From Self-Doubt to Speaking Up: The Confidence Shift You Need| Dr. Elizabeth Pritchard

Why do so many people struggle to speak up—even when they know they have something valuable to say?

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Elizabeth Pritchard, speaker, researcher, Authentic Leadership coach, and co-author of The Authentic Leadership Playbook, to talk about the hidden beliefs that keep people stuck in self-doubt.

We dive into how childhood experiences shape confidence, why many people feel unheard in relationships and the workplace, and how those limiting patterns can follow us for years without us realizing it.

Dr. Elizabeth shares practical strategies to help you build confidence, speak up in difficult situations, and stop playing small—including her powerful “power pose” technique that helps you prepare for hard conversations.

We also discuss:
• How to break limiting beliefs
• Why confidence is built through action
• The importance of celebrating small wins
• Overcoming people-pleasing habits
• Burnout, self-worth, and personal growth
• How to lead yourself before leading others

If you've ever struggled with confidence, speaking up, or feeling like your voice doesn’t matter—this episode will give you practical tools to start changing that today.

Listen now and start owning your voice.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today we are joined by Doctor Elizabeth Richard, a speaker, author, researcher, and a leadership coach who helps women lead with more confidence. Her work blends leadership, neuroscience, and personal transformation. And I'm excited to dive into her story today. Elizabeth, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Thank you so much, Peter. Great to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Thank you. Before we dive into your journey, I would love for you to introduce yourself and tell our listeners a little bit more about your work and what you do.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Fantastic. I help capable women expand their their abilities to stand in on any stage, walk into any room and be heard and say what they want to say. So we often hold ourselves back, or sometimes it's the situation or the environment or other people in the room. And so I help women to recognize what those BS beliefs are and to bust through them using neuropsychology and neuroencoding and step into who they truly be in their own authentic strength and power, personal power, not power over people, but power, and own their space, own who they are.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Awesome. So was there a moment in your life where you felt like you you couldn't speak up? Or was there a moment that you felt like you were misunderstood and that kind of gave you that uh connection with what you're doing now? How did you start doing working what you're doing now? What was was there a specific moment or were you always passionate about it?

SPEAKER_01 1:45

I think I was always passionate about speaking up because I didn't feel that I could. I'm the youngest of nine children, and being the little sister, my story was that I didn't have a voice, that nobody was listening to me. And that carried on into my career and life. And so there was not one specific moment. There were many, many moments that it was like I was so frustrated about I have something to say, but nobody's listening. And part of that is my own story that nobody wanted to hear what I had to say, and part of it in reality was what I experienced. And so I think there were many, many moments in my life. There were times in my career when it was like, I know what we need to do as a team, and the leadership isn't listening to the people in the team. There were other moments where I wanted to do things in in a different way and relationships and friendships, and it was like, but they're not listening to me. And so this company World Institute, which is Women Authentic Leadership Training Institute, was really born from that frustration of we have so much more inside of us, all of us, and we actually work with men as well. Often we go into companies and we work with half and half or 25% men and the rest women. It's like depending who's there and and who we're connecting with and resonating with in our leadership. And recognizing that there's a better way. It's not just the traditional, if you want to be in leadership, you have to do it the hierarchical way that has been built through patriarchy. There's a different way, and giving permission to be yourself and lead your way, whether that's from behind, in the middle, out the front, going come, come, come, let's go, let's go, being a leader, being a really quiet, solid, determined leader that people are around you because you encourage them and you know who they are. And so it was really born out of the frustration. The frustration of seeing what people were doing, knowing that there was more that we can do, and our aim is to build authentic leaders across the world in all different organizations, companies, industries.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

That's awesome. Do you feel like people are not confident? That's why they they're afraid to speak up, or what why do you think people they don't really feel like they should speak up in you know, it can be in business, can be in real life, people are a little bit more, you know, quiet, um, people don't really take the initiative to say things that they think. Do you think it's because of the lack of confidence, or there's something else that they're afraid to speak up?

