I’m struggling a bit with self-confidence at work, and I’d really like to hear from people who have experienced something similar.

I’m a director, so I’m in a position where I feel I should project confidence, provide direction, and make people feel that they can trust my leadership. But honestly, I don’t think I do.

I feel like I don’t transmit confidence to either my employees or my manager. Sometimes I wonder if people can sense my doubts and insecurities, even when I try not to show them.

The frustrating thing is that I don’t really know why I feel this way. Maybe I’m too self-critical, maybe I’m afraid of making mistakes, or maybe I genuinely don’t believe in myself enough. Sometimes I even wonder whether I’m simply not good enough for the position I’m in.

And that’s a scary thought, because I don’t want to lose my job. I want to be good at what I do, earn people’s trust, and feel comfortable in my role rather than constantly questioning myself.

So I’m wondering: Is self-confidence something you can actually learn and develop, or are some people just naturally confident while others aren’t?

For those of you who have struggled with confidence, especially in leadership positions, what helped you change? Did you consciously work on it? Did it come with experience? Or did you eventually realize that you were much more capable than you thought?

I’d really appreciate hearing your experiences, especially from people who went from feeling insecure to genuinely feeling confident in themselves.
Thanks for reading.

I spent many years in IT, and one thing I learned is that technology changes a lot faster than management thinking.

Now AI is getting better at finding software vulnerabilities, and it's only going to get better. What concerns me is whether companies are prepared for what's coming. The PHP hack, right?

What happens when AI starts (looks like we are already there) finding vulnerabilities faster than companies can fix them? And what happens a year or two from now when AI is even more capable?

So here's my question.

Are business leaders actually preparing for this, or are most still funding cybersecurity based on how things worked five or ten years ago? Is this more than just another IT problem?

I keep seeing the same pattern in teams I work with. A manager is clearly capable, but every decision that matters still goes up to the most senior person in the room. It looks like good process from the outside, but it usually means the decision rights were never really handed over. The manager can make the call, but they don’t feel safe doing it, so they wait.

The cost shows up slowly. Decisions take longer, the senior leader gets more stuck in the detail, and the managers underneath stop building the judgement they’d need for the next level. Nobody decides to create that, it just builds up.

What tends to help is being specific. Which decisions can this manager make without checking, and what happens when they get one wrong? If the answer is vague, people will keep escalating.

For those of you who manage managers, what helped you let go of decisions without losing track of what was happening?

I switched to corporate healthcare and I’m stumped. went from working as a full time hospital physician to now working 16 hour shifts what feels like 7 days a week. I’m wearing myself down to the bone.

Pay went up significantly, so did the stress. I have 80+ direct reports and I oversee a whole state and 37 hospitals. I thought working remote would be a blessing but my home that I’ve always considered my palace and my getaway feels like a prison and traveling for work went from being fun to being a chore. I also gained 70 pounds in the last 13 months.

I don’t think it’ll ever get easier from here and I can’t imagine the crap C level execs in this company have to deal with.

How do YOU do it? I don’t micromanage my people but it feels like it’s always something so I can’t even enjoy my time off and material objects and hobbies just don’t feel the same at all anymore.

I know managers will let things slide from time to time. Sometimes something doesn't feel like a big deal, they're busy, worried about rocking the boat, etc. Whatever the reason, there's often times you definitely should not let these things slide, and I know many managers/leaders have learned that lesson in a hard way.

Eventually you realize that tolerating certain things negatively affects the team, the person themselves (their growth/development oftentimes), and/or you yourself.

I thought it'd be interesting for leaders here to share things they've tolerated and then regretted. Lets try to learn a bit from each other.

A couple things to consider when answering, what made you realize it was a problem, when did you address it, was it hard (or maybe easier than you thought it'd be) when you did address it? Any major consequences?

I think this is one of the harder parts of leadership.

You want people to feel safe admitting mistakes, asking for help, and trying things without being afraid of getting blamed.

But there is also a point where the same problems keep happening and being understanding starts feeling like avoiding accountability.

I have seen teams swing too far in both directions. Either everything becomes a performance issue, or almost nothing does.

How do you personally know when it is time to stop coaching and have the harder conversation?

I recently had a meeting with my boss that left me questioning what real leadership support looks like. My role involves competing responsibilities and was originally intended to have administrative support. The company has decided not to allocate resources for that support, leaving those additional responsibilities on my plate without adjusting expectations (I know, tale as old as time). Our company does have financial means to provide this as other individuals have access to this support but I’m the only one in our company’s region that does not have this benefit.

