#56 | The Moment Self-Trust Slips: Why Capable Women Second-Guess Themselves Under Pressure and Reduce Their Influence

Have you ever received one piece of feedback right before an important meeting and suddenly stopped trusting your own judgment?

This episode, the story of Rachel and her big presentation, will feel painfully familiar if you’re a capable woman in leadership who can prepare brilliantly, think clearly, and still unravel the moment someone questions your approach. It gets to the heart of why high-achieving women can mistake self-protection for professionalism and dilute their strongest thinking right when visibility matters most.

 You will :

• Understand why this is not simply a confidence problem
• Recognise the hidden pattern that causes you to soften, edit, and second-guess yourself under pressure
• Leave reflecting more honestly on how you respond to critical feedback before high-stakes moments

Play this episode to spot the exact moment self-trust slips and start protecting your best thinking when it matters most.

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New episodes are released every Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings.

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This podcast explores resilience, imposter syndrome, and credibility while unpacking how boundaries, conflict, and feedback shape the way we handle pressure, influence, and guilt at work. It also looks at promotion, work-life balance, people pleasing, decision making, and visibility, offering honest conversations about how to grow professionally without losing your confidence or yourself.

Transcript

Caroline Esterson (00:02)
Hello and welcome to the new series. Today is Monday, which means we start with a story. And today that story stars a woman called Rachel. She left the house at 7.43 and by 8.51 she had already talked herself out of her own best thinking and she hadn't even got to work yet.

Caroline Esterson (00:24)
Hello, I'm Caroline Esterson and this is Little Moves Big Careers, helping women in corporate leadership who are constantly second guessing themselves to build the daily habits that compound into unshakable confidence. Yep, that's you.

Caroline Esterson (00:41)
And if this is your first time here, then welcome. I am so glad you found us. So let me tell you what you're going to get today. Firstly, as you listen to Rachel's story, you might just feel like you've been watching your own morning unfold, specifically and uncomfortably watching your morning. Two, by the end of this episode, you'll stop calling what Rachel does a confidence problem. It isn't.

It has a completely different name. And once you know it, you will hear it and see it everywhere.

And finally, I'm going to leave you at the worst possible moment. I know, I know, with a question that I really want you to sit with until Wednesday. Hopefully you won't be able to put it down. That's reflection at its best. Fair warning.

Right, Rachel, Let's go.

Caroline Esterson (01:36)
It's 7.43am and Rachel is in her kitchen.

The Oatly is on the wrong shelf again in the fridge. Rachel knows this because she's staring directly at it behind the kids apple juice and somehow her brain has stopped being able to process simple spatial information.

She might be in the kitchen, but her brain is most definitely not with her.

Her brain is in the two o'clock meeting, reading the slides, checking the order, wondering whether the third section runs on too long, whether she should have split the recommendation into two slides instead of one, and whether Dom will think the font is too small, and whether, Rach, have you seen my, that's Dan, standing in the doorway in his work shirt, one cufflinking, holding the other one out like it's an offering, like,

she's the keeper of all the cufflinks? Like this is a reasonable question to ask at 7.43am when she's standing in front of an open fridge trying to locate the oat milk. No, she says. She finds the oatly, she makes the coffee, she puts two slices of toast in the toaster and immediately forgets about them because Isla has appeared from nowhere wearing one shoe, a school jumper on, inside out

and an expression of complete betrayal. Mom, my reading record. It's in the bag. It's not in the bag. Rachel doesn't look up from the coffee.

It's in the bag. It's been in the bag since she signed it at 11.15 last night. It's sitting at the kitchen table after Dan had gone to bed, after she put a load of washing on.

After she prepped Isla's snack box, after she checked her emails one last time and then wished she hadn't. It's in the front pocket, she says, a small one. Isla disappears, Dan reappears, cufflinks thankfully now in. Do you know if my dry cleaning is? ⁓ Wardrobe left side behind your coats. You are a star. Rachel doesn't feel like a star.

Rachel feels like a woman who's running parallel operating system in her head at all times. One for the presentation, one for the household, one for the permanent low level anxiety that she has forgotten something important. And all three are running simultaneously. And none of them are running particularly well right now.

