Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of executive

coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way you want

to be perceived. I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach, and today we're talking

about self-limiting beliefs. She just won't speak up, Julie said.

I've been giving her the feedback Tom, I promise you I have, but she says things like,

well I don't want to step over a line, or I don't want to make a big deal of it,

whatever the it of the moment is.

Julie was taught. deal of it, whatever the it of the moment is.

Julie was talking about Maco.

Julie wanted Maco to be her successor as Chief Compliance Officer, but Maco wasn't stepping

up, at least not the way Julie wanted. I had coached

Julie four years earlier she was thinking the time had come for me to coach Maco.

She had just finished telling me half a dozen ways, Maco was not stepping up, and she asked,

If you took a wild guess, what would you say is holding her back?

I gave a little shrug and then said, self-limiting beliefs.

She squinted saying, I think I know what that means, but how do you define it?

I said, well first I define belief. I say a belief is just a story you choose to think is true that's all a

belief is something you think is true and makeo is believing something that

isn't true? she asked.

Well no to her it's true but not to everyone on the planet it's not a truth with a

capital T. So what would a self-limiting belief sound like?

She asked.

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