Work It Like A Mum
Work It Like A Mum
BONUS EPISODE: Building Confidence: Step Into Your Full Career Potential
In this bonus episode of Work It Like a Mum, I’m joined by brilliant career confidence coach Nicola Semple, who brings together mindset work, practical exercises, and deep real-world insight to help you take bolder steps forward in your career.
Summer break is around the corner, and while the pace of life slows down for many, it can be the perfect time to pause and assess your career progress.
This is the second session of our Momentum Masterclass Series, a six-week programme designed to help you maintain momentum in career growth and job search throughout the slower-paced summer months.
This session will help you :
- Recognise and challenge the confidence blockers keeping you stuck
- Reconnect with your unique strengths and talents
- Build self-trust and belief in your potential
- Learn practical self-confidence-building techniques
- Take confident, meaningful steps to build your career with confidence
Key Takeaways:
Confidence is Learned -It’s not innate; it’s built through experience and action.
Start Before You're Ready - Take imperfect steps; you’re already enough to begin.
Know What You Want - Clarity on your values and goals is the foundation of confidence.
Challenge Doubts - Question limiting beliefs and replace them with supportive ones.
Practice Daily - Build confidence like a muscle with consistent action and self-kindness.
Show Links:
Connect with our host, Elizabeth Willetts here
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Hey, I'm Elizabeth Willits and I'm obsessed with helping as many women as possible achieve their boldest dreams after kids and helping you to navigate this messy and magical season of life. I'm a working mum with over 17 years of recruitment experience and I'm the founder of the Investing in Women job board and community. In this show, I'm honoured to be chatting with remarkable women redefining our working world across all areas of business. They'll share their secrets on how they've achieved extraordinary success after children, set boundaries and balance, the challenges they've faced and how they've overcome them to define their own versions of success. Shy away from the real talk? No way. Money struggles, growth, loss, boundaries and balance we cover it all. Think of this as coffee with your mates, mixed with an inspiring TED Talk sprinkled with the career advice you wish you'd really had at school. So grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, make sure you're cosy and get ready to get inspired and chase your boldest dreams, or just survive Mondays. This is the Work it Like A Mum podcast. This episode is brought to you by Investing in Women. Investing in Women is a job board and recruitment agency helping you find your dream part-time or flexible job with the UK's most family-friendly and forward-thinking employers. Their site can help you find a professional and rewarding job that works for you. They're proud to partner with the UK's most family-friendly employers across a range of professional industries, ready to find your perfect job? Search their website at investinginwomencouk to find your next part-time or flexible job opportunity. Now back to the show.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to episode two of our Momentum series, a masterclass. As people are logging on, do let us know. If you can hear us all. Okay, give us a like or an emoji. We want it to be a really, really interactive session, so thank you so much to everybody that is joining us live today. I'm doing today's masterclass with the lovely nicola semple, who is a career confidence coach and, like I said, this is part of our momentum masterclass series. So summer might be slower, but your career doesn't have to be.
Speaker 1:The momentum masterclass seriesclass Series brought to you by Investing Women is a six-week online program designed to help you maintain momentum in your career development and job search throughout the summer months. So each week, we're going to be joined by one of the UK's leading career coaches to guide you through practical and empowering strategies that will help you move forward with confidence and clarity, whether you're actively job searching or just planning your next steps. So thank you so much, nicola, for joining me today. I know you've got loads of slides and it's going to be a really interactive session. Today it's all about building confidence. Like I said, it'd be brilliant to have a really interactive session. I know there's a few of you that are logging on now. Um, so maybe if everyone just puts in the comments um, whilst Nicola gets started, what holds you back from feeling fully confident in yourself and your career? You want to put some things in the comments. I know that'll be really helpful to both Nicola and I, and also to each other. But over to you, nicola.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone. It's it's always lovely to get these introductions, where you're classed as one of the UK's leading career coaches. It feels it feels very nice to hear that. I'm really delighted to be here with you today to talk about building confidence so that you can step into your full career potential, because I know that each and every single person who is watching this has got infinite potential and we want to help you tap into that. So today, what we're going to be doing is we're going to get really clear on what we mean by confidence, because there can be some misconceptions around it. I want to help you bust some of the confidence myths that might be keeping you stuck, and then I want you to learn some practical self-confidence building techniques and give you the tools to take meaningful steps to build your career with confidence. Now, that's a lot, okay, we have a finite amount of time together, and so I was thinking this morning if I was going to distill it down, if I was going to think about what is the key takeaway I want you to have this morning or this early afternoon. In a nutshell, I want you to walk away from this knowing that you are enough exactly as you are right now and that with imperfect action, you can achieve your career goals. And I know that everybody is coming at this from a slightly different perspective. Are you coming at this because you want to be promoted? Are you coming at this because you want to be promoted? Are you coming at this because you want to secure a new role? Are you coming at this because you want to pay rise? Okay, but know that right now you're enough. And by taking imperfect action it doesn't need to be fully mapped out with every single step A, b, c, d, e, f, g just imperfect action to move yourself forward. That can help you to achieve your career goals, and that's really what I want to support you to do today. So let's get into the detail of it.
