5 Myths to Unlearn to Become a More Confident Leader

Confidence gets talked about like it's something you're either born with or you're not. Extroverts have it, introverts don't. Some people just have "it" and some people never will.

In this episode of You're the Boss, Now What?, Desiree Petrich pushes back on that idea completely. After coaching and speaking to thousands of leaders, she's found that self-leadership, not team dynamics, is usually the number one thing leaders want to work on. Not better meetings. Not less conflict. Confidence. The ability to speak up, to lead with executive presence, to trust their own decisions.

This episode is about leadership development from the inside out. Five common beliefs about confident leaders get named, challenged, and turned into something usable.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why the belief that confident leaders "don't let criticism get to them" is actually working against your growth, and the blue hair story that makes it click
• How to use the question "what if I'm the problem?" as a tool for better decisions, not self-doubt
• Why comparison isn't the thief of joy when you use it on purpose, and how a DISC assessment changed the way Desiree leads
• The real difference between confidence and arrogance, and how imposter syndrome hides behind both
• Why your confidence at work is just your confidence at home wearing different clothes, and what that means for your leadership mindset

Whether you're managing a small team or leading an entire department, this episode reframes what leadership development actually requires. It's not about looking like you have it together. It's about knowing yourself well enough to lead like you mean it.

If this episode helped you rethink what confident leadership looks like:
Follow or subscribe wherever you listen so you don't miss Monday's leadership tip or next week's episode, where Desiree shares her brand new keynote concept, Breaking the Fourth Wall: The Secret to Building High Trust Teams.

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Join Desiree live at the Intentional Leader Summit in Marshall, or grab your copy of her book, Taking Intentional Action, to go deeper on the philosophy behind this episode.

This podcast for managers is here to help you:

• Grow your leadership development
 • Navigate team management with confidence
 • Learn how to handle conflict at work
 • Apply real, practical leadership tips

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Transcript

Desiree (00:01.442)
We've all been told a lot of things about confidence. Sometimes we've been told that you're either born with it or you're not. Sometimes we feel like extroverts are the ones that get the confidence and introverts are the ones that don't. We've been told that it's a skill that you can develop over time if you're working towards it. We've all been told a lot of things, and some of them are true, but I also believe that some of the things we know about confidence are myths, things that we have to

Turnover in our head in order for us to start to feel like confidence is something that we can have as a leader, as a parent, as a mentor. So today we're gonna go over five of the myths that I hear over and over about confidence from different leaders, different teams. And we're going to turn them into a skill or a habit that you can work towards to start to grow your own confidence.

So welcome back to You're the Boss Now What? I'm your host, Desiree Petrick, and our goal here is to help you lead yourself and your team with confidence. So lean in and let's get started.

Desiree (01:11.118)
So I have coached and worked with and spoken to thousands of leaders. And when I get an opportunity to work a little bit more intimately with someone, whether it's in a small group coaching program like my intentional leader accelerator, or it's really intimate, like a one-on-one, I will ask them what their goals are. What are your goals over the course of time that we get to spend together?

And I'll usually give them some examples like do you want to get better with the trust you have with the direct report or improve communication with a coworker you maybe don't like? Sometimes it's team dynamics, like do you want to have and be able to lead more productive team meetings? Or do you want to help reduce conflict between two of your team members? The other category is self-leadership, which is do you want to be able to speak up more confidently in meetings? Or do you want to build better executive presence?

And I always just assumed that the teen dynamics was gonna be the thing that most leaders wanted to improve, just because in a leadership position, that is part of your responsibility is to make sure that your team is working cohesively together. But I would argue to say that more often than not, the thing that people choose as their number one goal in their leadership development is self-leadership. It's speaking up more confidently, it's showing up more confidently.

It's having better body language and executive presence and a more

Desiree (02:43.682)
And an overall feeling of confidence in the way that they lead. And recently I've been hearing a lot of myths about leadership, a lot of reasons why people think that confidence

Desiree (02:58.734)
Confidence is not for them. So I want to bust some of those myths with you today. And we're gonna dive right in. Myth number one is that confident leaders don't let criticism get to them. This is absolutely not true. In our heads, we don't actually get to control the first thought that pops into our head. If someone criticizes us, even if it's within the best of intentions, it still hurts. It still derives a

Desiree (03:37.496)
The immediate thought that pops into our head is evolutionary. It's automatic. It's not something we get to choose. And so to believe that confident leaders don't let criticism get to them is naive and untrue. It likely does immediately bother them in some way, shape, or form. But I saw this

Desiree (04:06.158)
But I recently saw this brilliant video on Instagram and it put this into perspective perfectly. A guy said to a girl, I hate your blue hair. Are you offended? She's like, No. And he asked her why. And she said, Well, because I don't have blue hair. He said, Okay, so you don't believe me because you know, you have a belief that that's not true because it's not accurate. She said, Yeah, exactly. So he said, Okay.

I believe that you are a rude

Desiree (04:43.246)
So he said, Okay, what if I told you that you are a rude leader?

