[00:01] Katie: Welcome to The Focus B Show, where Katie Stoddart, high performance coach, interviews experts around the world in performance and mindfulness. Now here's your host. Katie.
[00:32] Katie: Welcome to a brand new episode of the Focus B show. I'm very excited to be here today with Tiffany Dawson. Tiffany is a career coach for women in Stem and a multi award winning podcast host. Tiffany helps women in Stem to be more confident, strategy, savvy, and influential. Hi, Tiffany. Welcome to the show. It's wonderful to have you.
[00:56] Tiffany: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to have this chat today.
[01:00] Katie: Thank you. Yes, it's interesting because we both have a background in engineering, and we both are now coaches. So I'm very curious, maybe to begin, if you could tell us what was your journey like? How did you end up being a yeah, sure.
[01:15] Tiffany: So, yeah, as you said, I have a background in mechanical engineering. I worked in the construction industry for about eight years across Australia and the UK. And they're very male dominated environment. Even though I wasn't on the construction sites all the time, I was usually in an office, but most engineers still to this day are men. And also, I guess I didn't notice at the time, but, yeah, I am also a racial minority in the workplace because I've got a Chinese background, but working in western world, so I guess I felt a little bit like an outsider at times. I was often the only woman in a meeting room, and that didn't really start affecting me until I was more senior in my roles. I felt like when I was junior, everything was new and exciting. Everyone who started at the same time as me was at the bottom of the food chain, as to say, in the corporate world. So we're all kind of on a level playing field. But the more and more senior I became, the more I saw this opportunity gap between me and my other peers, especially my male peers. And I just put that down to the fact that I was bad at engineering. I wasn't as good as them. So I really kind of lost my confidence in my ability to do the technical work or even to have good conversations with clients and all that kind of stuff, because I wasn't being afforded those opportunities that it seemed everyone else was. So I just thought that was because of me. It was because I wasn't good enough, and therefore they didn't put me forward for this stuff. But I know now that it's a very complicated issue in terms of social expectations of women in the workplace, especially in male dominated workplaces. And I'm sure my lack of confidence didn't help me put myself forwards either. So it was a bit of a double whammy. So you asked me how I became a coach. Well, I guess during my engineering career, I guess I worked my way up into a management position where I managed 30 engineers. I was a line manager for lots of people as well. And I really enjoyed that. Just being able to help people in my team to craft a career towards the direction that they wanted to and see them become happier and more successful in their roles, I just found that really rewarding, more so than the technical engineering stuff that I was doing. So I kind of had those two roles, the technical engineering stuff and the leadership role. And I guess I found myself spending more and more time doing the coaching side of things, especially after I had a bit of a little mini breakdown on the way to work one day. I was just feeling so overwhelmed at this point, even though I was a manager, I still felt like I wasn't good enough. I was always covering up the fact that I didn't know what I was doing, and everyone was looking up to me every day to ask for direction, and I was just pretending to be their manager, it felt like. So that's classic impostor syndrome, which I know you've talked a lot about on this podcast already, but yeah, I had a manager who was really helpful, and I know not every woman in engineering is so lucky to have that. I was sent on some group coaching workshops for high performing women in the workplace, and I really learned some tools to put those boundaries in place. Like, I didn't even know I was allowed to have boundaries in the workplace. I really let everyone just call me at any hour of the day with any problem that they had, whether it was personal or work related. I learned that confidence was something that I could grow and cultivate myself. You didn't just have to be born with it, which I thought was a thing. And yeah, these tools were just so simple implement, and I found that they worked really quite quickly for me. So that was great. But then I got a bit angry that no one had ever taught me this stuff before. Right, and you probably can relate. No one had ever taught me this stuff before. Why had I had to wait until I was so far down my career and also an adult before I learned this stuff? So I really started to kind of teach all the people who I managed and some of my female colleagues some of these tools so that they could also thrive in their workplaces. And I just became so passionate about teaching this stuff that I decided this was something I wanted to do full time. And I discovered that you can. You can do this as a coach. So that's where I am today.
[06:14] Katie: That's amazing. And I can definitely relate with the feeling of why didn't I learn this sooner? Yes, it's valid for so many different things that we learn later on, especially in the field of personal development. In my case, one of them was emotional intelligence. When I realized we could actually feel our emotions in our body, that we had ways to actually cope with being upset or angry, that there were ways to respond, when I discovered all of this, I was sort of outraged that we weren't taught this at school. I was like, these are our emotions. Like, why aren't we taught how to manage them? So can totally relate with this. And interestingly enough, so one of the areas you do specialize in now is confidence. So you mentioned that you had a bit of this impostor syndrome, and you learned these tools in your group coaching on confidence. So tell us a few tips and tricks that you teach that help women to be more confident in their work environments.