Speaker 2:What is confidence? A lot of people think that confidence is being able to stand up on a stage and project your voice and present yourself, or it's about being the loudest person in the room, the person who's always got an opinion, always got something to say, and that is a form of confidence. That is an outward projection of confidence. But really, confidence is all about having a belief in ourselves. It's about having the belief in our ability to meet life's challenges and to succeed and overcome those challenges, and the willingness to act accordingly. So, in other words, let's keep it really simple.
Speaker 2:Being confident is saying to yourself I know, I can do it. If you don't know how to do it, you'll know that you'll be able to figure out how to do it. You'll be able to get the support you need to help you to do the thing you want to do. You will take the action that's necessary. You will do the doing. You'll push past all those thoughts of I don't know how to do this, I can't do this, I can't make it happen. You'll start taking the action and then you'll take the action and you will build that belief that you're enough just as you are.
Speaker 2:So, as I'm saying all of that, I would love to get a sense at the moment where you're sitting right now, on a scale of one to ten, how confident do you feel? You can hold that thought in your head. You don't necessarily have to share it with anyone. If you feel comfortable sharing it in the comment box, then please do, but on a scale of one to ten, with one being. I am that little quiet church dormouse who does not say a word to anyone and keeps himself really, really quiet right through to ten, which is I know who I am, I who I am, and I go out into the world and let the world see who I am. How confident are you feeling at the moment?
Speaker 1:and, liz, I can't see any of the comments coming through, so I don't know if there's none, yet I know there's people watching, so if anyone does feel comfortable, if you want to share just your number, how confident do you feel that you know um be brilliant? I think it's all. It depends on certain things, doesn't it? Some areas you might feel confident in your life and others less.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if we look at this through the lens of career, because that's that's why we're all here today. We're all here to think about how to become more confident in your career. So if people maybe think about it from that perspective and the other thing is that confidence, can you know, it's not a static thing. It goes up and down depending on the circumstances that we're in and the people that we're surrounded by. So it's helpful just to kind of take that snapshot for yourself and kind of think about right, okay, how am I feeling right now?
Speaker 2:yeah what I want to do is bust some myths about confidence, because a lot of people will say, well, I'm not confident, but that's just me. I wasn't born that way. And I want you to look at that little serious sausage that is staring out at you from the screen. And that little serious sausage was two-year-old me. Two-year-old me would not talk to any grown-ups outside of my family. Two-year-old me used to sob when they were dropped off at nursery. Two-year-old me, I don't think, spent any time away from her parents unless it was either going to nursery or being at home. There was never a babysitter involved or spending time with family, because I was not a confident child at all.
Speaker 2:But through a series of being in a nurturing home and the events throughout my childhood, that two-year-old me got to the point of being at secondary school where teachers would call me quietly confident. So wasn't always necessarily outwardly confident, but I was quietly confident. In that I had a very sure sense of who I was and what was important to me. And then, by the time I got to university, I was confident enough to go traveling in America. I was confident enough to go and spend a year in France studying by the time I got into a graduate role, I was confident to hold my own with, you know, graduates from all over the world on a world-class graduate scheme within a management consultancy firm. By the time I was 29, I was confident enough to become the COO of a government advisory practice. By the time I was 35, I was confident enough to start my own business.
