Episode 60: The Confidence Paradox

Sam breaks down the three biggest mistakes executives make: over-preparing content while under-preparing delivery, relying on scripts instead of frameworks, and skipping stories in favor of raw data. He walks through a practical reframing process you can use before any high-stakes moment.

Key Takeaways:

• Confidence isn't the absence of fear — it's a trained response to fear

• The higher you climb, the heavier your words become

• A script produces stiffness; a framework gives you flexibility

• Stories sell better than any feature list ever could

Take the free Confidence Audit: samuellinton.com/audit

Coaching inquiries: podcast@samuellinton.comYou climbed the ladder. You earned the title. But now that you're in the room where the words matter most, your confidence disappears. In this episode, Sam unpacks the Confidence Paradox — why executives who are brilliant at the work freeze when they have to speak about the work.

Take the confidence audit here ==> samuellinton.com/audit

Transcript

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Big question and uh big week here at the Sam Linton show. I uh still am getting used to this new setup. Um, I really like what I've done with my desk. I know you're all worried. I know all week you were wondering, like, I wonder what his setup is like. It's it's booming right now. I've got I've got really good lighting, I've got uh an automated desk in front of me. I kind of reconfigured. I got my I got some books, lots of books, always books. Um, I do like this. I like it a little bit better. Um, I'm not crazy about the background, but we're working on it. This is just a work in progress. And I thought this would be a perfect time to do an interlude of an episode uh that really I'm gonna use uh a story that I've heard time and time again. And here's the story. The story is a person, a person that's put in an executive role. They have all the bona fides, they've climbed the corporate ladder, so to speak. They have given their all to the company to the point where now they are thought of as a leader and as a uh authority figure in that particular field, right? But here's the problem. Problem is now the time has come, and everybody get the collective gasps ready. They have to speak. Not only do they have to speak, but they have to do so in a high pressure situation. And there's one person in particular, uh, this newly installed executive, he was put in his role. He was expecting to charge the gates of hell with a squirt gun, as they say. And he had to speak in front of three different boards and pitch the services of the company. Slam dunk, if you're a salesperson, but he was an operations person. He was a person that was used to being the one who was behind the scenes, pushing the train, getting things moving, pick whatever frame of reference you want. He was the driver. And so when the time came for him to step before that board, he decided not to. He said, Why don't we send the CTO? Why don't we send the CFO? Why don't you talk about other people doing this, not me? And he moved away from that. Likely losing some income, likely losing some credibility. Nobody's gonna talk to him about it because he's an executive leader, and these situations don't come back up unless it gets to mission critical. Well, I'm here to get you not to mission critical. I'm here to get you to think this through in advance. And the title of this episode is called The Confidence Paradox. The confidence paradox. And what is that? That's this paradox that we all grapple with as leaders, that we feel that we're really good at what we do, but we don't have the confidence to communicate it in a way that demonstrates that we're good at what we do. It's almost as though we find ourselves in this unusual pool where we feel like we could do the job, we can continue to do the job. Unfortunately, our speaking ability betrays us. And that's essentially the problem that I've been put on this earth to solve. Not to mention to give you something funny every now and again, but I have been put on this earth to solve the problem of closing that gap and giving you the confidence in the communication that you have when you're running the operations, when you're hiring and firing people, the things that take a lot more pressure that most people aren't giving you credit for. I want to give you credit for because that's a hard job. That's the hard stuff. The speaking stuff is all mechanics. It's all things that we can deal with and we can work on. So this is essentially what a lot of executives fall into. They have confidence that is overwhelming in one area and absolutely none in another. This is why I came up with the confidence audit, which you can take on my website, samuellinton.com slash audit, SamuelLinton.com slash audit. And that'll give you the opportunity to see do you struggle with this? Is this a problem you have? Or what specific area of confidence are you lacking in, which it may be some, it may be one. I help you to figure out all of it. And I help you to work through that if we were to become a professional relating coach, client, whatever you want to call it. But coming back to this, what do we do? Uh, why does this matter for executives? Well, the truth is the more high the climb is, the more your words become work. The more high the climb, the harder the words. Because it took you so long to get here. And when you're working, let's say, and I'm