[07:11] Tiffany: Yeah, sure. So I think one of the most common things you'll hear women in the workplace place being told is you've got to be more confident. The reason you didn't get that promotion is because you weren't confident enough to ask. You need to be more confident. Do this. Speak up in meetings, at the boardroom table, stand up when you're talking. All this external stuff that we get told, but it doesn't make us feel more confident. This stuff about, oh, you should make sure you speak up at every single meeting, even if it's not really that valuable a thing to say. Just say something or I don't know, there's just all this kind of behavior that we're told to do to be more confident. And yes, it will make you appear more confident to other people, but you won't feel any more confident. Which is why I really think that we have so much impostor syndrome these days, because this is the way that women are taught to be confident. We're taught to behave like someone we're not. And that's exactly what an impostor is, right? So really, I think the first thing that gets missed out a lot is teaching women what self confidence actually is. And I know this sounds really basic, but when you ask women, oh, what does confidence feel like? Or what does it look like? They will tell you all these external behaviors. They won't really be able to tell you what self confidence actually means. And the kicker is this self confidence just means the ability to trust yourself, to do the right things that you feel are right at the right time. So the first thing that you need to know in order to have self confidence is what you believe to be right. What do you believe to be right and true? And an easy way to do this is to find out what your core values are. This is something that coaches will bang on about so much. And this is why if you don't have that self awareness of what your values are, then it's really hard to live authentically, like, to live in accordance to be able to trust yourself. So in spite of other people maybe not agreeing with your opinion, or maybe they think that the way you're doing things is wrong. If you have this gut feeling or you have the experience to know that this is the right way to do something, or this is the right thing to do, despite what the world is telling you. Then that's true self confidence. It's not looking like an extrovert or strutting down the street with a swagger. It's that feeling of being able to trust yourself. So I think the first thing to do if you want to start cultivating your self confidence is finding out what your core values are. And I've got a worksheet to do that if anyone's interested. And there's lots of tools online which you can do as well. They're all generally quite free and easy to do, so do that interesting.
[10:32] Katie: Yes. I like how you say that it's linked to the self trust. I often think about self confidence as being self trust, but you go sort of the extra step of saying self trust to do the right actions for you. So finding out the right actions and finding out their values. And that's why the example you gave earlier with the meeting or the meetings is so interesting, because the idea a person who's confident doesn't stand up in all the meetings to just say anything. But if they do feel that this is something they need to stand up for, if they do feel this is important for them, then having that courage, having that confidence to actually be assertive and stand up, then it matters. So it's not just standing up at any meeting, just for the fun, basically.
[11:18] Tiffany: Yes, absolutely. And then I guess on the flip side, if you lack self confidence and you have something valuable to say in a meeting, you will probably hold back and not say it. And therefore you don't trust yourself. You don't trust yourself to do the right thing, which is to share this great idea in the meeting. You can't trust yourself to do the right thing at the right time and you might feel after the meeting you'll be like, oh, I should have said that. Or I think a really common thing is after the meeting, after you've had this great idea and you didn't voice it, someone else will come up with the idea and you'll be like, oh, I had that idea, why didn't I say that? Maybe it was the right thing to do. So yeah, I guess self confidence has a lot to do with looking at the bigger picture and the benefit to others. So you ask for a quick trick to gain that self confidence. And I think a really quick mindset flip that you can do is when you're feeling lack of confidence, you're generally thinking about the risk to yourself. So say in that meeting situation, you have this idea to share. You think it might be a good one, but then your lack of confidence stops you. There's this voice in your head say, oh, don't say that. Maybe someone's already thought of that and it's actually a stupid idea. What if I say it and everyone laughs at me? Or what if I say it and all these risks to yourself? What if I say it and I don't explain myself properly and someone else steals my idea? I may as well just not say anything at all. So all these awful scenarios go through your head, and you're just thinking about the risks to yourself, and that stops you from taking any action, even though you feel like this could be a really good thing to say. So the trick really is to what I call flip the focus. So instead of thinking about the risks to yourself, flip the focus and think about the benefit to others. So if I say this idea out loud to this meeting room, how may it benefit the team? How may it make more money for our client? Or maybe it could help my team members do a better job. What are the benefits to others? And that's like a split second thing you can do in your own head to gain that instant confidence, because you are now priming your brain to trust yourself to do the right thing. Yes.
