320. The Surprising Gift of Doubt: Leadership Lessons with Marc A. Pitman

That quiet voice saying “I’m not good enough” shows up for almost every leader, even the ones who look the most confident from the outside. Mick Spiers sits down with world-renowned leadership coach Marc A. Pitman, author of The Surprising Gift of Doubt, to unpack why self-doubt and imposter syndrome are so persistent and how they can actually point you toward growth, alignment, and better leadership decisions.

We dig into the stories we tell ourselves and how confirmation bias turns those stories into “proof.” Mark shares practical ways to rescript self-talk with simple language shifts that move you from fixed labels to a growth mindset, plus the pattern-interrupt questions that help you stop reacting on autopilot. We also talk about fear of loss, why it blocks action, and how reframing rejection through a “Go for No” mindset can make hard calls and bold moves feel more doable.

From there, Mark maps the Leader’s Journey through four quadrants, showing why copying others only works for so long and how authentic leadership emerges when you integrate internal signals like values, emotions, and lived experience with external inputs like books, mentors, and training. We also cover strategic vulnerability, the fear of judgment in social settings, and how to help team members who doubt themselves by giving specific feedback they can actually believe and repeat.

🌐 Connect with Marc:
• Website: https://www.nonprofitacademy.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcapitman/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marcpitman/

📚 You can purchase Marc's books on Amazon:
• The Surprising Gift of Doubt: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1989603998/
• Ask Without Fear!: https://www.amazon.com/dp/193807906X/

Transcript

Doubt And Belonging Hook

Mick Spiers 0:01

Have you ever felt like you don't quite belong? Even when all the evidence says that you do? Have you ever questioned whether you're really good enough? Even after everything you've achieved? Or caught yourself thinking at some point, someone is going to find me out. Because if you have, you're not alone. And more importantly, it might not mean what you think it means. In today's episode, I sit down with Marc A. Pitman for a conversation about something that almost every leader experiences, but very few talk about openly. Doubt, imposter syndrome, and the internal stories we tell ourselves about who we are and whether we truly belong. We explore how internal narratives shape our behavior, how confirmation bias reinforces those stories, and how leaders can begin to rewrite the way they see themselves. Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Leadership Project. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by Marc A. Pitman. Marc is a world-renowned leadership expert who's helped tens of thousands of people with his programs and his coaching. He's a world-renowned leadership expert in public speaking, and he's speaks on stages all over the world. And he's also the author of two books, Ask Without Fear. And he's the author of a new book called The Surprising Gift of Doubt. And that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about doubt and how it shows up in our leadership and in our people and this dreaded word imposter syndrome. We're going to explore what does it really mean? And more importantly, how can we work with it instead of against it? So, Marc, without any further ado, I'm dying to get into this. You've triggered my curiosity like you wouldn't believe. Please say hello to the audience and give us a little flavor of your background. But mostly I want to know what inspired you to write this book and do the work that you do around doubt.

Marc A. Pitman 2:04

Wow. Well, thank you. I'm honored to be here. And um and thank you for everybody that's listening and offering some of your hard well-earned time to this conversation. Uh there's two answers. The reason for the book was because I couldn't explain what I did as an executive coach in a way that people understood. I've been I was certified with Frank McCovey coaching in 2003, and I've been doing executive coaching, leadership coaching formally since then. So 23 years now. And still people would say, I'd say, What do you do? I'm an executive coach. Oh, okay. And then there'd be this drift. And maybe you've seen this too of so what do you do? What is that? And I try to explain about transformation and the wonderful things of coaching and how did I benefit from coaching? And I just see their eyes glaze over. So the book was a almost decade-long process of trying to answer the question that even even my mother who introduced me to coaching didn't understand my answer often. She's like, You're unemployed then, right? No, I'm self-employed, mom. This is how you train me to be. So that's what the book and and it what I it's linked to what I love about what I do is that I love the moment. Well, I love whenever whether it's in front of a group, uh, in front of a large audience or one-on-one, when I see people starting to get free from the stuff that binds them. Oftentimes we even put armor around ourselves to protect protect ourselves necessarily, but that armor then becomes a cage that traps us. And many of the people that I get to work with feel stuck. And I get to, and there's there are different ways that they get unstuck, but the core of that fear is often for the people I work with, is the they're gonna find out. I have no clue what I'm doing, and they're gonna fire me. Like I can't let them know. I gotta keep running just a few set a few steps ahead of them. Uh that that self-doubt and that criticism. When I get to share with them that every leader I've worked with has experienced that, that's the the tremendous relief of oh, it's not just me. So many people think they get the manual, they miss the manual. I got the promotion without the playbook. I don't know how to do this. Everybody else seems to know what they're doing. And so as a coach or a speaker, I get to help them see different ways of looking at their experience and also normalizing it. Like this is the right path. You're on the right path that you haven't screwed up. That's addicting to me.