SPEAKER_01 4:36

There's quite a lot of things in in that whole conundrum, really. Unfortunately, it's not just, you know, be more confident and you'll you'll be fine. We'd love that. It's not it's not as simple, unfortunately. Because there's all these things that that we've built up, we call them patterns. So there's all these patterns of response, patterns of behaviour, and patterns of thinking that we've built up over our lives, and they've come through our experiences of what we've been through. So it might be a school teacher or a parent or a sibling or a neighbour or the friend down the road or or uncle or auntie or Mr. or Mrs. down the way that they might have said something, and we as a child take that on to going, Oh, oh, I'm not supposed to speak. It might be like Shush, I'm speaking with the adults, and that can just be an innocuous thing that we most of us do or have experienced as a child, and we take that on board as like, oh, okay, my voice doesn't matter. And it's not right or wrong, good or bad, it just is. As a child, we filter all of these experiences, and then we build up the belief systems around it, we build up the patterns. Now, some people have belief systems that I'll always find a way, no matter what, I'll always find a way, because that's what they were taught when they were little. Some people come through and have belief systems that that I always have something to say, and everybody listens to me because they did children's musical sort of numbers in front of the adults when they had sort of home parties and things like that. And so through whatever experiences we have as a child, we create these patterns, and within those patterns, there are the thought patterns, the belief patterns, and then the behavioral patterns. And if we don't recognize what they are, then they can hold us back, and that affects how we feel about ourselves, how we what we believe about ourselves, and then we almost get like a self-fulfilling prophecy. So we'll say, Oh, I have an idea, and somebody will speak over us in the meeting because we didn't note it, they didn't notice we were trying to speak up, and so it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. We go, see, nobody listens to me. They talk over me in the meetings all the time, and then we just keep finding evidence. Our brain is really clever, and if it's a belief that we have with a pattern that we have, then our brain goes, see, people don't listen to me, to you. Might be in a relationship, was like, I think we should move suburbs or move the kids' schools or something like that, and and then the partner or the doesn't listen to you, and you do something else, and it was like, see, they don't listen to me. It might be that you want to go to this restaurant, not that one, with your friends, and it was like, see, they they didn't listen to me, and so we find evidence along the way. So all of these things collected impact what we believe about ourselves and how we feel about ourselves, and yes, confidence is definitely in there as well, and what we do is confidence is built through action, so we help people to bust through those patterns because there's ways of stopping them and re and changing them and rewiring our brain so we believe a different thing, it's not just positive thinking because it doesn't work long term because it's just a thought, it's having that all-body belief that I can do this, I will speak up, people will listen to me, and then we build that muscle and strengthen it like we go to a gym.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

But it's something interesting is that if you've been living your whole life not being able to speak up, it's really hard to get to that point that you feel confident to to speak up. Do you think people it takes time to build that confidence and they start to to speak up and say what they think? Or because it it it doesn't happen overnight.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Not necessarily overnight, no. However, there there are strategies that that I can shift a belief within two to three minutes. And so once you've shifted and stopped that belief, then you can rebuild the new pathway and the new belief. Yes, it can take a little bit of time, but it doesn't have to take years, it can take days, it can take a few hours initially to go, oh, I used to believe that, now I believe that. And then we just practice the mastery of it. So, like for me, this whole journey in the last sort of 15 years of my life, it's practicing and doing those tiny tweaks and noticing them and recognizing them and celebrating them. It was like, oh, I spoke up in a meeting today, and yeah, I still got sweaty palms, and I still felt a bit like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. And I practiced it, I worked out what I was gonna say, and I stood up and did it. It was like, go me! And what that does is we have this dopamine loop because if we don't celebrate those things that we create and those things that we've done differently, then it's like oh, I did it once, didn't work. I still felt sick, I still wanted to throw up in the middle of it, and then I stopped speaking halfway through because my voice was really mousy. It was like, okay, you did it, you did it differently. Awesome! Celebrate that and build on that, build on that, build on that. And for me, I know that I I can't do this without somebody by my side. So I always have a coach because they see from the outside the BS stuff, the stories that I tell myself, the things that I think is true and have served me until now. But those things out aside, so what's behind that? What's behind that? What's behind that? Oh, I thought this. Okay, shall we change that? Yes, please. And that's the whole thing of growth. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Something that you said is celebrating the small wins, and I think that's that's really important because nothing happens overnight, it's it's building up and getting to that confidence level, but you have to celebrate because many times I feel like we're speeding up ourselves and we're thinking we're not enough, we're not doing enough, we're not, you know, that person. Um and I feel like small wins is really, really powerful. Do you have any little tricks or little uh things that can help you build that confidence and speak up?

