do next (and much more quickly).
I've been the woman crying in the boardroom.
I've lived this part of the story, and it's a big part of why I've created The Executive Edit – my new 12 week private coaching program for high-performing women who want to get on top of their work, trust themselves to handle whatever's next and get the rest of their life back.
If you’re thinking “I want work to look like that”, book a Coffee Chat:
