Learning to trust yourself

Is trusting yourself a requirement for leadership?

Yes. And here’s a story to illustrate the point.

During my riding lesson this weekend, my coach says,

Melissa, you need to learn to trust yourself.

I’m thinking,

Okay… Yoda, Jedi Master. But what do you mean? How do I trust myself? What does that look like?

I thought a lot about her words over the weekend. I knew, deep down inside, that her guidance was not just horse riding instruction. Her counsel was broad and deep and applied to many layers of my life.

I know what it means to trust someone else and I know why I grant trust, so that’s where I started.

I trust my coach for many reasons. Her words and actions consistently match up. She’s not trying to achieve personal credit. She knows that leadership, respect, trust is earned. She creates a learning environment in which she challenges me to think, and do, better — always. She teaches in a way that allows for mistakes, experimentation, and failure and it’s never followed by blame or shame but certainly by accountability and more practice.

And so it goes, we acknowledge our fears. We stand up and we hear the voice of skepticism and we recognize that it’s there and then we enter the arena and do the work. We acknowledge our fears so we can ignore them and get on with livin’ and learnin’ on our own messy, courageous terms. Know that we have the ability and freedom to fail, often, and with grace—and in public!

Your Turn

Leading change in work+life is something I do, you do, every day. What does trusting yourself look like for you? How do you learn to trust yourself? How does trusting yourself help you lead? Does your organization create an environment that allows for mistakes, experimentation, and failure?

Please add your thoughts in the comments and if you like this post, please tweet it and bookmark it.

Thanks!
Melissa