just going to use this as an example. Let's say you're working in the mailroom. And I hate using that example, but you know, I don't even know if they have mailrooms anymore. I think they do, but you're working at the lowest level of the executive ladder. And you're just there and you are punching the clock. Well, what you have to lose is minimal. If you don't get the accolades at that job, well, you could find another role. You can find another place in that company. And it no one's going to be judging you or clipping you on the internet. Well, this is what this guy said in the mail room. This is what this guy said in the janitorial services. And those jobs are important. I'm not saying they're not important. But what I'm saying is your words don't weigh as much. Then when you transition into a role where you have direct reports, where you have budget responsibilities, where you're hiring and firing and you're in charge of speaking to the shareholders, when you're in that role, what happens is those words are now heavier because you have more people that are looking at you. You have more people that are likely to take you out of context. You have more people that want to take you out of context. You have more people that will misinterpret what you say because they might not want to do what it is that you want them to do. So they will use your words as an opportunity to maybe not do the right things. Well, we don't want you to feel that way, but it's gonna happen because you've climbed to a level of status in the company that now requires you to speak differently. And because of that, your confidence is in short supply whenever you have to run a meeting, whenever you have to deal with a large group, whenever you have to speak to outsiders and maybe do a representation of what's going on with the company, talk about what you offer. This is why it matters. And I'd like to tell you, I really would, I would love to tell you as a pastor and as a leader that it really doesn't matter. Like people are just gonna judge who you are by the results you've given to the company and the fact you were in the mailroom at first, or you started in marketing and then you worked your way up, and and the fact that you already put 20 years in and you've already given it your all. But sadly, they're actually gonna judge you by your words. They will. I'm sorry. They're gonna that it's gonna change how they look at buy-in. It's gonna change how your initiatives are taken. If you're trying to overhaul and do some massive change management, it's gonna change how people trust you. I said this before. If they don't see that you're confident in the way you speak, trust is gonna be short. And what's gonna happen is you're gonna rest on your laurels of look what I've accomplished in this company. And they're gonna go, uh, I don't know if I trust this guy, even though he's been here forever, even though he named his first kid after the company, even though he's been here for as long as I've been alive, when he talks, I don't feel the trust. So this is why I do what I do. I want to make you be able to exemplify all that you've accomplished with your words. You don't want to fraction that and fracture it by the noises coming out of your face hole. You want it to accentuate and demonstrate how you deserve to be there. And I get it. You're underweight, you're under pressure. I know, I understand that feeling. I understand what it's like to have my words taken out of context. I understand what it's like whenever people that depend on your organization for their livelihood look at you and they get nervous when they don't see you feeling confident about yourself. I get that. And that's okay to feel that pressure. So we have to keep this in mind. A couple things, quick things. Number one, confidence isn't the absence of fear, it's a trained response to fear. Confidence isn't the absence of fear, it's a trained response to fear. Confidence is when you can go into a situation that you may not particularly feel comfortable with, but that you have trained yourself in such a way where you're going to demonstrate confidence in an uncomfortable situation. So there's tons of stories like this, but one of them that sticks out is a lady that I just saw do a keynote presentation. And I had a chance, I talked about this a little bit last week, but I had a chance to watch a bunch of people deliver keynotes and get coaching, and it was a really invigorating atmosphere. And in that event, I watched and talked to some of the people that were speaking over the course of two days, and they were going from I'm excited for this talk to I'm terrified to I can catch a plane out of here to let's get this done or I won't just want to be over with to I have to go to the bathroom because I have the pre-speak poopies. I hate to say it. I don't know of a more executive way to frame that. I'm working on that. I'm workshopping it. Um, they're afraid of how their words are going to come across. They're afraid of how people are going to see them. Their outfit doesn't look as good there as it did in the hotel mirror when they were getting ready in the morning. They feel that it's the lighting is not showing their face the way that their Zoom camera shows. They have all these things. And their mind obsesses on all of these things in equal measure. But confidence isn't that those things go away. Confidence is, well, I'm going to do this anyway, and I'm going to do the