The toast pops, she spreads peanut butter on it, cuts it wrong again. Isla likes triangles and she's cut rectangles, considers cutting it again and then decides there's just not enough time. So she wraps it on foil and puts it on the counter.

Isla's still looking for her reading record. Front pocket, Rachel says louder. The small one, the one with the zip. Dan is now doing something on his phone. She doesn't ask what. Mum, the zip's broken. It isn't broken. It sticks sometimes. She has been meaning to replace the bag for three weeks, but hasn't had chance. Rachel crosses the kitchen, opens the pocket, removes the reading record.

Tada! And hands it to Isla. Found it, she says. Isla takes it without looking up.

the invisible internal tally of things she's done correctly before 7.45am, which no one will ever acknowledge. Her phone buzzes on the counter. She makes the mistake of glancing at it. It's an email. From Dominic.

Subject line. Quick thoughts before today. her stomach does the thing. That specific cold dropping thing it does when a subject line contains the word thoughts or the word quick or even worse, both of them.

She puts the phone face down. Dan, can you do shoes please? Yep.

Isla shoes! Rach, do want me to? I'm fine. She's not fine. She's already calculating the walk to the station. 11 minutes if she leaves now, 8 if she moves quickly.

She can't leave now because Isla is standing in the hallway with one shoe on, looking at the other shoe as though it's a philosophical problem. Dan on it, Isla, other shoe, come on now.

Do you have your meeting thing today? Dan calls from the hall. Only I said I'd do football pickup, but if you need me at home, I'll be fine, Rachel says for the second time in 40 seconds. She picks up her bag. She picks up her laptop.

She picks up the coffee she's made and hasn't had chance to drink yet. She's putting on a coat with one hand and holding the coffee with the other when Dan appears in the doorway. Babe, you look great by the way, he says. She know he means it. She knows he's trying. She smiles at him because he's trying and she loves him and this isn't her fault. Reading record, she says, and hands it to Isla, who is now fully shod and apparently ready.

as though the last four minutes didn't happen at all. Rachel opens the front door. Her phone is still face down on the kitchen counter, so she jogs back for it. Quick thoughts before today. She puts it in a bag without opening it. She tells herself she'll read it on the train and she walks to the station in eight minutes.

Caroline Esterson (07:16)
It's 8.17am, the 8.15 to Victoria, but it's absolutely fine. The 8.15 is never actually on time.

Caroline Esterson (07:24)
Rachel, ta-da, gets a seat. This is the first good thing that has happened today. She puts her coffee on the fold down tray. She puts the bag on a lap. She looks out of the window at the back of someone's garden. A trampoline, the deflated paddling pool, child's bicycle on its side.

and she allows herself approximately four seconds of not thinking about anything at all. Then she opens the email.

Hi Rachel, just a few observations ahead of today. Thought it'd be useful to share. Her stomach does that flip again. The data section feels a little dense, might be worth streamlining.

Caroline Esterson (08:05)
She opens up her laptop and pulls up the presentation, looks at slide seven, the data section.

Caroline Esterson (08:11)
The one she spent an evening on. The one she thought was actually the strongest part of her presentation. She starts moving things around, cuts a chart, moves the call out box, reads it again. Better. Yeah. Is it? Maybe. ⁓ she just doesn't know anymore. Maybe it's just different. She can't tell. She goes back to the email.

The recommendations feel a little strong for this audience. Worth softening the ask? She reads that twice. A little strong? She goes to slide 11, the recommendations. The ones she'd spent three weeks building towards. The ones that at various points during their making, she'd been genuinely excited about. The ones that said clearly, specifically, without hedging, exactly what she thought the team needed to do.

why and by when. She reads them with Dom's words sitting on top of them like a filter

And then she does something she'll think about later on the platform of Victoria. She picks up a pen and she starts crossing things out. Must becomes could consider. Will becomes may. This approach requires becomes one option might be the recommendation that said the team needed to restructure its quarterly review process. The one that she'd actually researched and believed in most she deletes entirely.

replaces it with something vaguer, something that's more of a gesture towards an idea without committing to it, something that couldn't possibly make anyone feel uncomfortable. She tells herself she's being responsive. She's reading the room before she's even in it, showing that she can take feedback. She goes back to the email. And I wonder if your delivery style sometimes works against you with audiences like this.

something for you to reflect on. She reads it once, closes a laptop, looks out of the window.

have given way to the backs of industrial units, a car park,

wall with a mural on it she can't quite make out at this speed. Your delivery star sometimes works against you.

