How to recognize the symptoms and what to do about it. I've been sick this week, which is a real pain as I had a networking event I wanted to go to and I had to cancel. In the past I'd have been secretly delighted at having an excuse not to go, but that's changed since I've been working on myself and using somatic techniques. This time it was real flu but it's not always been the case. Some years ago I'd get fake flu or what I now call introvert flu. Introvert flu feels real,

Behaviours or beliefs that were appropriate and kept us safe at an earlier time, don't necessarily continue to serve us years later, particularly when our experience, role, position and seniority have changed. It’s important therefore, to routinely conduct an audit of beliefs and responsibilities to see if any of our behaviours have become out dated or are no longer serving us. It’s a natural instinct to behave in a way that’s accepted by the people around us and repress any

Follow this fast track method if you’re looking for mental and physical burn out. Pushing through high pressure meetings on will power alone is a surprisingly common approach to managing meetings as a non-native speaker and it’s remarkably effective… if you’re aiming to sabotage your leadership potential. Why? All this ‘fake it till you make it methodology does is diminishes your authority negates your power and destroys any feeling of natural right to be there. In adopting

Mimicking some other inspirational leader or motivational speaker isn’t going to help you develop authentic leadership or executive presence. You’re making a mistake if you’re following an influencer or guru and trying to be like them, because you are not them. Yes, take their advice, follow their principles for doing the work they did on themselves to get to where they are today. But don’t try to be ‘just like them’ try instead to ‘be just like you’ because leadership and ex

Last month I gave a webinar on speaking up with confidence even as a non-native speaker. The participants probably expected me to talk about posture, breathing exercises, eye contact and voice, but instead I asked "Who here considered themselves a naturally confident person.?" Only 1 hand was raised. So I asked "What is confidence?" Some of the answers from the chat were: Alignment Self worth A state of mind Feeling ready Then I asked what does confidence feel like? And th

I have the knowledge, I have the experience, I know what I have to say, I even feel driven to speak… so why does my heart beat so fast when asking a question or challenging an opinion and why does my body shake for so long afterwards even when nothing ‘bad’ happens and the outcome is positive? That’s a question I’ve asked myself time and time again in a variety of situations and it basically comes down to psychological safety. I can feel both stirred to take action and speak

I was watching a video on LinkedIn last week of a lady full of passion and power talking about what she believed in. I was captivated by her video, enchanted by the energy and dynamism in her. Then towards the end as she spoke about a free resource she had produced… she shrank. Her whole demeanor, changed, her voice, her tone, her body language, everything. The strong determined woman was no longer there, and in her place sat a young girl self conscious, and embarrassed of th

Most multilingual speakers feel a self conscious speaking in a second or third language and with good reason. Research has confirmed that when speaking in a different language our personality actually changes, which can feel awkward even when our language skills are excellent. When communication feels awkward we’re not at our best, we don’t feel fully connected to ourselves, our knowledge or our audience. In other words, we’re not fully present. It’s that presence piece that’

Are you aware of how the much the daily little stressors add up in your life? Of the cost to your energy and performance and presence throughout the day? Probably not. In my experience none of us truly are until we change something and notice the difference. We are by nature a resilient species, we adjust to our environment according to the demands put upon us. Recently I've been reminded of just how much minor irritations drain our energy and affect not only our performance

You can’t develop leadership presence without being present and it's hard to be fully present when you’re scanning faces, checking for approval and second guessing your language accuracy. Being present also means not letting hesitations, forgotten words or mispronunciation disturb your focus and diminish your self-esteem. If you're a multilingual leaders, your mind going blank is typically a sign of cognitive overload and when it happens how you deal with it makes a big diffe

Most of the challenges my clients face are human ones, which is reassuring to be honest. They come with the secret fear that they’re the only one in the team, department, company to feel like a complete fake and imposter in their new leadership position. That’s one reason why group coaching programs can be so effective yet also so intimidating particularly when they carried out internally. It’s that secret fear of, ‘What will my colleagues think of me if I admit how I feel?’

If you've been following my recent posts, you'll know I'm currently in Cambridge looking after my sister's three labradoodles and two horses while she's away with her family. It's given me a brilliant training ground for the very techniques I teach my clients on accessing confidence in high-stakes situations. Don’t believe me? Here’s how. Confidence is confidence. It's the same emotion, whatever the situation. It's the same feeling you need whether you're driving your car, sp

You can indulge in self pity, argue about injustices and attribute blame wherever you want but it won't change anything. What's more until you deal with it you’ll you'll carry that same feeling of 'pissedoffness' into your work, your home and your relationships, as well as your next interview... and the longer you carry the unresolved experience around with you the harder it is to resolve and move on. None of us like rejection, we’re hard wired for approval from our peers and

You failed a recent interview and now you're replaying all your answers over and over in your head trying to work out what went wrong. Did you share too much information? Did you not share enough? Were your answers not accurate enough? Was there something you said or didn't say that was a red flag for them? Did you misunderstand a question? Was there something important you didn't mention that would have got you the job? Why did your mind go blank when they asked about your

You have an upcoming interview and ticked the box that states you have 'Professional Working Proficiency' or 'Full Professional Proficiency' in English and now you’re secretly wishing you hadn’t? The honest truth is that particularly if you’re applying for a senior leadership position a lot of how your language skills are judged comes down composure. Professional proficiency in any language is more about confidence than accuracy. Why? Because even native speakers make frequen

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗱𝗼 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝘂𝘀 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝘁 𝘀𝗼 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁 𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁? Could it be that when we do something that comes naturally to us we don’t see its real value? Is it that you grew up in a time and place where self promotion was considered distasteful or vulgar? Is it because as an introvert you’ve never liked the attention that being complimented brings with it? Or, is it that the perfectionist in you that has helped shape who you are and m

That was the voice that was echoing around my head the morning I decided to change. I knew their behavior wasn’t acceptable, I knew I deserved better and I knew was capable of more… so why hadn’t I done something about it for so many years? Why hadn’t I spoken up before? Why hadn’t I challenged their behavior at the beginning? Was my sense of self worth so low that I believed I deserved that type of behavior? I guess the answer was yes... what other reason could there be? The

As some of you will already be aware, I attended the HBA European Leadership Summit at the beginning of June and that I had the honor of supporting some of the speakers. Those of you who were there may have also seen me stand on stage share a story and say a few words about fear and confidence accompanied by my colleague Susan Heaton-Wright. What you probably aren’t aware of is how I was feeling while standing on stage. Truth is that my legs were shaking and I could feel my v

Earlier in June this year Nicole Schlautmann gave a powerful and inspiring talk at #HBAELS26 in Vienna on vulnerable leadership. She asked the question: Is there anything in your life that you didn’t do because someone told you, you couldn’t? Most hands in the room were raised. Then she asked "Are you happy you didn’t?" and no one spoke up. Most people would agree that to succeed it helps to surround ourselves with people who believe in us. But what do you do when the messa

Most non-native speakers struggle to get formality right, but in honesty much of the time the biggest struggle is in our heads. The main concern in the majority of my clients is that they’ll be too direct or come across as rude. Some of this comes down to personality, with perfectionists worrying more than others, but I believe a lot has to do with our own language and culture bias and how the foreign language is structured grammatically. In comparison with languages such as