Desiree (04:56.578)
He said, What if I told you that you're really bad at handling conflict? He said, Would you believe me? She said, Yeah, I I do believe you. And he asked why. And she said, because I I kind of have thought that about myself. I've I believe it. He said, exactly. When it comes to criticism, the reason that it gets to us as much as it does, the reason it bothers us as much as it does, is because a part of us believes

That the criticism is true. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. When we get bothered by a piece of constructive criticism and it's bothering us, it just means that it's something that we get to work towards. The myth is that believing it's not supposed to get to us is what confident leaders do. No. Confident leaders just understand that if they feel something

Desiree (06:06.956)
No, in order to gain confidence as a leader, you have to be able to differentiate the things that people are saying and how we actually feel about them. Not just taking their criticism or even their feedback at face value, but understanding why it impacts us the way that we do. Being able to think through that process is what creates confidence for leaders, not just assuming that it doesn't bother them. Myth number two, confident leaders trust their instincts.

without question. I will tell you what, as a facilitator of working genius, I can tell you that discernment is a genius. Discernment is in the ability to have a gut reaction to something, the ability to make a decision without a lot of hemming and hawing, having confidence around making a decision. It's a genius that some people have and some people don't. So to be able to say that confident leaders trust their instincts without question would mean that only people with

The genius of discernment and working genius are confident leaders. And I know for a fact that's not true. So to bust this myth, I want to tell you that confident leaders don't trust every instinct. They trust that they know if a mistake is made or if something doesn't work out that they're going to be able to try again. They trust that the people around them will say if they don't think something will work. They

Desiree (07:45.794)
One of my favorite ways to explain this to my clients is think about the decision that just went through your head. Maybe it's that a coworker irritated you and your original instinct, the very first thought was they didn't do what they needed to do and they're in the wrong and I'm in the right.

Desiree (08:10.188)
If that's our initial instinct, if we just always trusted that instinct without question, we're going to not only create a lot of problems within our team, but we're also going to limit our ability to have

Desiree (08:29.368)
To use different perspectives in the way that we make decisions. We're not going to be thinking about other people because we just assume that our instinct is right. So instead, I teach my clients to ask this question. What if I'm the problem? What if for a moment I assumed that I was the problem and I question how I could fix this problem? If I'm the only one I can control, which you are, if I was the problem, how could I fix this?

Before assuming your original idea is right, before assuming that another person is in the wrong or their opinion is wrong, question, what if I'm the problem? What if I'm wrong? Then what? How could I change this? What could we do better? What could I do differently? How could I approach this differently? That is what creates a confident leader. Not the automatic assumption that you're right, but the ability to put yourself in place of the wrong decision.

And working through that process of seeing it both ways, seeing a different perspective. That is going to create a confident leader.

Desiree (09:40.974)
Okay, myth number three. Confidence is the thief of joy. Now, this isn't a myth in the sense that it's wrong, because confidence

Desiree (09:53.772)
Because comparison can steal your joy, it can steal your happiness if you're doing it in the sense of they are better than me, they are growing faster than me, they make more money than me, and that makes me less than. If you're using comparison in that way, it can absolutely steal your peace, your joy, your happiness, whatever you want to call it. But what confident leaders do is they use comparison as a tool, they use it on purpose.

It's not something to avoid. I did this when I was very first managing in the healthcare space.

Desiree (10:38.712)
When I was managing the dementia facility and realized, you know what, I don't think that I'm doing this right. And I finally went and asked my boss for help. He sent me a disc assessment. I took the assessment and instead of doing what I had always done in the past, which was get really frustrated at the things I wasn't good at.

Desiree (11:03.214)
And just assume that everything in the assessment was correct and there was nothing I could do about it. I said, What is it about these other personality styles that I want to embody? What is it about these mentors and leaders that I do respect? What do they have that I don't? And so I was comparing myself to different personality styles. I was comparing myself to different leaders and saying, What do they have that I don't? And why is it that I want

What they have. But then I took it a step further and I said, How do I get what I want? How do I get from where I am to where they are? Not assuming that what they have is the picture perfect version of success, but just saying, Let me pull on some of the threads of what they have that I don't, and ask myself, how can I get those things? Use that comparison as a tool, do it on purpose.

So that you can start to grow into that person. It does a second thing that's kind of cool too. It takes away a lot of the resentment that you feel towards that person for being better than you, for being stronger, for being more competent, for being whatever it is that they are. It no longer makes you resent that person. It makes you

Desiree (12:26.476)
It makes you more willing to utilize them as a mentor, whether they know you're they're your mentor or not. It makes you want to

Desiree (12:50.368)
It helps you to grow in a way that you wouldn't have before because all of a sudden there's a gap you're trying to close instead of just looking at confident leadership as this abyss and you don't know which direction to go. Find the leaders and the people who have the things that you want that you don't have and pull on the threads, the pieces that could potentially get you into that space. That is what confident leaders do. Myth number four, confident leaders have it all together and don't show weakness.