best I can. And it's going to be good because I'm good at what I do. So confidence isn't the absence of unease. And a lot of us, what we do is we wait. We're like, well, I'm going to eventually start to feel good about myself as a presenter. And when that doesn't come, we just don't present. So what we do, what our company does, what I attempt to do, is I make you feel that you can do it afraid, do it scared, and know that that fear is there, but you have done so much to be confident in your delivery, it's going to be okay. So the confidence isn't the absence of fear, it's a trained response to it. How are you training your response? Secondly, the the way to train this is a way to reframe where your brain is going. So here's something quick that you can do. First thing, ask yourself some questions. There's a first question. Number one, what do I actually know to be true here? What do I actually know to be true? So, what do I know? What do I know about these people? What do I know about this venue? What do I know about my message? What do I know about the subject of what I'm covering? What do I know? Like, tell me what the truth is. Not the hypotheticals. Not I'm gonna have a panic attack. Not my slides are gonna crash. Not I'm gonna forget to do the joke or hit the special effect button. None of that. But what is true? What I know is I'm here to do this talk. I've done this a million times before. I know this material better than probably anybody will ever know it. I don't know everything there is to know about XYZ subject, but I know more than most people. And tell yourself the truth about what it is that you're actually doing there. Not this hypothetical of, oh, well, people are gonna think this, or people are gonna have this opinion of me, or people are gonna know. What's the truth? The truth is you're brought there for a purpose. You're there for a reason, and you're there to bring value. Secondly, and I've said this one before: who am I there to serve? Speaking is serving. It's not just about you. So think about who is there and think about the problems they're having. If you're a speaker and you are there as in the executive level for the company, you are there to embody confidence in that company. Hey, we're killing it here. We've had a remarkable quarter. Yeah, we got the tariff stuff and yeah, AI. But listen, we have a tight ship here and we're doing really good things. You're there to give them confidence about being there. You're there to project a vision for the future, a vision that they can't see yet without you speaking. You're there to give value to them. You're there to encourage them when things aren't going well. Hey, we missed that budget by a significant amount. Doesn't mean there isn't next quarter. I know we lost that huge deal. It doesn't mean that our work on this project is in vain. You rally around the troops, rally the troops, I should say, and get them excited about being a part of your organization. So who are you serving? Who are you serving? Think about what they're thinking about. Think about what the single mother in your team is thinking about. Think about what the guy who just got his clear cancer diagnosis that he's now in remission. Think about what he's thinking about. Think about the guy that's six months from retiring. What are they thinking about? And then realize you're there to serve people. There are people on the other side of your words. Yeah, it's important what you say, but you're never going to go wrong by serving people and putting them first. You're never going to go wrong by recognizing that you're there for a function and not just to fill a time slot or run a meeting. All right. And then one of the last things that I ask myself is what am I trying to get them to walk away with? And I pull this again from the framework that I taught at the beginning of the elevated communicator framework, which is one clear audience takeaway. What do I want them to do, believe, change, stop? What do I want them to do with this? Like what is it? What's the point of this? If it's my team, what am I trying to do? Now, again, if you're having a staff meeting and everybody's got different assignments, you might be saying, overall, I'm trying to get them to do whatever their goal is for their individual departments for that particular period of time. If you are just giving a quick update about what's going on, your goal is for them to realize that they're behind or ahead. Or maybe you're just trying to give them some camaraderie and some team building. Maybe you're there for the purpose of showing them some model leadership of the uncertainty of what's going on, they can count on you. They can count on you. So, what is it that you want them to walk away with? I try to figure that out before I ever write anything else in a presentation. What do I want them to get out of this? What's the point of all this? What's the meaning of it all? Right. And so that's these are the some things that I will ask myself to kind of get that confidence level up. And what most executives do, the three big things is number one, that that they make mistakes on that will destroy your confidence, is number one, and I've talked about this ad nauseum, is you really over-prepare content and really, really focus on the content, the words, the content, the words. I got the slides right, I got this, I got that. Content, content, content, content, content. And we're not thinking about the