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Yes, I do. I was just thinking which one shall I talk about? Many, many of them, many of them in the book. We've got eight of them in the book that we just published this year. So there's a whole lot of little strategies in there that you can just grab one little strategy and do it and do it consistently. And if you do it consistently for the week, then you just build on that and do it consistently next week and build build on that. So there's lots of little strategies you can do. One of the things, and it's evidence-based, one of the things that I that I've found really powerful, and that when I'm talking with any of any of the people that I'm coaching and training, they have found it really powerful as well. And it's the work done by Professor Amy Cuddy. So it's about the power pose. So there's a whole lot of research around it, and there's been debate around it, and for the last decade as well, but there's new research around it that shows that if you stand in the power pose, so it's like the old Superman Wonder Woman type thing, power pose where your feet are slightly apart, you're standing tall and feeling really grounded and firm, your hands are like this on your hips, and you're breathing deeply, and you feel like this whole sort of thing in the middle of your core is strong and stable. Now, just standing like that for two minutes increases your testosterone, increases your serotonin, and it decreases the adrenaline and cortisol, which is like your fear, your fear hormones and your stress hormones. And so, what it does is it increases that ability to go, oh, I've got this, I'm gonna do this, let's just go and do it. And then you feel strong and capable. And I always get people to say things as well, so they're saying it in their mind and feeling it in your body because we know from the neuroscience information from people like Dr. Joe Dispenser and Gary Braden and and Bruce Lipton that if we don't feel it in ourselves, then our brain just goes off on its merry little journey and pretends and creates all these lovely little fantasies that we don't really believe inside. So that's why positive thinking doesn't work because if we're just thinking it and we're not feeling it, then our body's going, nah-uh, I'm so not confident in this. Hey, I've got to stand on stage to 150 people, I've never done that before. That is so freaking scary. And and so our body is doing this, and our brain's going, I've got this, we're going, we're we're good, we're good, we're confident. So you can't have that incongruence between head and body. And so the the power pose helps that whole connection. And we work out a phrase that works for individual people. Some of them say, I've got this, some say I'm strong, some say I'm awesome, some say I'm amazing. Depends what they they create their own statement that is meaningful to them, and they do it for two minutes, and then they go and have that courageous conversation, or they walk on the stage and do the presentation, or they walk into the meeting and present what they're gonna present, or ask a question in a meeting, or have a conversation with a with a family member or a partner, and so I I did this the first time that I did this super powerfully. I was working for a manager who was an incredible micromanager who would have favorites in the team and who would keep information from other people, and the the way that she managed, she was a she, the way that she managed was really toxic and really dysfunctional for the team, and I needed to come in and um propose something that was against what she had just said, we're gonna do this, and I was totally totally scared. I was so scared of having this conversation with her because I'd had conversations with her before, and my experience was she shut me down, she didn't listen to me, she was almost demeaning and moved on, and then she would sort of ignore you or bully you. And so there was this courageous conversation I was determined to have, and I stood around the corner in the corridor in the workplace, and I stood with hands on hip and I was like, I've got this, I've got this. And also, the other trick is to go, it's all about me. If I show up and I do something that is stronger and more powerful for me, then I realize that it doesn't matter what the response is because I have no control over their response, their response is their response, and I walked into that office with that. I walked into that office going, my history with this person is this, and I have never been in this particular situation before, and I just bring me here now, being present. I don't bring all that past stuff with me. So there's a whole lot of strategies in there, and these types of things absolutely work, but we must have this and all of this in congruence.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

It's almost like uh fake it until you make it, right? You have to trick the brain, and uh, I love the example with uh with the power poles because it's such a simple thing, you can do it in in five seconds, and you can feel that confidence and you can feel that you're ready to fight, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Your micromanaging boss, uh that's also and also the language around it, yeah, as well, because it's like if we go in for a fight, because we take that energy with us, then then we'll we'll end up with in a fight because they feel the energy. So part of it is also regulating, and this is what we're focusing on this month in our blogs and things as well, is regulation. When we regulate that, we dial that down, so we dial down the I have to fight because if fight's involved, then we need to win, and then our egos are involved, and they will they will always trip us up when it comes to another person, and so recognizing that I'm going in here and I'm being true to me, I get to control me, I get to control how I sit, how I breathe, what I say, how I receive, whatever happens out there. That's all I can control, and having that ability to to and recognition to do that and practice that, your confidence rises, your ability to regulate grows, your self-awareness explodes, and you create a much easier and a lighter pathway in your life forward.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Right. That's that's really interesting, and I I feel like it's something that a lot of people can learn from, and a lot of people can apply in different areas of their in their lives. Do you think that um people sometimes struggle from overconfidence and they speak up too much? Do you think it can be from not speaking up to getting to the next level of speaking up too much and you know that hurting yourself and your you know your reputation?