Speaker 2:Confident people are not born that way. Confident people are developed throughout the course of their life. So wherever you're at on that life journey, wherever you are on that way, confident people are developed throughout the course of their life. So wherever you're at on that life journey, wherever you are on that path, you can build and grow your confidence.
Speaker 2:The other myth that I want to bust is that all your colleagues are confident. When you look around you, everyone else is feeling like they're fully in control of their career, and it's just you who's feeling the way that you do. It's not true. So there was some research conducted by a body called my Confidence Matters, and it was done in conjunction with the University of Glasgow, and when they carried out this research, they found that 79% of the women interviewed stated that they regularly lacked confidence at work and 61% cited appearing confident but not feeling confident. So if you think about that, that's roughly two-thirds of the female population that they are talking about.
Speaker 2:So the next time that you are in a Teams meeting or in a face-to-face meeting with your colleagues and you look around the room, you're probably going to find, if people were being very honest with themselves and with you, that two-thirds of people there aren't feeling that confidence. I'm really curious, liz, from the people that you come across. How does that stat hold true with you? Does it surprise you or do you think that's right about you? It does surprise me.
Speaker 1:I worked at a management consultancy. Like you, and I do remember, people feel it appeared really confident and I used to have so much imposter syndrome and I'd be in these meetings thinking I won't even speak up and so that's.
Speaker 2:That's the thing. What about? What if we just normalized that those feelings are feelings that we have at a certain point in time and we all talked about it a little bit more with each other? I was running a panel, and it was a panel on imposter syndrome, and what we ended up doing was getting three or four of the female senior leaders to come and talk about their experience with imposter syndrome, and the feedback that we got was yeah, nicola, your presentation was great, we get some really good tools and tips from it.
Speaker 2:But, oh my god, I cannot believe that these people weren't feeling confident either. I can't believe that they experienced imposter syndrome, because when I look at them, I see these beacons of confidence, I see these people who role model all the things I want to be, and I can't believe that they sometimes feel the way that I feel. Yeah, and so that that's incredibly powerful, that if we can role model, that, if we, if we can make that clear, um, that these are just feelings we have. They're feelings we have at a point in time who else has felt imposter syndrome in their careers?
Speaker 1:if you pop it in the comments I think it's you know. It's so important that we do normalize it. And I do remember feeling crippling imposter syndrome going into these meetings feeling I shouldn't really, didn't really deserve to be there yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:So let me give you another example I've just spotted. The other thing that can come when people don't feel confident is the need for perfection. They have to get absolutely everything right or they're going to come across as being a bit of a numpty. I've just noticed a typo on my slide. I've got all my collags. Are confident rather than colleagues?
Speaker 1:I didn't even notice that.
Speaker 2:I didn't even notice that If I'd spotted that, say, 20 years ago, I would have gone on this downward spiral of oh my God, nobody's going to find me credible because I haven't spelled it properly Whereas today I look at it and I'm like, oops, yeah, yeah, that's not going to detract from the message that I've got today and you know, that's not going to detract from the message that I've got today. And yeah, that I know. Have the confidence to be able to appreciate that I made a mistake and that's okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And we all make mistakes, don't we?
Speaker 2:All the time, which leads me very neatly onto my next point, which is another myth to bust.
Speaker 1:Michelle always seems so confident, doesn't she Right?
Speaker 2:We always think that confident people get everything right and they're never afraid of anything. Michelle Obama, to me, the epitome of all of that. She's awesome, she's brilliant. If you read her books, if you listen to her interviews, she talks all the time about the things that she's been afraid of, the things that she's found challenging and the things that she has worked through, and so it's not about getting everything right. It's not about never being afraid. It's about taking those steps, one by one, to do the things you need to do, to work through those fears and to achieve the career goals that you have for yourself. I mean who?
Speaker 2:you would never look at michelle obama and think, well, she's not a confident person yeah but she does feel scared of things, but she doesn't let that fear stop her from moving forward yeah, I think it is.
Speaker 1:It's that feel the fear. Do it anyway isn't it.
Speaker 2:It is, and you know that. So that book feel the fear and do it anyway, by Susan Jeffers, I think, must now be about 40 years old. So it starts. It starts to sound like a bit of a cliche when you say that, but it's so true. Like what is that thing that you really want to achieve in your career? What are you scared of about it? Okay, you're scared. You're scared that that might happen. That's okay. But you can still take the action to, to move through that yeah, because I know my lack of confidence in those meetings.