Mick Spiers 4:34

I love being able to do that for people. It really does feel amazing, not just for the person that you're helping, which obviously when they become unstuck, it's liberating for them. But for you to see it with your own eyes, and often it's kind of it's stuck in their head, right? So the stuckness is in their head. It's the interference is kicked in, and interference can show up in so many different ways. We're gonna talk a lot about doubt today. But when they become unstuck in front of your eyes, it really is an amazing experience.

Inner Critic And Stock Stories

Marc A. Pitman 5:07

Well, in doubt and the critic almost becomes a co-opting force of you need that. It's almost a, I don't know if it's addictive, but it's this I can't be a good leader without the doubt or the criticism, the inner critic keeps me in line. I will be out of control if I don't have this. And so when you start getting free from those shackles, it's really exciting to just see people flourish and sit up a little bit taller, lead in the way that they're uniquely designed to lead in their team, and it works organizationally too, having teams and organizations feel like, oh, that's how we fit, or this is our benefit to the sector.

Mick Spiers 5:44

Let's unpack that one a little bit. I want to you can help me here and see if I'm right or not. But I've said this to a few groups that I've been doing some training with lately, and I get some very curious looks when I say this. I tell people that, you know, a lot of people say that if you talk to yourself that you're crazy. Here's the secret we all have an inner monologue, every one of us. We don't talk about it, not everyone talks about it, but we all have an inner monologue, and often it's an inner critic. It's an inner critic. We talk to ourselves in ways that we would never talk to a best friend or even someone that we didn't like. So why do we talk to ourselves like that, Marc?

Marc A. Pitman 6:27

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head with I often, well, some might humorously say you might tell and might be able to get a a read on your inner conversation by listening to how you talk to your animals. If you have pets, there are some people that are really judgmental, the pet's always trying to do something wrong, the pet's always trying to be mischievous and get in trouble. And that could be an indication, it could be the pet, but it could also be an indication of the inner monologue. I call this your stock stories. It's the kind of there are two kinds of stock stories. They're the stock stories that you tell people at conferences. I'm so and so, this is what I do, and that's how you define yourself and help them kind of figure out how do you fit in my life. But the other stock stories are the stock stories that are the ones you tell yourself. Oh, I can never remember names. Oh, I always screw up, oh, I just dropped that, I'm clumsy. And you're right, by and large, they're so toxic. One of my friends, Jess Sharp, recommended putting them on a legal site pad of paper, yellow pad of paper, just having it by your desk. And every time you think a thought to yourself, write it down and just look at it at the end of the day and say, What are you saying to yourself? And then would you talk to a friend this way? And if the answer is no, then maybe there's an invitation to change.

Mick Spiers 7:40

So there's two things I'm picking up there, Marc.

Marc A. Pitman 7:43

One, Carl Jung is coming into my mind and his concept of the I keep being told that I haven't studied young as I'm a I'm a nerd, so but young is one I haven't studied enough. But I keep being told that I'm young adjacent or something. So tell me more.