[13:53] Katie: I love this and it's so true. And I've mentioned something similar about public speaking and fear of speaking in public. Because if you focus on yourself, like you said, what if I look ridiculous? What if I don't sound well? What if I use the one word? What if I get stuck that's my biggest fear when I speak in public is to suddenly forget and get blocked. Everything else I'm not too afraid of. But the second you flip it to, how can this speech influence people? How can this inspire others? How can I actually help them? Then you forget all about yourself and it's so much easier in many ways.
[14:25] Tiffany: Yeah. And even if you do have, you might still have that fear, even though you're thinking about benefiting others. But then it just puts it into perspective and it feels worth it. It feels worth it to be nervous for half an hour speaking, because I might be able to inspire a few people to take some action towards something that's going to be really helpful to them.
[14:46] Katie: How do you help women to build that self trust? So on one level, there's finding out the values, finding out what's right for them. A lot of people, because they've been too influenced in their lives, they actually don't know what feels right. So once they've figured out what feels right, how do you help them build this self trust? Because this is also a huge part of confidence.
[15:05] Tiffany: Yeah. So I guess there are a couple of tools that I teach, such as the flip, the focus. And it's not generally going to be something that you generate overnight confidence. It's something that you have to train your brain to do. Because remember, you've probably built this lack of confidence over decades in your life, so it takes time to undo that. But I really think that having that self awareness to start off with and learning what your values are and your priorities in life means that you start respecting your own needs and wants as much as you respect other people's. It's not becoming selfish. It's not saying my needs and wants are more important than others, but it's just respecting them to the same amount. I think as women in Western society, we are taught from a very young age to make sure we don't bother others, make sure we serve others first all the time, above our own needs. But in the end, it's not beneficial to the other party because you might start feeling resentful and you might start acting in a way that doesn't help others because you've bent over backwards for them. So it's really about zooming out and looking at that big picture. Yes, you might be able to benefit others by bending over backwards for the next five minutes, but in the long term, is that really going to be helpful? So I guess through coaching, I help these women to see that bigger picture, that longer term strategy, and to understand that having that self confidence and trusting your values and your needs and wants are as important as others because it's going to help them in the long run as well.
[17:04] Katie: Yes, it's exactly that image of you put on your oxygen mask first before you help others. It's the same if you're not feeling aligned with yourself, if you don't have that self trust, that self confidence, then how can you help others find it? Which is why a lot of the time and a lot of the coaches I've interviewed have this. But this is also because how can you coach other people to be aligned, to love themselves, to have that self awareness, if you don't have it yourself? So it makes perfect sense to me. I'm wondering also the difference, and this is something I know a lot of people aren't necessarily clear on, which is the difference between overall self confidence and confidence in specific areas.
[17:45] Tiffany: Yeah, I guess overall self confidence is that notion of being able to trust yourself to do the right thing at the right time. Confidence in a skill means that you feel, I guess, competent. You are confident riding a bike. Like you know how to pedal each foot and you know how to steer. I guess there is a link because if you get on that bike or do that skill that you feel confident in doing, then that might make you feel in that moment that you are competent at whatever you're doing. However, I guess when you have impostor syndrome, you can be competent at a skill, but also feel like you're not good enough. So there is a bit of an interlink there.
[18:37] Katie: Interesting. What do you think is the link then between Impostor syndrome and self confidence? I know that they're related, but how would you explain the difference between someone who has Impostor Syndrome and someone who just has lack of self confidence?
[18:51] Tiffany: Yeah, I guess there is a really close link there. Impostor syndrome comes from a lack of self confidence, but like a really severe lack of self confidence. I would say you probably experience Impostor Syndrome if you're often thinking that anything good that happens to you happens out of sheer luck. So people with Impostor syndrome will often say things like, oh, I was just in the right place at the right time, or I was just really lucky that that happened to me. And so any achievement that they make, anything good that happens to them, even though from the outside it looks like, wow, they're so successful, they've made this happen, they will often think, oh, I was just really lucky, I just spoke to the right person at the right time, and here I am. On the flip side, people with Impostor syndrome will also feel like anything bad that happens to them is totally their fault. They're completely responsible for anything bad or anything that fails around them, even if there are other factors involved. So I would say impostor syndrome is this feeling of lack of control over what happens around you, whereas a mere lack of self confidence may mean, oh, okay, I'm not really that good at that thing yet. Or, yeah, maybe it's just the fact that there is probably something I can do about it, but I'm not there yet.