Speaker 2:You know, held me back and would have continued to hold me back and when you are in meetings now, obviously in a different context, because you're running your own business and the meetings you have will be with clients as opposed to internal meetings. But when you're in those kind of meetings now, do you feel like you behave in a different way?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think so, but I think it is a muscle, isn't it? I think I don't think, like you said, anyone is born necessarily confident, and I think it's just in a weird way as well. I think it's not always doing the thing that you're directly frightened of necessarily. I think it's just lots of small actions and come together to make you more confident. Like you know, before I launched investing women, I would have found the thought of doing something like this really frightening. Um, but you still got to do it. And then you do it and then it builds up your confidence then, because I built my confidence doing this and I've built my confidence doing something else as well yeah, um.
Speaker 2:So it's almost as if I've pranked you and that you've gone through my slides in advance, because I know that you haven't Sorry.
Speaker 2:I haven't, actually you haven't, but it's exactly what you say about it being a muscle. Confidence is a choice, it's a habit you build, a muscle you strengthen and a belief you grow. And so, if you think about like, you go to the gym to build your physical muscles, yeah, but when you're building that confidence muscle, you have to and take opportunities in the outside world to try things out and to build that muscle step by step, one step at a time be interested in people that are watching.
Speaker 1:You know what do you think would be better in your life or in your job if you had more confidence, if some, you know, if you feel comfortable. Either you know, put it in the comments or think it in your head and and well, we'll talk more about this in detail.
Speaker 1:But and I also want to say something actually, because I know I've completely interrupted you but I think like to normalize the because I feel confident doing this, but then in certain parts of my business I feel really unconfident about still and I think I don't. I guess that's normal and you might see someone that feels looks outwardly confident and actually I'm confident doing this. But there's other bit I don't think we're all like this for everything.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean like there's something you'll feel really confident about something's not so confident about, and exactly, but what you can do, the things you do feel confident about, you can borrow that confidence and apply it in other areas because, you know, if let's rewind 10 years, elizabeth Willis had never run a webinar before. She's now at a point where she's very proficient at running webinars before. So when you encounter a new thing in your business, you can go well, do you know what? I've never done this before, but I've been in that situation before in a different scenario and I've learned how to do it and it's been okay. And in the learning how to do it, it didn't happen overnight and there was a real learning curve to it and it felt really uncomfortable and I didn't enjoy some of it, but I got to the point where that was okay yeah, and I guess that's the same for anyone else watching this.
Speaker 1:It's, I guess. Where can you borrow confidence and look back at past trends in the story? I guess it's evidence, isn't it? It's evidence of where you've been confident in the past, whether it's like just learning to walk or goodness you like you.
Speaker 2:You have pre-empt the next series.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love it because, when you drill down to it, so much of this is just common sense. Yeah, it's common sense when you shine a light on it and just start taking the action towards the things that you want. But the first thing. So let's now think about OK, you've told me all this stuff about confidence, but how do I actually start to build some of that confidence in myself? And the number one thing, well before I say that, what you might be expecting, what the people watching might be expecting, is for me to share a series of tactics, so things like visualisation or anchoring, or power posing or putting on your red lipstick before you go into that important meeting. They are all really useful tactics that you can use to bolster yourself and enhance your confidence, but they are tactics. And what I want everyone here to be thinking about is how do I build that deep inner confidence so that you've got that feeling that you are enough, that you are capable, that you can do the things that you want to do without the need to go and put your red lipstick on? The red lipstick might be the icing on the cake, but it's not the thing that you need to be able to drive you forward. So the first thing that I want to really encourage you to do is get clear on what's important to you. It is really hard and I mean really really hard, because I have tried to do it and that is it's really hard to build your confidence when you don't know what you want and you're building it on shifting sands. So if you are trying to build your confidence in a job you know isn't right for you, you know deep down that this job is not going to make you happy. It's going to be really hard for you to build confidence in that arena because you will always have this niggling doubt underneath that you're not in the right place, this is not right. And so when you've got that niggling doubt and you're looking around at everybody else who seems so uber confident, and then you kind of think to yourself oh, I'm just not, I'm just not good at this, I'm just not good enough for this. So understanding what's important to you is like for me, I think it's like the foundation stone of being able to build your career confidence.