They maybe look like that, but I promise you, if they are willing to be transparent with you and you wouldn't ask them, do you feel like you have it all together? Their immediate answer without hesitation is gonna be, no, are you joking? I don't feel like I have it all together. I feel like a hot mess half the time. If you go to them and they're willing to be transparent, that's that's part of it, right? They have to be willing to be honest with you and show and be vulnerable with you. But if you were to go to them and say,

Do you feel like you struggle sometimes, or did you struggle getting to this point? They would tell you, yes, of course I did. No one gets to where they are without struggles and failures and mistakes. Confident leaders don't have it all together. They trust that the people around them don't want a perfect leader. Confident leaders are typically willing.

Desiree (14:23.544)
Typically willing to be honest and transparent and vulnerable or whatever it is, whatever word it is that you want to use for this. But you have to realize there's a difference between confidence and arrogance. If you have an arrogant leader, it appears as though they're confident, but their arrogance is going to make it so that they don't want to necessarily help the people around them. And honestly, their arrogance might be imposter syndrome, right? They're showing up.

As confident, even though they don't feel that way. And so they're putting on this mask. They're trying really hard to make it look like they're not trying hard because they don't believe it themselves yet. So a truly confident leader, a quiet, peaceful type of confidence is a leader who wants to show up and help others. And they do that by showing you that it's not actually perfection. Confidence is a

Desiree (15:23.854)
confident leaders, they trust the people around them to not feel the need to try and show up perfectly. They're showing up with an an actual type of confidence.

Desiree (15:37.739)
a genuine confidence.

And myth number five, confidence at work and confidence at home are two different things. Now, this myth was one I kind of made up, but I feel like more and more, if you were to go on LinkedIn and scroll for even five minutes, you see people saying, Stop posting selfies, stop posting workouts, stop posting all of these different life things. I'm using life in in air quotes, because people think that life and work are separate.

Some people, whether you've been conditioned to believe that they're two different things, whether you understand them to be two different forms of skills that you're trying to grow, I don't know what it is. I completely disagree with it. I believe that there is one life and everything that we do at home to grow ourselves is transferring to our work life and vice versa. And so the habit that I believe confident leaders have is they know that the confidence that they have at work is just their confidence at home.

showing up in work clothes. Let me explain a little bit further. Most of my leadership lessons, if you've listened to any of my leadership tip episodes, very, very few of them are happening in the workplace. It's me going out to eat with my family, me going on a walk by myself, me working out in my shed, me hanging out with my kids. All of my biggest leadership lessons in life come from everyday life. They rarely come

From the time I'm spending in an office. So when we can develop ourselves at work, when we find consistency and discipline in moving our bodies, or spending time in the kitchen working on our wellness, when we can spend time helping our kids to learn leadership lessons, or to help them to understand.

Desiree (17:34.966)
Or talk them through a difficult time. We are reteaching ourselves leadership lessons. We're using the lessons we've learned to teach them. Every time you want to have a fight with your spouse, but you can talk yourself into believing, well, maybe I'm the problem here. Maybe I should rethink this and how I could fix the situation. You're using the confidence.

Desiree (18:00.13)
You're using your leadership skills from every different area of your life in every area of life. So if you feel like you just cannot gain the confidence at work that you want, even though you've done all of the things right that people are telling you, look at look at what it is that you do when you're not at work. Look at the time that you spend.

Desiree (18:24.064)
on your body. Look at the time you spend in your relationships. Are you listening to or reading personal development when you're not at work? Confident leaders show up confident in every area of life because they know that they're putting in the time and energy and effort in every area of life. They're not separate. It's one life.

Desiree (18:51.662)
As you can probably hear throughout those five different mists that we just bust.

Desiree (19:01.12)
As you can probably hear throughout the last 20 minutes, I am so passionate about this topic because I feel like people think that we're gatekeeping confidence. Like if you aren't able to set boundaries yet with your family or at work that you that you can't claim confidence, if you don't have the body that you want or the discipline that you want, that you can't claim confidence, if you don't show up to work exactly how you want and hold it together 100% of the time.

And show off this picture of perfection that you can't claim confidence. That is not the case. Confidence is a one step at a time, one lesson at a time, one conversation at a time, skill. And it's something that you can continue to work towards. Let me know which one of these you've been thinking, which one you're going to think about a little bit differently going forward. Number

Desiree (20:06.028)
Number four, the fact that confident leaders have it all together and don't show weakness, leads us directly into next week's episode where I am going to

Desiree (20:18.336)
Share with you some points from my brand new keynote. It's called Breaking the Fourth Wall The Secret to Building High Trust Teams. It's something I haven't really talked about here on the podcast because I have been working on it, I have been rehearsing it, I have been talking to people about it in one on ones because I didn't really know if it was exciting as I thought it was, and it turns out it is. So if you are not currently following this podcast,

Hit follow, subscribe, wherever you listen to podcasts, tune in on Monday for our tips for life and leadership, our five-minute mini episodes, and then come back next week for the episode about breaking the fourth wall. I can't wait to tell you more about it. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, you can go to the link in the show notes so you make sure you don't miss anything that we've got going on. And until next time, I'm just so thankful for you. Thank you for being here. If you're coming to the Intentional Leader Summit in Marshall on July 29th,

I appreciate you. I can't wait to see you there. And until next time, just remember that leadership is a privilege. But it's also a really big responsibility. And you're the boss now. So what are you going to do with it?