Mick Spiers 7:58

Yeah. So there's something here. He talks about the shadow, and the shadow is the difference between our ego, our own sense of self, our inner sense of hell self, and how we project ourselves on the world. So we project ourselves on a world, you said, going around the conference with the story you tell your other people about yourself. But meanwhile, the story that you tell you yourself about yourself in your own mind doesn't match. And the difference between those two is what he calls the shadow. And he's trying to get people to be authentic, is to actually bring those two together. But not necessarily that means that you just go around being, you know, just open and honest and go tell everyone. Do you know that my inner monologue told me today that I was an idiot? Well, you don't, that doesn't, that's not the unmasking that he talks about. He talks about improving the story that you tell yourself about yourself and then trying to get reality and well, not reality, the projection and reality to match.

Rescripting Language And Identity

Marc A. Pitman 8:54

That's fascinating. Well, because for me, that's where I did that. One of my stock stories is that I would be walking around college campus and recognize faces, but the names weren't coming to me. And so I realized if I could recognize faces, maybe I could remember names. So I tried to replace, I grew up in a weird family. We had school work because we went to school, and then we had Pittman family homework because my parents were learning leadership and were going to listening to motivational speakers and all. So we had to listen to some of the greats and read like Think and Grow Rich and other books, psychocybernetics and all, as teenagers growing up. So in college, I had this awareness of self-talk. So I heard myself constantly say, I'm great at remembering names. I can't remember. I mean, I'm great at remembering faces. I'm just no good at names. And somewhere along the way, there was a pattern interrupt where I thought, if I can remember faces, maybe I can remember names too. It's it's maybe it's just memory. And so I changed the wording just a bit to say, I'm really good at faces and I'm getting better at names. To this day, you'll never hear me say, I forget something. It's almost humorous to me now, but I'll say, I didn't remember that, or I'm not remembering that right now. Because I don't want forget to be the word that's anchored in my psyche. I want it to be remembering because that's more honoring to people. So, and what I talk about is it's the I think it's psychocybernetics said about the card catalog. You know, growing up, we used to have card catalogs in the library. It's the Google search screen. You're helping rescript yourself, your operating system, recode yourself because your subconscious wants to just prove you right. So if you say I'm an idiot with names, it's gonna say, Oh, yeah, you are. Look at all these voids you got it wrong. But if you say, Maybe, you know, maybe I could learn more, it will do the hard work to find that one time where you got you got it right and start rescripting who you are.

Mick Spiers 10:48

All right. So I'm I'm hearing some really powerful things here, Marc. I want to replay some of them back to you. So the power of the story that we tell about ourselves, about ourselves in our own mind is very powerful. It's very, very, very powerful. And it becomes almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy filled with confirmation bias. Then I'm hearing so that and the confirmation bias is then we only remember the parts that are true to the story that we just told ourselves, and we ignore all the evidence to the contrary, which might come up again when we talk about in imposter syndrome. Then the power of the language that you hold the pen, you're the one that can choose the words. So it's almost like conversational intelligence here, you know, kind of Judith Glazer type stuff, that the power of the words comes in. And then I'm gonna I'm gonna throw Carol de Weck in here and go growth mindset versus fixed mindset. When you said, I'm terrible at remembering names, that's fixed mindset. When you said, I'm really good at recognizing faces and I'm working on getting better at remembering names, that's growth mindset. And it's all in the power of the language and holding the pen, and you're the narrator, you don't have to stick with that stupid inner critic that keeps on saying the negative things, grab hold of the pen and rewrite it. Well said. Yeah, I love that.

Marc A. Pitman 12:07

That and that phrase, so what you're talking about there, uh it's got me beaming because the the way I teach leadership, that was what what I call quadrant three leadership, where you're starting to say, What if, you know, maybe I'm not totally broken and always failing? What if the fact that I'm consistently missing this step or this methodology, maybe that's a feature, not a bug. Maybe there's something in this that is a unique perspective I bring to the conversation, or at an organizational level, a unique perspective our our team brings to this sector. And then you start having exploring all the different ways to identify that, objectively communicate that. So it's not just I don't feel like doing this, but there's you get you develop some language that is more confidence instilling in yourself and in others that you're making informed decisions and making choices, not just reactions. And that uh raises your confidence back up to what I call quadrant four.