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Yeah, we when we see people who what we're potentially say overconfident, like you said, it's usually through a lack of self-esteem. It's usually a cover-up, it's usually a protective mechanism that the inside they're feeling like they're crumbling, and so they have learned to put on a mask and go, Yes, I know everything, and yes, let's do this, and let's go here and let's go there. And if you actually scratch beneath the surface, those people on the inside have very low self-esteem and use their ego and their knowledge and their capabilities usually to cover up what's happening on the inside. Now, all of that sounds pretty judgy-judgy. However, this is the pattern. Remember, it's a pattern. So all of these things are just patterns. And when we look at patterns, it's not about blame or shame or guilt or judgment, or he did it to you, or she did that to you, so therefore this happened. Let's blame your mother, let's blame your father, let's blame the teacher. It's not about that, it's like this is where you are right here, right now, and you've done a freaking amazing job because you're here, and everything that you've had in the past has served you to here, and so those people who want to look at growing differently to expanding to being a better version of themselves going forward to creating things in a different way, then you get to choose your pathway forward. We've worked with people who have had huge bravado and huge ego, and part of authentic leadership, which is the core basics of what we do, is the first two things is self-awareness and self-regulation. And there's ways of learning that every single day. Notice, pause, choose again. Now you find that these people who keep talking and keep holding the floor and must have the last word, all of those types of things that we're talking about, they actually have very little self-awareness. And they also haven't practiced the skill of regulation. So dialing up and dialing down. Because there's times when, as a leader, there's no way that you need to have the last word. There's times when you need to listen 90% of the time and talk five or ten percent of the time. There's times when you can lead going forward with information, and other times going, have no idea how to. Get through this. I know we will get through this. What can we do? I've been through all sorts of things in my personal life from abuse as a child to having a marriage of 22 years that was crumbling and and we separate we we separated and divorced to moving countries and moving to a place of over four and a half million people where I knew two people and that was all to creating a business because it was a good idea, all sorts of things. Um to saying no to people. Yeah, I was a person, I was a people pleaser. It was like, yep, patterns that I'd created. It was like, let's keep the peace. I didn't like tension, I didn't like discomfort, I didn't like raised voices, they scared me as a child. And so within that, I learned to always keep the peace and think that I didn't have the right to put me first in anything. And that caught up with me in my early 40s, where I absolutely hit the wall and I experienced burnout, very severe burnout, where for three months I couldn't even do basic tasks for myself, and it took me nine years to rebuild my life. And around that whole time, it was like I was learning that I could say no. I was learning that I could dream and create and think about things that I wanted to put myself out there for and learn and grow. And I'd never never experienced that before. And within that, it's not it's not being selfish. It wasn't that I was going, okay, everybody can go away. I'm gonna do everything for myself and be really selfish. It's about being self-ful because how can I help other people if I'm not full myself? How can I support people? How can I be a good friend, a good partner, a good mother, a good colleague, a good leader, a good businesswoman, a good whatever? How can I be that if I'm not full myself? And full means having the tools to know when to push and when to pull back, having the tools of knowing when to talk and when to listen, having the tools of going, no, that's not what I'm focusing on, this is what I'm focusing on, and doing it, having the tools to go, oh, this is unfamiliar, I haven't been here before, this is a bit scary, and going, I'm doing it anyway, and just doing it. So recognizing those moments, absolutely, absolutely in my personal life and professional life, in the business that we run, in any interaction is absolutely vital, and that's that's who I'm practicing and learning to be every single day.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Right, awesome. Tell us a little bit about the book.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