She opens the laptop again.

She goes to slide one, her opening line, the one she'd written and rewritten and finally landed on last week.

loud in the bathroom at 6 a.m. on Saturday morning. Well damn snored in the bedroom and Isla watched television and she stood there in her dressing gown, reading the whole thing in her head. The line was, I'm gonna ask you to think about this differently today. She reads it, deletes it.

and then types, thank you for the opportunity to share some thoughts with you today. She reads that back.

she knows it's the verbal equivalent of an apologetic cough.

It's the opening line of a woman who's not sure she should actually be delivering that presentation. It's exactly the kind of line Dom's email has produced in her. And she knows that somewhere underneath everything she knows.

But the knowing and the doing are two completely different places right now, and the doing is winning hands down. She closes her laptop, picks up her coffee. It's cold by now, but she drinks it anyway.

She thinks about Dan asking if she needed him home tonight. She thinks about Isla's face when she found that reading record. She thinks about the fox she saw crossing someone's garden on the way in, and she holds onto that for a moment. The fox just crossing the garden can

completely unbothered. And then the train stops, the doors open

cold coffee

Quick thoughts before today.

⁓ 9.04am the office. Rachel walks through the door at exactly the time she's supposed to walk through the door. This has required very specific effort.

She did a lipstick on the train, found a bathroom at Victorian, looked at herself in the mirror for long enough to decide that she looked like someone who had their life together, which is not how she felt, but is apparently how she looks. She straightened her jacket in the lift. She took one breath before the doors opened.

She is from the outside, completely fine. Morning. That's Callum.

the Tony people who slept well are enthusiastic. He's already at his desk with a large coffee and what appears to be like a breakfast burrito and the general demeanor of a man for whom today is just a Tuesday. ⁓ morning, Rachel says. She puts her bag down. She opens the laptop and she doesn't look at the presentation. Big day today, Callum says cheerfully.

Not a question, just an observation offered into the air like he's commenting on the weather. Hmm, says Rachel. ⁓ you ready? Rachel looks at him. He's looking at her with the open, uncomplicated face of someone who has absolutely no idea what the inside of her head looks like right now. No idea about Dom's email or about the recommendations she softened on the train or about the opening line she deleted

with an apologetic cough. Yeah I think so she says, yeah ready. She makes herself a coffee she doesn't really need and stands at the machine while it makes its noise and she runs the presentation in her head. The new version, the one she sanded down.

Slide one, the apologetic cough. Slide seven, the streamlined data. Slide 11, the softened recommendations. The deleted one, the one that she'd actually believed in. She goes back to her desk and opens the presentation. She looks at slide 11 for a long time, then closes it again. Rach, quick question, Callum says. The Sheffield project,

Are we still going ahead with the April timeline or is that shifted? Only I've got a meeting with them on Thursday and I'm not really sure what to tell them.

Rachel pulls up the Sheffield project notes, finds the timeline, reads it and gives Callum a clear, specific, accurate answer about the April timeline and about what he should tell them on Thursday. It takes six minutes. Six minutes she doesn't have.

She's now writing Callum's Thursday talking points and ahead on top of the presentation, on top of Dom's email and on top of the operating system that is still somewhere underneath all of this, tracking whether Dan remembered to put the reading record back in Isla's bag.

Brilliant. Cheers said Callum as he turned back to his burrito. Rachel looks at her screen. She has four hours until the presentation.

She's got a one to one.

At 10 that she can't move, has a document she promised the project team by noon that she's not started. And she has Dom's email sitting in her inbox like a small cold stone. she opens a new document starts writing the product team notes.

At 1147 she sends them 13 minutes late. She sends a separate message apologizing for the delay. She doesn't mention why.

At 12.30 she eats lunch at a desk. She's not hungry, but she eats it anyway because she knows from experience that going into high stakes meetings with nothing in her stomach

ensures that her stomach will make churning noises

wrong time.

she goes to the bathroom, looks in the mirror, same person as this morning, still composed, still fine from the outside, and goes back to her desk.

