This week, I attended a Conscious Capitalism Dallas event featuring Raj Sisodia and Nilima Bhat, authors of Healing Leaders. I have also been studying Dr. Daniel Friedland’s Leading Well from Within as I prepare for xchange ’s Conscious Leadership Accelerator course.
Together, these experiences have me reconsidering what we ask of leaders when things feel uncertain.
How much energy goes into appearing confident? And what could become possible if we learned to work more skillfully with self-doubt?
You can lead before the doubt disappears
What interests me about Friedland’s approach is that it includes reappraising stress and self-doubt, alongside recognizing reactivity and cultivating creativity. There is room to change our relationship with what we feel, rather than making its disappearance a prerequisite for leadership.
That matters to me as someone who works with creative leaders.
I want people to bring forward an idea, ask a difficult question, or try something unfamiliar without first having to win an argument with every doubt in their head.
My aim is to help them find enough steadiness to take a thoughtful next step.
Notice what happens before you respond
Consider a leader introducing a change. Someone challenges the plan.
The leader might explain more forcefully, close the discussion, or interpret the question as a lack of commitment.
I want to make room for another possibility: noticing the reaction before acting on it.
Friedland’s framework offers a practical starting point: pause, breathe, name what is happening, and consider the best response.
From there, I might ask myself:
“What am I trying to protect right now?”
“What could this person be helping me see?”
Those questions do not remove accountability. They help me approach the conversation with more choice about how I lead it.
Give leaders somewhere to practice
Sisodia and Bhat’s Healing Leaders connects a leader’s inner work with the health of the organizations they lead. That connection has stayed with me alongside Friedland’s work.
For HR and L&D, I see a practical opportunity: create places where leaders can rehearse the conversations that change makes difficult.
In a workshop, I would invite participants to bring a real situation, notice their first reaction, and practice a different response with a partner.
In coaching, I would explore the self-doubt underneath that reaction and identify a small experiment to try at work.
Then we could return to what happened. Did they ask a better question? Hear a concern they might have missed? Stay in the conversation when they wanted to shut it down?
That is the kind of leadership development I want to make room for: reflection, practice, and a connection back to the work.
We can ask leaders to deliver change while also supporting the inner work it requires.
What conversation might become possible if you did not have to feel completely certain before entering it?
— Dwight Spencer Executive Coach, Keynote Speaker, ICF-ACC, and Certified xchange Guide, Helping creative leaders beat imposter syndrome and lead visibly Host, Community and Becoming For the Love of Creatives Dallas, Texas dwight.authenticcreative.coach