Speaker 2:And you had a whole session on this last week and I saw a bit of it where I think it was Kim and she was talking about the career roundabout, and right in the center of the career roundabout she was talking about what are your values, what are the things that are important to you? And I would strongly encourage everyone who's listening to this to do some work to identify what your career values are, what are your must-haves and your must-not-haves? Because once you've got that, it makes everything so much easier. It makes the decisions you make about your career so much easier. It allows you to take action with much more conviction because you know that you're doing the right thing for you. It lets you channel your energy so that you can move forward. And when you start to move forward in your career and you build some momentum, what then happens is that you get a boost from that. You get that positive boost from it. It reinforces your capability, it reminds you that actually you know what I am good at this, and that encourages you to take more action. And then it creates this positive feedback loop, because the more action you're taking, the more momentum you build. The more momentum you build, the more action you take, and that is what's going to help you to boost your confidence.
Speaker 2:So if we look at a really actionable tip that you can take away, that everybody listening to this can take away, and do create two lists in terms of what you want from your work, what are the things that you absolutely must have from your work, and what are the must-nots the must-haves and the must-nots so I've put a couple of examples here Must-have the opportunity to work from home two days a week. Must-have the opportunity to work directly with the senior leadership team. Your must-nots spend a night away from home for work, work for an organisation that promotes unethical trade. Think about what that list looks like for you, and you must see this all the time, liz, with people who are looking for a new role and really helping them to get clear on what are the things that they absolutely must have, what are the things that they don't want to have in a role. And people have got the clarity on that want to have in a role. And when people have got the clarity on that, it really helps them to build that confidence to move towards the things they want to have, and so what I would, what I would really encourage you all to do, is figure that out for yourself.
Speaker 2:After this session, we're going to share with you a pdf, that is, it's called back yourself, which is it's got a series of reflection questions in it that you can use to help pin some of this stuff down, so it will allow you to help explore your thinking on it and help you figure out what are those things that you really want from your career. Because once you've got that, you've got your foundation stone for building your career confidence. The next thing I want to encourage you to do is become your own personal private detective. So every single day you are out in the I'm going to call it in the wilderness of the workplace. You know you're out doing your thing and I want you to start noticing. Notice the things that make you feel good about yourself. Notice the things that make you feel less confident than you would like to be. Notice the people that you surround yourself with and just start to notice what are the triggers that are going to help you build your confidence, what are the triggers that pull down your confidence? And really it will be different things for different people, but the more you can build up that picture of your own self-awareness, the better, because you'll really get to know yourself and know the things that that have an impact on you.
Speaker 2:Um, the thing about confidence is it is all based on our thoughts, and our thoughts are based on our beliefs. So what do we believe to be true about ourself? And really analyzing that and and getting to the root of well, where did that belief come from? Is it helping me or is it holding me back? And so that's things like I've not got enough experience to get promoted, or I wouldn't be able to get that job because I've only been working in that industry for two years, so there's no point in me even applying for it. These are beliefs that we've got that hold ourselves back. I've only been working in that industry for two years, so there's no point in me even applying for it. These are beliefs that we've got that hold ourselves back, and what we want to be able to do is really understand whether those beliefs are true or not.
Speaker 2:So a little series of questions that you can ask yourself and this is based on the work of an author called Byron Katie, and it's super simple, super powerful when you have a belief that crops into your head. So it could be I'm not experienced enough or I'm not good enough to be able to go and present to that client or the other people in my team are better at their job than I am. You can take yourself through these questions and just ask yourself is that true? If you're going to look at it objectively, is what you've just said true? So, if we take the example of I'm not experienced enough, so you might be thinking, right, I'm not experienced enough. Is that true? Well, I've only been in this company for the last year, but I did a similar role for five years before that. So is it absolutely true that you're not experienced enough? Well, you know what Maybe I do have in a a broader context, I do have enough experience.