people. We're not thinking about how we're going to say it. We're not thinking about our posture, the way we look. We're not thinking about our tone and volume. We're not thinking about the magnetism about connecting to those people. We're not thinking about opens. We're not thinking about closes. We just want to make sure that that 25-page binder that I've covered it all, and that is the smooch of death as an executive. No one's going to remember what you've said. And it's just going to be one more thing that you have to do or get through. So over-preparing the content and under-preparing the delivery is chief among sinners, one of the worst things to do. Secondly, you create a script instead of following a framework. You create a script instead of following a framework. I coached an executive who was very good at their job. And every time they would give a speech or a meeting or a review, they just read. I picked up the paper and read. Okay, today we're talking about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They would stop. They were good readers, but that skill was really mastered in fifth grade. That's not what you're there for. You're there to make the connection. You're there to be able to connect the people to what you have to say. And so if you're using a script instead of a framework, then you're going to be in trouble because your script is going to be what anchors you and you're going to be anchored just to content that has no emotion or no connection. So script produces stiffness, whereas a framework gives you flexibility. The framework, and I've talked about this ad nauseum, but this would be things that you put in the buckets, like the three things, the rule of three. There's the good news framework. We've talked about all of these. There's a framework for when you have to deliver bad news. I have frameworks and frameworks are dimes a dozen. Really, they are. You could right now go on to Claude or Chat GPT and say, give me a framework for how to have a staff meeting on Monday. Give me a framework for how to tell somebody that we're cutting half of the workforce down. That's going to be difficult to do that without being scared. But give me a framework for how to ask people to work the holiday weekend, whatever it is. So the framework is essentially just an outline of what you're covering without memorizing the words. You're just memorizing where you're going to go. Think of it as a map that doesn't have the streets marked out, but it has the states marked out. Okay, I got to be in bur, I got to be in Alabama on this date. That's the first part. Then I got to go over to South Carolina by this date. Then I have to go to North Carolina by this date. And so you just know kind of the general vicinity and you know enough about what's going in each of those buckets to help you. Now, the last thing I will say that will help you with this confidence, the mistakes that executives make is they don't tell a story. They don't tell any story. They just stick to data, they just stick to news, they just stick to a meeting that could have been a memo or an email. And what they do is they miss out on an opportunity to share an anecdotal story. I was talking to a colleague of mine, a doctor, really amazing guy, and he did a presentation this morning for a group that I'm in, and he was talking about his business. And he said, I want to tell you a story. Now, this is the time where we're all supposed to pitch our businesses in this meeting. And he said, I'm going to tell you a story about this girl that came in to my clinic and she had pain from an operation she had to have her appendicitis, her appendix removed. And he told this riveting story about how she had the operation, it went well, but then she was in excruciating level 10 pain. And after a couple of sessions with him, pain went away. Now that sold me more on wanting his services than him saying, Oh, I have three different types of services. Each of them service this, and I do adjustments and I do functional medicine. I do, no, no. He told this story, and we were all eating out of the palm of his hand, like, oh my goodness, please, how does this end up? Did this girl get help? Did the situation resolve itself? Like, please tell me the end of the story. And his story was perfect. And it was perfectly timed. And the problem is, when you as an executive aren't using stories, you're doing too much work. You're not in, you're not that interesting. The material is not that. Interesting. The meaning minutes are not that interesting. Tell me how it applies. Show it to me in action. Get me excited about what it is that you want me to do. Once you do that, I'm there. So that's the confidence paradox in a nutshell. It's a shorter episode today, but uh I'm gonna have a bonus episode, believe it or not. If you're listening to this, it's Monday tomorrow, because I have a special announcement for tomorrow. You don't want to miss that. But in the meantime, I want to encourage you, if you would like some coaching or if there's something I can do to help you, uh podcast at samuelinton.com, podcast at samuelinton.com. Take my confidence audit and see how you're doing when it comes to your communication. That is SamuelLinton.comslash audit. And we look forward to seeing you next time. In the meantime, continue doing what you have to do to build confidence. Remember, confidence you're not born with. It's built. And you can build confidence. We'll talk soon.