[Alicia Davis] Have you ever felt self-doubt when you wanted to communicate something to someone, you just, you know, you get all up in your head about it? And then you stop yourself? If that’s true, then we would love to share a couple of thoughts about that today. Right, Stacie?

[Stacie Watson] Yeah, you know, I think we’ve both had the opportunity recently to be with leadership teams. I was with one in a retreat a few days ago, and one of the participants was a director level, so a little bit of a lower level org chart-wise from other people in the room. And this person had only been in her role for five months. And so it was interesting, you know, at first, I could sort of see her doing a lot of observing and holding back. And as the day went on, and there was a lot of brainstorming happening, she just brought such energy and perspectives. And I thought to myself, you know, sometimes I think we doubt when we’re in new situations, or maybe we’re the youngest, or the only of whatever, woman/person of color at a table, you know, will my voice count? Do people want to hear from me? And yet I saw an action, the power of being new and having just a different perspective. And you had a similar situation, right?

[Alicia Davis] I did, you know, I was with a team. And it was, there were three or four new team members, and they were doing a lot of direct care. And they were new to the team. And we were having this very open and vulnerable conversation around the room. And they just said, many of them said, I feel like I’m a burden when I go to ask questions. And you could just see there was a ripple effect around the table of “No, we want you to ask questions, we value your opinion, it’s so important that we have a conversation with you.” And, you know, I think we can, again, we can just get in our own heads and in our own way, about sharing things. And of course, that impacts our confidence. And we want to offer this practice or this approach as a way of really building our confidence. We talked about this in our Communicate with Confidence session. And it’s really about how do we both notice that we’re having this negative self-talk that’s holding us back. And then what’s really important Stacie, is that we actually do something different, right?

[Stacie Watson] Absolutely. You know, the noticing is, in some ways, the most powerful part because that’s where we can really begin to shift the way that some of these internal thoughts get in the way. And so as we notice, we can say, okay, I’m not sure, but maybe I can check out my question, right? I don’t know if they want to hear my opinion. I can ask that question. Or I can go to someone trusted on the team, and talk about some of my doubts. I think what’s really important is sort of getting out of the sort of paralysis that can come from the doubt, and taking some action. And I think that’s really our invitation to each person today. All of you watching, you know, notice, if you find yourself in a moment where you’re feeling some doubt, and think of one thing you can do that will help you shift even a little bit into action. Because your voice is important. And we see it every day, how important that is. So we want to invite you to find a little more confidence in you know, the way that you approach your communication.

[Alicia Davis] That’s right. We have a number of learning sessions on communication as well as other topics., and we were talking about Communicate with Confidence today. And so we’d love to hear from you. If you think this topic would resonate with your team – love to have a conversation with you. I’m Alicia Davis.

[Stacie Watson] I’m Stacie Watson.

[Alicia Davis] We are the founders, co-owners, and executive coaches at Transformative Leadership Strategies. And we would also love for you to follow us on social media @TLS_transforms on Instagram. So thanks so much and we hope to hear from you soon.

[Stacie Watson] Thank you.