Speaker 2:So what happens when you believe that thought? Well, when I believe the thought I'm not experienced enough, I think, well, I can't go for that opportunity, I can't go for that job, I can't put myself forward for that. And then you can ask well, who would you be if you didn't have that thought that you weren't experienced enough? Well, you would be somebody who would throw their hat into the ring and give it a go. And you can finally ask yourself well, what will you believe instead? Okay, so I'm going to believe that actually I've got a decent amount of experience. I might not fill every single tick box on that rule description, but I think I've got enough there that I could give it a go, and it's a. It's a very rational set of questions that can help take some of the emotion out of um the thought processes and the decision making processes that we have we've.
Speaker 1:We've actually had quite a lot of comments.
Speaker 2:I was on the wrong setting, sorry, so I can see I'm trying to wonder because I can't, okay, I can't see anything. Yeah, yeah, sorry, I had the wrong setting so people have been sorry about that.
Speaker 1:Everyone has been putting um loads of comments. We had loads of people putting the numbers, had someone put two or a few fives and a six. I can go through. There's some questions as well, so maybe we'll do the questions at the end. But someone said they certainly certainly felt imposter syndrome, especially when they came back from that leave. Yes, I did too. We've got some questions. Maybe we can ask the questions at the end. Um, I've got another person that said confidence can come from others as well. We need to support each other as well. If we support others and allow them to speak and we listen, we don't know people's confidence. Even if what someone says is not something we agree with, we should support people having their say. By supporting others, we allow them to build confidence a million percent.
Speaker 1:That absolutely love that um yeah, cool, we've got quite a couple of questions, but we could maybe ask them again, I'll keep going and then we can.
Speaker 2:We can pick up on them. So the next thing you're going to do which you said before, les, was about gathering the evidence. So you've figured out what you want. You have started to question some of these negative beliefs that are holding you back. You've started to think about okay, so what? What could be some of the positive things I want to believe about myself? Then you need to start gathering the evidence.
Speaker 2:So I don't know if you've ever been on a long journey with your kids where you've been on the motorway and you've been like, right, let's count the number of red cars that we see and up until that point in time, there seemed to be quite an even spread of the colour of cars that were on the road and then, once you decide that you're going to spot red cars, all you see are red cars. They're absolutely everywhere, because your brain is now tuned in to find the red cars. This is what you need to do in terms of gathering the evidence to build your confidence. Start to notice when you're doing things really well. Start to notice when you are taking opportunities that you might be scared of, but you're taking them anyway and you are achieving the outcome that you want to achieve and the more evidence that you can gather to build that confidence again. It has that positive feedback effect Because you're focusing on it, you're gathering the evidence and then what you're going to do is start to notice more things and more things and more things, and you're building up that sense of self-belief, self-trust. And one really simple way that you can do this is create so I've called it an evidence log.
Speaker 2:Some people call it a happy file, a sunshine file, whatever way you want to call it but start to pull together extracts from your performance reviews, any messages that you've got from satisfied clients, stakeholders, any positive feedback you receive.
Speaker 2:This could be all related to work or you might widen it out. There might be the checkout operator that you have a chat with on a Saturday morning when you're getting your shopping and she'll say something to you like oh, you've really made my day Well, record that, because what that's doing is providing evidence of the impact that you're having on other people. And when you are feeling less confident, when you're having a dip, when you're having a hard day, what you can do is go back and take a look at that and go. Do you know what? I actually know that I'm doing okay because all of these people have told me that I'm doing okay. So even if I'm not feeling it today, I can borrow some confidence from what these, from the feedback that I've received from other people. And I would also imagine, liz, that when people are going through a job search and potentially getting rejection after rejection after rejection, is really helpful for them to have something like that to come back to to bolster their confidence and remind themselves that I'm going to get there.
Speaker 2:It's hard just now, but I'm going to get there yeah, absolutely the next thing I want you to do is put on your blinkers, because the temptation can be, as we said before, about looking at everyone else and thinking that they've got the rack together and that they are so much better than we are, when actually that's not the case at all. You're going to get really clear in the things that are important to you, you're going to take action towards them, you're going to gather your evidence and you're going to block out what everyone else is doing, because this is where we can start to feel the temptation of of feeling less than so. If I give you some examples around that people who started, usually in larger organizations, where they started on a graduate program with a cohort of people, they can tie themselves up in knots by comparing themselves to everybody who was in their cohort at the time, because people will progress at different stages and you might be looking at people around about you going well, wait, a how come? They're already a director and I'm only a manager, and you know having that negative effect of the peer group and feeling that you are not measuring up to it. And it used to be that we only had our peer group from school, from university, maybe from when we started work.
