Let Go of the Beliefs That Limit How You Lead

You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Amy Gallo. And I'm Amy Bernstein. A regular guest of ours, executive coach Muriel Wilkins, is here with us yet again, yay, with her signature mix of candor and compassion. Hello. Thank you for having me here again. Nice to have you there. To see you. Muriel, every time you're on the show, you help us see what being a leader actually requires on the inside, and you've channeled that special gift into your latest book. Tell everyone what it's called. Absolutely. So my latest book is called Leadership Unblocked, Breakthrough the Beliefs That Limit Your Potential. So I have to be honest. I identified with several of those beliefs, but the one I focused on is the belief called I need it done now. And I identified with another of them, the I know I'm right, which I understand, Muriel, is one you have struggled with as well. Yes. Have struggled with, struggle with, and probably will always struggle with, but with a little bit more ease. So we'll go into detail about those hidden blockers and the steps you had us go through, which we strongly recommend our listeners go through too. Yeah. We went from vague feelings of we know we need to make a change all the way to concretely listing what we need to start and stop doing. Not only so that we as individuals can reach our full potential, but also so that our teams can and our organizations can as well. Alright. So, Muriel, before Amy b and I tell you about the awareness we got from reading and reflecting, and that it was a bit of painful awareness at times, can you just tell us what you mean by a hidden blocker, and how would someone know that's what they have? Yeah. So a hidden blocker is basically a belief. It lives on the inside of you, which is why it's often hidden because you're not even aware that it's there. And a belief, for simplicity's sake, is a truth, something that you think is true. We all have beliefs, and some of them are based on facts. Most of them are based on our perceptions, the lens through which we look at the world, which has, quite frankly, nothing to do with what's happening at the moment, but is a reflection of everything that has happened to us beforehand. And so the reason I call them hidden blockers is one, because we're often not aware of them, so they are hidden until you can bring them to the surface. But second, they often block us from being able to reach the goals that we have for ourselves unwittingly because they are serving another purpose, but not necessarily the purpose that you wanna have, which is to reach whatever professional goals or personal goals that you have. Yeah. So some of the signs that you describe of, you know, struggling with …