She opens the presentation one more time.

reads it from slide one to 11, thinks about the recommendation she's deleted, doesn't put it back. At 1.45 she says the presentation, closes the laptop, picks up her notebook and pen. Off to the line she says, because she has to say something,

Callum looks up from his screen. Oh yeah, good luck.

⁓ Rachel quick one before you go, Sheffield thing. Do you mean April the 17th or April the 24th? Only I look back at the notes and there seems to be two dates.

Rachel stops, spins around, gives Callum the correct date, April the 17th. The 24th is the review, not the launch. She's completely certain about this. She tells him clearly and calmly and without any trace of what is happening inside her chest.

Oh, you're a legend says Callum. He writes down the details.

Rachel picks back up her notebook, walks to the

presses the button for the third floor,

stands in the lift for approximately 11 seconds with her eyes closed. The doors

At 1.58, she's in the corridor outside the boardroom. Rachel's two minutes early. She's always two minutes early.

She stands outside the boardroom door but doesn't go in. Oh, she suddenly can feel her feet, they hurt.

She'd been wearing these shoes and they pinch since 7.43am and it's now 1.58am. And she's walked by her rough calculations about four and a half miles in them between home and the station, the station and the office, the bathroom, the desk and the coffee machine and now here.

And she notices this now because it is the first time she has stood completely still

all day. She looks down at her phone, slide 11.

Those

used to say clearly without hedging with the evidence to back them up that the team needed to restructure its quarterly review process, that the current model was creating lag that was costly.

That was the fix. was specific, achievable, and she'd worked out exactly how. That slide used to end with the timeline. Now it ends with, what option might be to consider reviewing the current approach. She reads that back.

She wrote it on the train this morning because a man sent her an email at 7.51 and her stomach did that thing and she picked up a pen and just wrote. She thinks about what that slide used to say, the specific words the team must implement. She'd chosen that word deliberately, must, not could, not might, because she'd done the research and she knew what the numbers said. She wasn't guessing, she'd been certain.

She had been for approximately three weeks, genuinely certain. She's not certain now. She's standing outside the boardroom in shoes that hurt with a presentation she half believes in and the opening line of a woman who is sorry to be taking up your time. She could change it back. She has the original in her drafts. She could open it up right now, copy slide 11, paste it over 40 seconds and she's got two minutes. She doesn't open it.

She tells herself it's because Dom knows the audience better than she does. She tells herself she's being professional, that she's being responsive.

and that taking feedback gracefully is something people notice. She stands in the corridor in her painful shoes and she tells herself all of these

And then she puts her phone in the bag, ready to go in.

Caroline Esterson (19:49)
And here's where I'm going to leave Rachel, standing outside the door, changed presentation in hand, best idea already deleted, and the opening line already softened. Because I want you to sit with something before Wednesday. What would you do? Not, what should Rachel do? What would you do in that situation?

If that email landed in your inbox at 7.45 this morning, if those words, something to reflect on, had dropped into your chest on the morning you needed to be at your best, would you have rewritten the slides? Would you have deleted the idea that you really believed in? And would you walk into that room as the version of yourself that got the feedback or the version of yourself that are prepared for three weeks? There's no wrong answer here. There's just your answer.

and it tells you something.

On Wednesday, I'm going to come back with the analysis, the behavioral science behind what happens to us when we get critical feedback right before a high stakes moment. What it does to our brain, why we make the choices we make, and what excellence actually looks like in that corridor. And on Friday, well, we have a song that is carried more than one woman I know into a room she was terrified of.

plus three quick fire moves that you can use before your next moment.

Caroline Esterson (21:23)
So sit with Rachel and yourself for a while.

But before you go, I've got one ask, just one.

if you listen to Rachel's morning today and thought of someone, maybe a colleague, a friend, or a woman on your team who you know is quietly brilliant, yet manages to talk herself out of her own best thinking, send this to her.

because she needs to know she's not the only one who feels like this. That's it. That's the whole ask. I'm Caroline Esterson. And remember, make your move, even if it's tiny, especially if it's tiny.