Okay. So the authentic leadership playbook. We wrote this with my colleague and I, co-founder Christine Burns. So the Authentic Leadership Playbook is based around Be Do Have. So the framework of Be Do Have. So B is about building your self-awareness, your emotional agility, psychological capital, being able to stay calm in the chaos, and to be able to lead with values and not ego, like we talked about before. And this book was written for anyone who leads themselves first. And hopefully that's all of us, because we get to lead ourselves when we're self-ful, and then we can lead others, whether it's formal or informal, doesn't matter. Then the doing bit is about taking courageous, intentional action. It's about owning the room and not from ego, but only walking in and going, I have a presence, I have a right to be here. You said before, Peter, about I know I am enough in this room. I don't have to play small, I don't have to feel fear, I don't have to feel that I haven't got anything to say. So the doing is all about supercharging your language, so it sets you up for that efficacy, that confidence in how you do what you do, and creating your presence as well of who you are with the mindset and the influence to impact. And then the have section is all about creating sustainable success. So it's working through that how how do you know when to push and when to pull? How do you create that rhythm in your life so that you don't just keep pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing and then burn out? Or you don't just sit back and go, well, everything's not right yet, so I can't do this and sit on the procrastination side of things. This is all about creating fulfillment and resilience on your terms. And so the book is written with lots and lots of personal stories and examples. It has a little bit of theory in it, so it has the whole book is evidence-based from the neuropsychology, positive psychology, sports psychology, and has many, many little strategies that you can just take and put into your day-to-day, and then you just do it for two or three minutes today, tomorrow, next day, break, today, tomorrow, next day, and you put it in place and you just tweak up your growth in who you are being. We absolutely just loved creating this book because it's who we be, and it's what we do, what we teach, and what people say, oh wow, I want more of that. So it's like, right, let's create a book and write the book.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Awesome. Thanks so much. My last question to you will be if there's anybody out there listening now, going through a rough time, not being able to speak up, what's your advice? Like, very simple, in a few words, what do you think they they should do, or how would you empower them to speak up? Fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

The first thing to do is to sit down and write a list of your goodies. So we call it stack your goodies. Write a list of all the things you have done that you're proud of. It can be having a conversation with the neighbor down the road when their dog wouldn't stop barking. It can be saying no to someone at work when they said, Oh, can you just do this? It was like, actually, my day's totally full. It can be an achievement, an accomplishment, it can be little, it can be huge, it can be something in between. Write a list, stack your goodies, and then the next step, like we talked about before, celebrate each one of those. And one thing you can do, and you might think it's weird, but what it does is it connects your head and your body and your cells. You can actually stand up, lean forward, put your hand up, and pat yourself on the back and go, Oh my gosh, look at this. I've got a list. Don't care if it's six things or six hundred and six things, I've got a list of the things that that I've done that was a that was actually actually quite good when I did that. That was very cool. Because what we focus on, we get more of, and what we write, we invite. So if we're writing these things and recognizing them and celebrating them inside to ourselves, you can share them as well. That's even better. That gives you even more goodies. When we do that, we're focusing on something different, we're focusing on I can do this, I do have the ability to do that. And then the next stage is to recognize that the only reason we feel fear is because it's unfamiliar, or we're just jumping into that pattern loop of oh, that's a bit scary, so then we don't do it and we want to run away. That's our reptilian brain keeping us safe, and in those moments, there's strategies that you can bust through and do it differently. And that's so that's the third part of it is have somebody like a coach on your side who helps you with these strategies to go through. Find those things that work for you, find those people that support you in that way. They'll probably be a different person than what's in your sphere at the moment because they've got you to where you are. If you want to go in a different place forward, then you need to have a different who in your circle, a different who to help you through. Oh, right. Didn't mean to be poetic there.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

Right. No, that's that's great. I think you provided really good examples, and you provided those small changes that we can all do and see big results because everything starts with small changes. Everything every big thing happens because if something small happened and you changed, you you were able to adapt. And I think a lot of people get overwhelmed because they focus on the big picture but they don't they don't start, they never start. And I feel like that's that's one thing that I would also say is that just start, just do something small, like sitting down and writing a list of five things, and uh that's how you start changing. Um for our listeners, can you tell uh where they can uh connect with you, learn more about your journey?

SPEAKER_01 31:58

Fantastic. So two ways. One is pop onto our website, which is Walt Institute, W A L T Institute.com, and on there you you can sign up for our weekly inspirational blogs, you can see how to get the book. The book's available on Amazon, digital, in print. You can connect with us, you can ask me questions, you can connect with Christine, and we would love to help you go go forward in your journey in life and career because, like Peter just said, one small thing that's all you need to take. One small thing, we say one tiny tweak will change your life.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

Right, awesome. Thanks so much, uh Elizabeth, for being guests. Definitely will be uh interested to learn more about your journey, and I'm sure people will uh want to connect with you and uh start working on their better self. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

Thank you so much, Dimitri, for this conversation today.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

Thank you, thank you.