[20:28] Katie: The research I read around Impostor syndrome said that interestingly enough, a lot of the time there was experts in their fields that had Impostor Syndrome because they no longer process the information consciously, but subconsciously. So they didn't have the feeling that they were actually learning it or doing it. So it was all in the back of their brain sort of subconsciously. And so they saw I'm just bluffing or I'm just inventing. And I can definitely relate with that feeling of, oh, I was just lucky. And I had a particular phase of Impostor syndrome about a year ago and I was just really diving and digging into it. And it's two things. It's when you start to really be an expert, is one way of putting it. But let's say assimilate the knowledge, that's one thing. And the other one, it happens every time you step out of your comfort zone because your brain is thinking, we've done, it up to here, what are you doing going to this level? And so the brain sort of panics and wants you to go backwards. Fear driven, I think.
[21:23] Tiffany: Yeah, and I think this is so true of any sort of skill. The more you learn, the more you realize you don't know, or the more you realize there are people who are better than you. And I can't quite remember, but there's the four stages of learning that you go through. I think it's really interesting for people learning a new skill to look that up because you do definitely go through those four stages. And firstly, you know that you're incompetent. Secondly, you feel like you're getting a little bit more competent, but you kind of know that there's more to do. And then the final stage is, you know you're competent and you're confident at it, but there's that third stage where you are actually competent, but you don't feel competent. And it's like this really interesting middle part of your learning that a lot of us get stuck on. And because we get stuck in that middle phase, we feel like we shouldn't move forwards and we don't kind of push to that next stage of being able to do that skill.
[22:26] Katie: In your case, when you were going through impostor syndrome, do you remember a specific moment where things changed and you no longer felt that feeling?
[22:36] Tiffany: Yeah, I don't know if it was a specific moment, but I really did work hard at it for about three to four weeks. There's a tool that I teach and also I learned at the same time, which I call the Name and Shame, and it is really calling out your inner critic. So the inner critic is that mean voice in your head that tells you you're not good enough. You shouldn't do this. You'll just make a fool of yourself. You look fat in this. Know all that awful stuff that we say to ourselves. And the name and Shame method means you give that voice a character. So my name And Shame character is Judge Judy because I find her kind of irritating. She's always judging without really knowing all the facts. She's always like, she's got this annoying voice and gavel and she just kind of like, yeah. Anyway, so I've chosen her. And every time my inner critic showed up, I would pretend it was Judge Judy saying it to me. And because I felt so irritated by her anyway, I'd just be like, oh, that's so easy to dismiss. Like, that's not my voice. That is just my inner critic. So annoying. Shut up. I don't need this right now. And I think over those three weeks, I don't think there was a specific moment, but I realized one day going into work that I felt really calm and serene and that I was able to prioritize things really well because I didn't have this external pressure of expectation on me. I just knew, okay, well, I've got way too much work to do. But these are the things that are really going to make a difference today. So I'm going to focus on these. I'm not going to be able to do these things. These people are not going to be happy with me, but that's okay. So, yeah, it was this realization one day going into work, feeling like I've got this under control, whereas before I felt completely out of control. I just felt like there were people pulling me in all sorts of different directions and I had to please everyone, but I didn't feel like that after those three weeks.
[24:46] Katie: Yes, it's interesting. It's basically you managed to tune down those voices in your head that create all that noise, that judging, that feeling of not being good enough, but also that need to answer everyone, or that fear that if you don't answer these people, maybe you're not liked as much or valued as much. And once you turn it all down, it's like, oh, I can just breathe and work clearly, and I don't have all this mess. It's like inner noise and mess going on, basically.
[25:13] Tiffany: Yeah, definitely. And because of that inner noise and mess, because I was trying to please everyone, I was probably just doing a bit of a half *** job pleasing everyone. Whereas once I had that clarity in my head as to, okay, these are the right things to do, I can trust myself to choose the right things to do at the right time. I did the stuff that was important to a really good standard, and the stuff that wasn't important, I didn't do them, but they also didn't really matter as much. So it was that clarity and confidence can really help us to achieve more and be successful in work in that way, because you have that clarity of what is the most impactful thing I can do right now.