Speaker 2:With the advent of social media, we are bombarded or we have the opportunity to be bombarded every single day by what other people are up to, which gives us the opportunity to compare ourselves to what other people are doing and then questioning whether we are measuring up appropriately. So if you are the type of person who finds themselves spending longer than you should looking at LinkedIn other social media apps as well but from a career and work perspective, if you find yourself looking at LinkedIn and it does not make you feel good about yourself, then I would really encourage you to get that app off your phone. Be intentional about how you're using the platform. Only use it when you're on your desktop, limit the time you spend on it each days and just unfollow any accounts or any people that do not make you feel good about yourself, because, as you are in this process of building your confidence, you do not want to give any opportunities to anyone or anything that might be draining that confidence.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so it's really important to protect yourself around that it's definitely good to do what focus on things, isn't it make you feel good?
Speaker 2:yes, yeah, um, as a slight aside, but also illustrates the point. So before we come on, um, liz and I were just chatting that my eldest daughter is going through her gcs at the moment, on TikTok, there are a million online tutors who are sharing hints, tips, strategies for how to get through your GCSE exams, and they cover all different subjects, which is brilliant in the run-up to the exam. What is less helpful is that these tutors are somehow getting their hands on the exam papers when the kids come out and they are dissecting the papers online a couple hours after these kids have sat the exam. Now, if you remember when you used to come out of the exam and you'd say to your friend, what did you get for number one? And they'd say I don't know 50. And you said, said, oh god, I get 52. I wonder which one's right. They now have real time. These influencers who are going through the entire exam and showing them exactly where they've gone right and where they've gone wrong. That's not necessarily helpful.
Speaker 1:It's not necessarily helpful for anyone and so, apart from the influencers who are profiting, exactly so.
Speaker 2:We have got to be so careful about what we're surrounding ourselves with. We've got to be so careful with our social media consumption. So if you are feeling less confident and you want to build your confidence, then please, please, be intentional about how you are using these online platforms and your kids as well, I guess.
Speaker 1:I mean obviously that's an aside, and that's another. Yeah, no, no, that like that's that.
Speaker 2:That's like a two-week training course, that one um. But the final thing is just be kind to yourself, right? What? What you are doing is work. It is important work, and it is work that will pay dividends. But it can be hard work. It doesn't happen overnight. You have to go out there.
Speaker 2:I cannot wave a magic wand and say every day, listening to this at the moment, I bestow upon you endless amounts of confidence. The way you get confidence is figuring out what you want to do, get out into the world and doing it. Lather, rinse, repeat. Sometimes you'll get it right and then you'll be successful. Sometimes you'll fail, and that's okay, because you'll pick yourself back up and carry on. So, look after yourself. And just one little self-compassion tip you can take away. It's just breathe in, just tell yourself I'm doing my best, breathe out, I'll let go of the rest.
Speaker 2:So just to recap you, if you are not feeling confident, if you were putting low numbers in the chat that we couldn't see earlier, sorry everyone, that was my fault. Sorry if you were putting low numbers in there. Please know that you're not alone. Okay, so we know that you're not alone. Okay, so we know that, on average, 79% of women regularly lack confidence at work and 61% appear confident but don't feel confident.
Speaker 2:The beliefs that we hold are not truths. If we believe that we're not good enough, that we're not experienced enough, that we're not capable enough, that is not true. We've got the power to choose the beliefs that are going to help us build our inner confidence, and that's what we really want to do. It's having that deep-rooted feeling that we've got this, we can do this. Changing what we believe and building that sense of inner confidence it not hard. It's not hard. You need to take action and you need to push through, but you've also got to appreciate it does take time, it is going to take up your energy, it is going to need your attention and so, if you think about where you are today, just have a little think about where you want to be by Christmas time and what are the steps you need to take between now and then to help build you towards where you want to go.