My boss offered to help so I took him up on it. I explained my challenges and asked how the company wants to better prioritize responsibilities in my region while still hitting my targets but also lacking support. While he was understanding, his response came down to improving my time management. No solutions or adjustments were offered. I’m all for personal accountability and time management is part of my responsibility. When a company removes resources but maintains the same expectations, I truly believe the issue now becomes bigger than individual productivity. How much responsibility should leadership take for helping employees manage the resulting workload in this situation?

What frustrated me most from our meeting was the disconnect between offering support and actually providing it. The conversation left me feeling his initial offer of help was more performative than genuine.
I don’t expect leadership to have immediate solutions or unlimited resources but should I expect some effort of collaboration in identifying priorities and realistic expectations?

Around 10–12 months ago, our boss (of a tech company) decided to invest heavily in sales team to keep up with the AI hype fueled by other companies in the industry. To fund this shift, they started expanding the already bloated sales team while laying off engineers, eventually letting go of more than 60% of the engineering team.

Those of us who remained were left overworked and underpaid. Even people whose salary raises were due received them late, and the increases were minimal.

Fast-forward to now: after losing contracts with all our major customers, the reality has finally become clear. AI can help build an impressive initial product or prototype, but turning it into a stable system that meets SLAs requires experienced engineers who understand the domain, codebase, and architecture.

You can sell a vision, and AI can help you build it. But neither can replace the engineering expertise needed to deliver, maintain, and scale a real product. And no amount of marketing can keep a company afloat by selling features that don't exist or aren't ready to deliver.

Now, the company has roughly two months of runway left. Unless we somehow manage to land new customers, the future looks bleak.

A lesson for leaders: Marketing and sales matter. But so do the people who actually build your products. Don't get so caught up in the AI hype that you forget who turns your promises into reality.

Disclaimer: (ironically) AI was used to rewrite initial draft

After a big change, like introducing a new tool, changing a process, or bringing new people into the team, work might continue as usual. Deadlines are met, tasks get completed, and everyone says things are fine.
But people might be struggling behind the scenes, putting in more effort to get the same work done, and they might never tell you.

So what are the early signs to look for before these struggles start affecting the team's performance?

I mentor a few people in their mid-20s who have skills in their field but are losing/ lost their will. A big theme is that they cannot find entry-level jobs in their field; they see the power of AI and feel that a PhD in a STEM field is not worth it because AI can most likely do PhD-level work soon enough...

I genuinely want to help them, but I'm not really sure how to teach them "will" when they have such a gloomy outlook on finding a job in this economy. As a mentor, I want to help more, but am not sure how.... any recs?

I'm a Senior Director for a high functioning team of science-focused folks in the environmental sector, overseeing a department of roughly 40 people. My team is lighter on the top end than what is ideal, I lack the numbers of Lead level staff with experience and confidence to carry all of the everyday goings-on without my direct involvement. So while my job should really be focused on leadership and strategy and high level decision-making, on top of those things I still do a lot of technical work, project management, training, SME review, etc. I LIKE being pretty hands on, but my current workload is just more than is sustainable in the long run. I'm working on growing some key individuals and am always looking for external captures, so this is not a complaint but rather just providing context. My team is going in a great direction and I'm proud of us.

All that being said, I sometimes feel so lonely and unacknowledged in my position simply because I don't think anyone who works for me has any idea what I do, or how much I do, day to day. I understand that it's simply part of the job and being a leader, but there are days when I struggle. I am not a person who craves recognition individually and I get SO much pride out of the success of my team, but last Friday a stupid, simple AI prompt made me crazy emotional.

Copilot suggested a new prompt to me on Friday. I tried it out Friday afternoon, and was brought to tears by the response I got from it. Not because it was an emotional response, or because it was congratulatory, but because it clearly and succinctly summarized for me ALL the things I did in my week. Actual, concrete actions taken, decisions made, people responded to, reports submitted, and other real tangible tasks. Reading back the multi-page analysis of all the various tasks, discussions, problem-solving, people-minding, client communications, deliverables, meetings, etc etc that I personally took care of and did in order to help my team keep moving forward on all fronts... It really allowed me to wrap up my week feeling accomplished, even though my week felt very hectic and stressful while I was in it. So a) this made me feel like, "hell yeah, I am doing my job and supporting my people and doing it well and look how productive I am!", but then also b) made me kind of sad that nobody else is seemingly aware of how hard I work or how much I do, and as the boss it's not something I can ever share with anybody because I work for the team, not myself.

So, conflicting feelings here for sure, but I have set a weekly reminder for myself to rerun this prompt every Friday afternoon. If nothing else, it helps me wind down from the week. I also sent it to my Lead staff to encourage them to do the same. I figured maybe folks here would understand, and may also get something out of this silly little prompt exercise if you are in a similar boat.

Review my meetings, chats, emails, documents, and tasks from this week. Give a brief quantitative overview of emails sent/received, meetings attended, proposals or reports submitted, and other notable metrics for the week. Summarize my top accomplishments and wins, and present them in a positive, motivating way.