[25:59] Katie: Yes, it's getting rid of your fears. I think a lot of the time, it's not having the fear either of other people judging you, not having the fear of you judging yourself, not having the fear will go wrong. But just think, okay, this is the right action to do. Even if it's out of my comfort zone, even if it's something a bit scary, this feels right and aligned, and then you have that self trust and belief to do it. I like this. I like the correlation between getting rid of the fears and the confidence because I think they're very related.
[26:30] Tiffany: Yeah, absolutely agree.
[26:32] Katie: Do you work also on helping women sort of overcome these fears? Because I know that's definitely, like we said, correlated with the confidence.
[26:40] Tiffany: Yeah, I think this kind of fear manifests in different skills and different scenarios for the women that I work with. But the crux of it is the same. All the stuff that we've spoken about today so far, that is the crux of all of it. So some of the women I work with are really afraid of challenging their superiors, so they might have stepped into a leadership role, whereas before they were treated like a junior member of staff. And now they're in this position where they suddenly have to speak back at people who are more senior than them. And they're really afraid to do that because over their years of being in that career, they were the person who told them what to do. And now they've got to talk back and share their ideas, but that is what's expected of them. So it's kind of retraining their brain to not have that fear and to be able to trust their intuition sometimes, and also their experiences that they are things that should be respected as much as their superiors, ideas and experience.
[27:48] Katie: I like the fact that you say it's rewiring their brain to function in another way. Yeah, I think this is a lot what we do as coaches, because we do have all these old patterns that we acquire, like you said, over two decades or more. Three decades, four decades and then rewriting that. And the last sort of point I'd like to touch on because we're already coming to the end is beliefs. Because I know this is a huge part of confidence, the sort of beliefs you have about yourself or about external. So what tools do you give people to rewire their beliefs when, for instance, I don't know, they believe that they're inferior to their top manager and so therefore they can't answer back. That's like a belief. How do you help them rewire that and change that?
[28:32] Tiffany: Yeah, I guess I don't have any really specific tools. I know some coaches specialize specifically in rewiring old beliefs and limiting beliefs, but through twelve weeks of coaching, I really do try and be that annoying person who questions everything. These are questions like, okay, you've just mentioned that you have this belief that your ideas aren't as good as others. Why is that? And being able to coach them through those questions like, why do you think that? What makes you believe that this is the case? I think that really opens up their minds to think, oh, why do I think that? Because they've never questioned it before. It's just this deep set belief that they have been taught ever since they were children that their ideas aren't as important or aren't as useful as other people's. So that line of questioning and being able to dig into changing that old belief into a logical set of answers means that when they can't answer the question, they realize, actually, yeah, I can see myself as a third person now, almost. And my main aim is to really train them to have this line of questioning for themselves moving forward. So after I work with them for a number of months, they have this tool to take forwards with them for the rest of their lives. Even if we don't continue on coaching, they are able to do this for themselves and keep questioning their limiting beliefs. It can be really hard to question limiting beliefs on your. Own, which is why I'm a coach. I know all of these tools, but I still rely on other coaches and other people in my life to question these limiting beliefs for me, because they are so deep set, it's really difficult to uncover them yourselves sometimes. And we have this blind spot because it's our own thoughts. We have these beliefs, we trust our old beliefs. They've been there for years. They're kind of like a safe set of hands. They've kept us safe for all this time. So, yeah, I really believe that having conversations with other people and different people, not just coaches, different people who have different beliefs than you, is really helpful for uncovering some of those limiting beliefs of your own.
[31:01] Katie: Absolutely. And the question part is so essential. And this is also one of the main ways I go about it. But any type of question, it just rewires entirely our focus, and it just helps us think about everything in a different way. It's so powerful sometimes just having a few questions either that you know for yourself and use or from your coach, it could just change everything.
[31:21] Tiffany: Right?
[31:22] Katie: One question could change your life. Pretty much, yeah.
[31:25] Tiffany: And I think the really annoying thing is sometimes I will have one conversation with one of my clients and rewire a limiting belief, and then I will have a conversation with my coach and we have exactly the same conversation. And I'm like, oh, why did I pick this up? Like, I've literally just coached on this exact thing and it can be right in your face and you won't even see until someone really tries to dig into your brain and uncover that thing.
[31:53] Katie: Definitely can't believe it's already the end of the 30 minutes. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Tiffany, it was a real pleasure to have you here.
[32:03] Tiffany: Thank you so much for having me. Loved it.
[32:05] Katie: Thank you.
[32:07] Katie: Thank you for listening to the Focus B show. We would love to hear your feedback. Let us know in a review how this episode inspired you. Keep buzzing.