Speaker 1:Firmus, you've just asked coming at the slides. Yes, you can. We're going to send the replay to everybody that has registered, so lovely, what questions have been coming up. We just had a couple. Someone said I want to feel more confident in showcasing my skills as I look for a new role or set up as a freelancer.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you've got any tips for them so first thing I would do there is work out what's the story that I want to tell the world. So you're talking about showcasing your skills. You will have a lot of skills, but what is the role that you want to move into, whether that's an employed role or a freelance role? What skills are going to be required in order to demonstrate that you're the best person to do that role? And then, working back from that, what's the story I need to tell to be able to showcase those skills? And it's then thinking about what are the appropriate channels for me to do that. So is it about going to networking events and being able to tell my story there is about being in an online platform like linkedin and being able to tell your story there um, crystal said she's scared to apply for jobs.
Speaker 1:Um, so she put she was a six but scared to apply for jobs almost below than that. I don't know if that's a question or a statement, but I think a lot of people feel like that.
Speaker 2:I think it's so, the the number that you've got. As we said earlier, it can vary. It can vary day by day, by by time of the day. But, more importantly, where you're saying I'm scared to apply for jobs, well, what is it you're scared of? Are you scared about going through the interview process? So what support might you need to to be able to make that happen? Are you scared about making a change in your life? Are you scared about getting the job and being successful? Like what? What is the flavor of the fear? And when you work out what the flavor of the fear is, you can then start to take the appropriate action to deal with the fear everyone said thank you, thank you, um.
Speaker 1:I think the last question that, unless anyone else has any um, is that you have, someone has an opportunity to take a new job role, but they are in perimenopause and struggle with brain fog, so they're worried this isn't the right time okay, so that that is something that is facing so many women.
Speaker 2:First thing I would say is get the medical support that you need. So I I actually started with a client a couple weeks ago. It was really, really clear to me in that first session that she needed to have some conversations with a doctor first before we could start doing the work she wanted to do in her career. So if you are suffering from brain fog, there are supplements you can take and I am no medical expert, I'm just of an age where it's the conversation between all of my friends. There are supplements you can take to help alleviate the brain fog.
Speaker 2:It's worth doing a bit of research and googling on that. But also have a conversation with your doctor if you feel that it's severe enough. And then it's really about making a decision about how strong do I feel to be able to embark on this new career journey? Do I feel like I would be doing myself a disservice to make the move at the moment? And it's really about having that clarity for yourself. Having that clarity for yourself, because there there's nothing to say that a woman in perimenopause with brain fog should not take on a new career opportunity absolutely not. But it's about really assessing the situation for yourself and asking yourself honestly do I feel that this is the right move for me at this point in time and, if it is, what's the support I need to help make that transition as easy as possible for myself?
Speaker 1:brilliant. Well, I think that was it for questions. If anyone else has any other questions, please pop them in the comments before we wrap up.
Speaker 2:Um, just, just while we're doing that, I have tons of resources that people can have. Um, I've got my book, the career confidence toolkit, which is available on Amazon. There is the career confidence podcast, which has about 115 episodes now that I think. Um, you can go on there. There's. There's loads of different um episodes of me sharing hints, tips, advice, but there's also interviews with people sharing their career journeys. And then, finally, if you would like to have a chat about how I might be able to support you, you can set time up.
Speaker 2:People always look at that and go oh my God, I don't want to talk to her because there's this elephant in the room of what if it costs thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds to work with somebody? All my details are on my website. I'm very, very transparent. Go on, have a look and see whether it is something that's appropriate for you. But, most importantly, no matter what, you are going to be sent a pdf which is my guide. Back yourself your seven-step plan to build confidence and achieve your career goals, and we can connect on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. Well, we will send the replay and the pdf to everybody that has registered shortly. Thank you so much, nicola, for joining us today. I'm sure everyone can agree this has been absolutely fantastic, and thank you so much to everybody that has joined live today and put your comments and I eventually saw in the comments and made it a really nice, lovely interactive session. So thank you so so much to everybody. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Work it Like A Mum podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and subscribe, and don't forget to share the link with a friend. If you're on linkedin, please send me a connection request at elizabeth willett and let me know your thoughts on this week's episode. You can also follow my recruitment site investing in women on linkedin, facebook and instagram. Until next time, keep on chasing your biggest dreams.