New Role Now What?

Confidence Boost: How to ease high performance pressure.

• Erin Foley

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In this week’s Confidence Boost episode, Erin breaks down the hidden pressure many high performers feel to be exceptional in order to feel safe and successful at work. She explores why this mindset shows up so strongly in new roles and the ways it can quietly undermine confidence and sustainability. Erin offers two practical mindset resets to help you ease the pressure, redefine success, and approach your role with more clarity and calm.


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Speaker 1:

Quick and dirty. Let's give you a confidence boost for your week in this short but value-packed episode. Stay tuned. Hi friends, I hope you are having a great start to your week. I wanted to jump in here and give you some podcast episodes that are short and sweet but give you an immediate confidence boost that you can take into your week.

Speaker 1:

So this week I want to do your first confidence boost episode, and today I'm going to address a phenomenon that many, many, many of my high performing clients have around feeling pressured to be the favorite extraordinary, around feeling pressured to be the favorite extraordinary. Sometimes they talk about it as needing to be special at the top. Often they were seen as deeply valuable in their previous role and now they're starting somewhere new and they fear this sense of being ordinary or average or not adding enough value, because they felt a little bit like the rock star in their old job. So the way that this often looks for my current clients are dominant thoughts like if I'm not exceptional, then I'm not doing well, if I'm not the favorite or I'm not the superstar, then it's not good enough. If I'm not on top, I'm not valuable enough or I'm not safe in this job. You are not alone if you are identifying with one of these thoughts. It shows up for a lot of high achievers, a lot of perfectionists, a lot of people who have very, very, very high expectations of themselves. And the pressure often doesn't actually even come from your boss or your peers. It's internal. It's coming from you. It's something that I see rooted in people's past. Sometimes it's about their family of origin, sometimes it's something that happened in schooling. So there's a lot of different reasons why we can kind of get looped into this needing to be special, needing to be the superstar, needing to be at the top.

Speaker 1:

But here's the thing that's problematic about it when you start a new job, you really cannot start off as a superstar, you cannot start off at the top. You have to be able to give yourself space to master the new. Give yourself space to master the new. And the superstar mentality when you are new and really even after you're new, often leads to burnout. So it either creates this beginning to a job where you just are in constant self-doubt because you're not the superstar, you're not at the top, you're not viewing yourself as exceptional. So you start getting skewed on your own performance, your own capabilities and the fit of the job and once you do start to adjust, the feeling that you need to maintain this superstar mentality often burns out my clients and so they often come to me and they've switched jobs because they might've started to really feel burned out in their last job and now they're in the new job and they're not wanting to take this burnout into the new job, but they still have this superstar mentality. And the truth is that you cannot maintain this feeling that I have to hit a home run every second of every day. It becomes unsustainable, it becomes exhausting, it usually leads people to overwork and it becomes something that will often burn people out of their jobs or they'll quit their job or they'll start to job hop in an attempt to solve for this.

Speaker 1:

So today, in your confidence boost episode, I just want to give those of you who identify with this mentality two different ways of thinking about this. To help you snap your brain out of this. I need to be special, exceptional superstar mentality. My goal is to help you feel more grounded, to help you learn your role in a sustainable way and to have you creating a expectation for yourself that is realistic, that's going to feel good. That's going to help you be successful, not just as you're learning, but for the long term.

Speaker 1:

So the first reset I want to give you is to think about this desire to be exceptional and apply it to being new. Try to be someone who is exceptional at being new. Now, be careful, because some of your brain's going to be like. That means I learn really fast. That means like I come out the gates really strong. But people who are actually exceptional at being new tend to be open, curious and willing to take in feedback and have the ability to make space for not knowing. Okay. So being exceptional at being new actually means you are able to not know. You are able to sit in the discomfort of not knowing. You are able to be curious and in a space of learning and taking in the feedback as you learn. Confident people don't panic when they don't know. They slow down and learn it. So being exceptional at being new means really mimicking what it would be like if you were being new, like someone who is confident. And a confident person is able to slow down, not spiral because they don't know, not spiral because they're not at the top, but just give themselves the space to learn it.

Speaker 1:

The second reset that I want to offer you is that success is about consistency, not superstar moments. I want to say that one again because I think it's really important. Success is about consistency, not superstar moments. I want to say that one again because I think it's really important. Success is about consistency, not superstar moments. Success is not about hitting a home run every time. Most highly successful professionals are viewed as thoughtful, steady and reliable over time. They know how to get from A to B more often than not time. They know how to get from A to B more often than not.

Speaker 1:

I think the misstep is that people think I need to win every time. I need to win everyone over every time. I need to be at the top every time. You don't. Your job is to build value over time. Quick wins are fun, but not foundationally strong.

Speaker 1:

What we really want is consistent value over time with your supervisors and your coworkers. We want you to be building trust, capability, success, getting from A to B. If you think about the people who you view as deeply successful and competent and capable, it's not because they hit a home run every time. You're probably able to see them make a mistake or learn something or have a misstep, but you view them from a larger view that allows you to see the consistency that they have over time to perform well and to be reliable and to be trustworthy. So the two resets that I want to give you this week to boost your confidence.

Speaker 1:

For those of you who are identifying with this exceptional, special mentality is that I am exceptional at being new. I am open, I am curious, I'm able to make space for not knowing. I don't need to win everyone over right away. I'm building consistent, reliable value over time. Okay, guys, thank you so much for tuning in. If you're in a new role and you want support, building confidence, improving your performance, getting out of self-doubt and overthinking, head on over to Erin M, as in mindset fullycom, check out my one-on-one coaching program. The link is also here in the show notes. Thank you, guys, so much for listening. I'll be back with more Confident Boost for you. In the meantime, I hope you have a great week.