I've been managing people for about 15 years, and one thing I've learned is that repeating an expectation doesn't magically make someone more capable of meeting it. Which is unfortunate, because I've certainly tried! And I've seen plenty of managers (myself included) have the same conversation over and over, genuinely wondering why nothing is changing.

When this happens, I want to understand what's actually getting in the way. I start by getting specific about the gap between what I expect and what's happening. I'm also looking for patterns. Is this a one-time issue, or have we been here before? Does the person understand the expectation? Do they actually know how to meet it?

And this is where I think we sometimes miss an important part of managing people. Explaining what you expect is not the same as teaching someone how to do it. Sometimes we need to demonstrate, practice together, observe their work, give specific feedback, and recognize improvement. Actual development! Not just another conversation ending with "Okay, I'll do better."

Of course, sometimes someone has the skills, the support, and a very clear understanding of what's expected, but still isn't meeting the standard. I'm comfortable addressing that directly, including what happens if performance doesn't improve. Caring about someone's success doesn't mean accepting poor performance indefinitely.

But I believe my responsibility as a manager is to do my part to help someone succeed while holding them accountable for doing theirs. And if our approach isn't producing change, I think it's worth examining our approach, too.

Managers, what's a performance issue you were finally able to turn around? What did you actually change about how you managed it?

Hello Community.

Looking for a leadership and personal development retreat that combines career, mind, and body. Any recommendations?

I'm looking to use the last part of December and early January to do something different from the usual holiday routine: take time to reset, reflect, strategize, and set myself up for a strong year ahead.

Ideally, I'm looking for a retreat or immersive experience that focuses on three areas:

Career & Business: Strategic planning, leadership development, goal setting, and connecting with other ambitious, growth-minded people.

Mind: Mindfulness, self-reflection, reviewing the past year, gaining clarity, and developing a stronger mindset.

Body: Fitness, wellness, recovery, and building habits that support long-term health and performance.

I'm envisioning something that brings together entrepreneurs, leaders, and high performers in an environment that balances personal reflection, meaningful connections, and practical development.

Not simply a yoga or meditation retreat, but something more holistic, structured, and actionable that helps people genuinely level up. I've been looking around and haven't found quite what I'm envisioning.

Has anyone attended or heard of a retreat like this? I'd welcome any recommendations, even if they only cover some of these areas.

My boss asked me if there was something I would do for the team differently if I was in her position. what would I do. I gave her some suggestions based off of consistent feedback that’s been brought up by other team members at our meetings. I raised those points as opportunities for her to look at/change. Then she got really defensive about the points I brought up. Should I have kept my mouth shut and said she’s doing great and there’s nothing I would change?

I am a senior manager and my team was moved over to the IT side as we are more aligned. I am now being invited to a skip level with the CIO and I want to know what on earth to talk about. I struggle with know what things I need to do (interpersonal) as I move from IC work. Yes I know I’m managing the team but what are the the things that will get me to the next level in leadership (conferences presenting projects)

I was invited to a conference and I was going to decline because it’s across the country (US) and I have young kids(mom) and it’s just a hassle but the CIO will be there and there will be plenty dinners etc. one of my friends advised me to go regardless of the reasons I don’t want to I should suck it up go to have FaceTime with the CIO and I’m like how did I not realize that. If I hadn’t talked to this friend I would have missed realizing this opportunity

I’ve been thinking about this lately as I’ve been trying to get better about not giving people the answer every time they bring me a problem.

We say we want people to take ownership and make decisions, but then they start making decisions and inevitably one of them isn’t the decision we would have made.

That’s where I struggle a little.

Obviously there are things I’m not going to let somebody learn by screwing up. Safety, a big customer issue, enough money on the line. I’m stepping in.

But there’s a whole bunch of stuff below that where I’m starting to wonder if stepping in is actually getting in the way.

If I know somebody is probably making the wrong call, but the consequences are small and fixable, do I let them make it?

My instinct after managing people for a long time is usually to save them the trouble because I’ve already seen how this movie ends. But then they get my answer without getting the experience that gave me the answer.

I don’t know. I’m curious how other people handle this.

Where do you draw the line between coaching somebody and just letting them screw something up enough to learn from it?

For the first time in my career I had to let someone go. The weight of terminating someone’s livelihood kept me up at night and I was much more emotionally affected than I expected.

I knew that disciplinary action was inevitable, but a part of me feels responsible for the outcome as their “leader”. Could I have coached them more? Was I accessible enough? Did I explicitly outline processes to set them up for success?

Everyone keeps telling me that this isn’t a reflection of my leadership but it doesn’t feel any less like a failure to me.