Mick Spiers 13:09

I definitely think we're gonna come back to those quadrants later because that's that's got me very curious. I'm gonna say that I heard two things uh, like in the thread, I heard two things. One was when you started to rewrite the narrative about I'm terrible at names, the first thing I saw you do is you focused on what you can do instead of what you can't do. So the previous inner monologue was telling you what you can't do. Then you worked on, well, actually, what I can do, I'm really good at recognizing faces. So you focused on what you can do instead of what you can't do. And then the what if came in. Okay, so if I can do that, then I should be able to repurpose that skill into this. So that's where the what if came for me. So, but it started with a positive, what can I do first? So, what can I do with what I have from where I am? And how can I translate that skill into address the thing that I'm concerned about?

Fear Of Loss And Taking Action

Marc A. Pitman 14:03

I think that's accurate. And I think there's also a healthy dose of I might be totally lying to myself. Like having that, I learned from uh the beginning of my career was not profit fundraising. So I'd ask for hundreds of thousands of US dollars and not give anybody anything in return, except maybe a good feeling. And had fun with it. Like I just that I love that. My first ask was for 100,000, raised tens of millions or more over and helped the clients raise even more, which is so exciting. But the part of it is a healthy, maybe not taking myself so seriously. Like the story I'm telling myself could be true, and maybe it's not. And so when it came to fundraising, and I think sales professionals may experience this too. The picking up the phone to make a call, there's all this negative stuff. It's probably the wrong time. I'm probably interrupting them, I'm probably being a pain in the neck. There's probably better things to do. They probably don't even want to talk to me. That could be true. What could also be true is that this is the best time. They just got their inheritance or they just won the lottery and they've been looking for something of meaning to invest in, and they can't wait to talk to me. I find myself then getting all kind of just laughing at myself because what are the odds of that happening? And in reality, they're about as good as the odds of it being a bad time. I don't know. The donor will tell me if it's a good time or bad time. It's not my choice to make for them. But I love having that kind of not believing my own press, like a little bit and a little bit of humor. That's part of how, and and it's interesting to watch clients get freed up with that. Like, okay, this is super important. This is a big deal. There are big goals, it's my job. And I can not be totally wed to the outcome because if I do the right process, the outcome tends to happen.

Mick Spiers 15:46

So, two phrases jumping into my head. We you and I spoke about this before we record this phrase, but do I know this to be true? Do I know this to be true to challenge that? And then I'm hearing the the what if, what, what's another possible explanation or another possible scenario? And then testing, well, which one's more likely to be true? So, what I'm curious about here though, Marc, is you know, we talk about this pretty often, but our fear of loss is much greater than our appreciation of gain. So when you do that, what if analysis and you go, okay, possibility one, they're gonna hang up on me and hate me, or possibility two, they're going to welcome my phone call and they want to have the conversation. In our head, because of our aversion of loss and our it's greater than our appreciation of gain, we're gonna maybe, if we don't patent interrupt, we're gonna we're gonna go to the left option and we're not gonna make the phone call. We're gonna we're gonna let the interference get in the way.

Marc A. Pitman 16:50

Absolutely. And this is where I'm looking, I'm trying to look up right now. They there's a book called Go for No. Have you read this? No, I haven't. No. It is brilliant to help you reframe that to trick yourself. It's kind of it's a really good hack. Go for no is basically we want to get to a yes. And I'm I apologize to the author that I'm not remembering. Andrew Gerald, I believe it is. But the we want to get to yes. And the way to get to yes is often through no's. But that fear of loss, like we'd rather, many of us would rather have a big prospect list than get through to our big list of suspects or possibilities than actually find out, make the calls and do the contacts and have people fall off the list so that we're actually talking to people who are interested. Because it feels like we're losing a list as opposed to moving forward on our goal. So go for no, she posited it. There's a just wonderful parable in there. But the game then becomes how many no's can I get? Can I get 30 no's this month? And what's hat, what gets for me being competitive and playful, it messed me up because I started making first of all, it got me over a little bit more over that hump of well, it's a win. I'm winning if I get a no. So I think that was part of the rescripting. But then it messed me up because when people would be interested and maybe say yes, I know exactly. It's like this is the yes is what's gonna fill my bank account, but playing a no game right now, I gotta make another call, darn it.

