The Stoic Edge for Managers - Episode 10 - When you hit a crisis of confidence

We've all been there...when your confidence eludes you...when you think you know everyone knows you're an imposter.

But what if the stoics knew this would happen? What if they had ideas that helped sort it? In this episode, we examine the stoic philosophy that helps us identify why we lose confidence in ourselves as managers, and how we can deal with it.

With stoic resolve and resilience.

Thank you for listening. The Stoic Edge is available for all managers and others who feel it would be beneficial to them. Find out more about the company that produces them at www.mymanagementcoach.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Welcome to the Stoic Edge, and thank you for listening to this management podcast aimed at today's business manager. I want to talk to you today about something that almost nobody in management talks about openly. I'm talking about that quiet, persistent voice, the one that shows up, sometimes at 2 AM, sometimes in the middle of a meeting that says, Who are you to be leading this? What if they find out you're making this up as you go along? What if the next challenge is the one that finally exposes you? If you've heard that voice, and I would be surprised if any honest manager said they hadn't, then this episode is for you.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

What you've just described to yourself has a name. You probably already know it. It's called imposter syndrome. And it is one of the most quietly destructive forces in professional life. Not because it reflects reality, but because it feels so convincingly like it does. Here is the first thing I want you to know. The fact that you feel it does not mean you are failing. In many ways it means the opposite. The managers who never question their own capability are often the most dangerous ones in the room. The ones who do question it, who hold themselves to a standard, who genuinely care about whether they are doing this well, they are almost always the ones worth following. Your doubt is not evidence of your inadequacy. It is evidence of your conscience. But, and this is important, conscience without direction becomes paralysis. And that is where the Stoics have something extraordinary to offer.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Marcus Aurelius is one of the most powerful examples in all of human history of a leader who struggled with exactly this. Here was a man who did not seek power, he did not want to be emperor. He was a philosopher at heart, a thinker, a writer, a man who preferred quiet reflection to political theatre, and yet the weight of an empire landed on his shoulders and he carried it for nearly two decades with remarkable grace and integrity. But read his meditations closely, and you will find a man who doubted himself constantly, who questioned whether he was living up to his own values, who reminded himself again and again of who he wanted to be, because the gap between who he was and who he aspired to be was something he never stopped examining. He wrote, Confine yourself to the present. Five words, quietly devastating in their clarity. Because so much of imposter syndrome lives in the future. What if the next crisis is too big? What if the landscape changes and I don't have the answers? What if the challenges of tomorrow are beyond me? The stoic answer to all of those questions is the same. You cannot know that yet, and you do not need to. What you need, what you have always needed, is the ability to meet this moment, this challenge, this day, with everything you have. The future will ask its own questions when it arrives. Your only job right now is to show up fully for the present one.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Epictetus speaks to this even more directly. And I want you to really hear this because it is one of the most liberating ideas in all of Stoic philosophy. He said, It's not what happens to you, but how you respond to it that matters. Not your title, not your experience, not your qualifications or your track record, or the number of years you've been doing this. Your response, that is your power. That is your competence. That is the thing that no imposter syndrome can touch, because it belongs entirely to you. Think about every difficult situation you have navigated in your career, every crisis you absorbed, every conversation you had when you didn't know what to say, but you showed up anyway. Every decision you made with incomplete information, under pressure, in the full knowledge that you might get it wrong, and made it anyway, because that is what the role demanded. That is not luck. That is you. That is the capability you have been building quietly and consistently through every single challenge you have faced. Epictetus also said, No man is free who is not master of himself. The imposter syndrome that holds you hostage, the voice that tells you that you are not enough, is not your master unless you give it permission to be. And the stoic practice of self-mastery is, at its core, the practice of withdrawing that permission daily, deliberately. One honest moment of self-examination at a time.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

So here is what we want to leave you with today. Three simple truths drawn from two thousand years of stoic wisdom for every manager who has ever felt the cold hand of self-doubt on their shoulder. First, your doubt is not your enemy, it is your quality control. The fact that you question yourself means you care. Keep caring. Just don't let the caring become paralysis. Second, confine yourself to the present. You cannot prepare for every future crisis. You can only be fully present, fully capable, and fully yourself in the challenge that is in front of you right now. That is always enough. And third, your response is your power, not your CV, not your title, not your years of experience. The way you choose to meet what comes at you, with clarity, with courage, with stoic composure. That is the measure of your leadership. And that measure is entirely within your control. Marcus Aurelius, carrying the weight of an empire, questioning himself in his private journals night after night, still showed up, still led, still became one of the most admired leaders in human history. Not because he had no doubts, but because he refused to let his doubts have the final word. Neither should you. This has been the Stoic Edge for Managers, brought to you by myManagement Coach.org.