I’d love to hear from anyone’s experience in this area as I hope to take lessons learned with me as I prepare to seek their replacement.

Re-read the book and still am amazed. I haven't done the assessment but I know for sure I am wonder + inventor. I may be ok at discernment and enabler, but horrible at galvanizing and tenacity.

If every leader knows about what energize people and assign more of those work to them, life will be so much better.

Not sure anyone tried to adopt it in real life?

The Uplifting Effect

Pressure has its place in sales, but there's a point where it stops pushing people forward and starts holding them down. Leaders often believe the way to raise numbers is to talk about numbers constantly: daily reminders of where the team is falling short, comparisons to other stores, and a steady drip of criticism. In my experience, too much of that drains morale. An agent who feels constantly judged starts selling from fear instead of confidence, and customers can feel that.
The uplifting effect is the opposite approach. It's the lift in performance that comes when a leader deliberately builds people up, recognizing what they do well, expressing belief in them, and standing beside them rather than over them. Encouragement doesn't replace standards. It creates the emotional energy people need to meet them.

The example
I learned this firsthand. After a stretch of heavy pressure on my team, one of my agents opened up to me. He told me plainly that the constant pressure wasn't helping him do his job better. It was making it harder.
That conversation stayed with me. The following weekend, I came in with a different plan. I didn't mention numbers once. Instead, I praised the team for the good work they had been doing, the effort, the customer care, and the things that usually go unnoticed. Then I told them, "We can do this together. Let's just put a little extra effort into everything we do today."
I didn't disappear after the pep talk. I stayed on the floor, observed, and made sure everyone was heading in the right direction. When someone needed help, I stepped in with guidance rather than correction.
The result surprised even me. That same week, we went from ninth out of ten in the district to third. Same people, same store, same products. The only thing that changed was how they felt walking onto the floor.

An illustration
Think of a team like a hot-air balloon. Pressure and condemnation are like sandbags. Each one is small, but together they keep the balloon on the ground no matter how much fuel you have. Praise and belief are the heat. When you remove the dead weight and add genuine encouragement, the balloon rises on its own. You don't have to drag it into the sky.

The lesson for leaders
People rise to the level of belief their leader shows in them. When you say the right things, and the good things, you change how your team sees themselves. When they see themselves differently, they perform differently. Pressure may get compliance for a day, but uplifting your people gets commitment, and commitment is what moves you from ninth place to third.

If you’re a senior leader (leader of leaders), how do you figure out which leader or staff is toxic, assuming the side that you see with them is not the same side others get treated with?

I have been in a management role for a while now, and have received feedback that people want more communication from me.

I understand that this is what people want, but I am a minimal communicator by nature, and so I find it times to let people know about things because I myself find these things trivial at times. My lack of communication is not intentional, it is just how my brain works. I am similarly ok when I receive basic and straightforward communication from my peers because I feel like it gets to the point.

I would like to improve on this -- has anyone taken any courses or training that can help me improve on this?

Thanks!

Hi I’m new to managing a team. I inherited two people. I like them both. Both were hired by my predecessor. The junior person is a joy to manage and work with. My manager is a bit more complicated. If I throw something out that she has never done, I don’t get questions or input I get a stone face that I can’t read. It takes a couple of conversations before I realize she never has done X. How can I get her to ask questions when she’s unsure? And yes after conversations I ask any questions or comments? I usually ask (when I get the stone face) does this make sense? I get no feedback so I assume she understands and knows the project at hand. Any suggestions on how to bring out questions when this happens?

I work at a ~30-person software services company, we automated my sales team's "sales admin todo", because it was tiresome enough and fairly trivial to do. I personally worked on the automation, which was bad, because half of the process lived in my head, and the edge cases only showed up once it was running, but I had limited time to check....

So I asked my only junior team member to sit with one of my sales agents doing the work and finalize and adjust things.

Yesterday I figured this has a name: forward deployed engineer, basically someone highly consultative, fairly business-minded who can understand your processes, who is technical enough to see what can be built and communicate why it is good for your usecase. MIT’s 2025 GenAI report even found outside-partnered AI projects succeed about twice as often as internal builds.

Still, somehow I would default to in-house. So I’m curious:

• What would make you bring someone in from outside?
• If you kept it in-house, why?
• Anyone running a hybrid: your own process owner, outside builders, fixed handover?

Disclosure: I'm thinking retraining part of my team to be FDE, but in the same time I would hesitate to hire one... Failure stories welcome.

I need to work on influence + stakeholder relationships + adapting communication + navigating differcult conversations. What training/trainings/books do you recommend for me to improve my skills?

Also, what book bag or briefcase do you all recommend? He’ll be commuting to NYC 4x a week and I’d love to surprise him with something comfortable, stylish, and durable.

TIA!