They say leadership is about decision making, so is there a role for doubt?
Doubt. It’s an interesting experience – and a common one. We all have doubts. We think of them as negative, as things that makes us hesitate or even stop in our tracks. We may have convictions – then doubt them. We want to make decisions, then doubt creeps in.
Timothy Gallway, in his seminal coaching “Inner Game” books, talks about interference – the noise of our own voices of insecurity.
He said: POTENTIAL minus INTERFERENCE equals PERFORMANCE. It’s worth chewing over that phrase for a moment.
This week, I shared with a coaching client an extract from Myles Downey’s Effective Coaching in which he said, “Interference is usually based in fear and doubt .… nothing gets in the way of peak performance more than doubt”.
These issues often come up in my coaching – that’s why I am writing this post for anyone who finds they are held back by their own feelings of doubt.
To quote my coaching supervisor: “when you lift the lid on doubt, that’s when the learning takes place” (thanks @Martin Hill fcmi; British School of Coaching).
As with any problem, recognising it and naming it is the first step towards overcoming it. Recognising doubts leads you to thinking about what they are really about. They can signpost ways to acknowledging your strengths, overcoming that interference, and from here, having confidence in your own decision-making.