Mick Spiers 18:19

So for the avoidance of doubt with the audience, Marc and I are talking about making fundraising calls, but everything we just said is applicable in everything that you keep on stopping yourself from doing. When you're getting stuck and you've got the fear of loss kicking in and telling you that this is gonna go bad, and you're not appreciating the gain that could be at the end of this action that you haven't taken. We do this all day, every day in our brain. And, you know, it's do I know this to be true? All of these kind of things. So like this negative story that I've told myself of how badly this is gonna come. You know, ask yourself questions like, what's the worst could that could happen? And what's the probability of that worst thing to happen? And then what's the best thing that could happen and what's the probability that that would happen? And if you do that well, it often, well, I'm gonna say nearly always lands on the positive side and you take action. But if you don't, if you don't patent interrupt and you don't do that process, you won't take action. You'll just sit there and feel safe and protected and won't take an action that could have changed your life.

Marc A. Pitman 19:28

And that's why I always have a coach that I I'm paying to coach me, because I need somebody else outside of my system to be able to, that I trust, to be able to, that doesn't have a vested interest in my answer, in the sense of their employment doesn't depend on me or my employment doesn't depend on them. But someone that's able to ask that question and allow me that free space to be, oh wow, maybe it isn't as much of a crisis as I thought.

Mick Spiers 19:55

Yeah. That is an interesting one, Marc. So everyone listen to that. So world-renowned coach has a coach, right?

Marc A. Pitman 20:04

That's one of my best when people ask me about one-on-one coaching. I do ask them, as you're looking, because I hope people are choosing their coach that is a good fit, not just the only one they've heard of. But I said, as you're looking, ask the coach, who's your coach? And it's a it's pretty telling. If a coach doesn't have a coach, no, there could be seasons, that's fine. But if a coach is typically not being coached, maybe they don't believe in coaching as much as they think they do. So yeah, I always like to say the ask leaders, who's the person you're following or what's the methodology you're following? Because I think they're mixed for safer leaders if they're learning. I guess it goes back to growth mindset.

Mick Spiers 20:39

All right, very good. All right, so we've we've already covered two really good things, which is about rewriting the story we tell ourselves about ourselves in our head. And I'll I'll give one more anecdote on this one, which is if you start a sentence with this, I'm the kind of person who, and then you finish that sentence with a positive statement, you become that person, right? So I'm the kind of person who makes smart choices when I go out to eat and I make healthier choices, you'll start making healthier choices. If you say to yourself, I'm the kind of person who eats burgers and pizza and beer, you'll eat burgers, pizza, and beer. So it becomes very powerful in terms of how you how you write that story and the language that you use. Marc's example, I'm the kind of person who's terrible with remembering names. You will always be the person that's terrible at remembering names. Okay, so we've done enough on that.

Marc A. Pitman 21:27

My friend Renee Funken uh has a great training on labels and labeling ourselves and freeing ourselves up, identifying our labels. And so that's that's been a process she and I are uh going on in this last few months of just being reflectively what are the labels that we have for ourselves and then asking ourselves, does it still serve us?

The Leader’s Journey Four Quadrants

Mick Spiers 21:47

Yeah, very good. Okay. All right. Then the second stanza was then about overcoming some of this stuckness related to our aversion of fear being greater than our appreciation again, and how you can pattern interrupt and challenge yourself so you take action. What I want to come back to, Marc, is something you said at the very beginning, which is the realization that that not everyone has got it it all sorted out. They on the surface they look like, oh wow, look at that Marc guy. He's got his whole world sorted out. And then this realization that we're all making it up as we go along. We're all a work in progress. Tell us more about this.

Marc A. Pitman 22:25

I call this the leader's journey. This is where the four quadrants come in. The first part of leadership is basically quadrant one is where you're copying the other person. You've observed another another leader and you try to implement what you've seen them do. And you're at your highest. So imagine four axes. There's the confidence axis that's vertical, and there's the inputs axis that's horizontal. If you're driving while listening to this, please don't try to draw that out. But trust us, you can look, you can find it online. So confidence vertical, inputs horizontal. And we typically stay on the we're the highest confidence in the first stage because either we have known we're a leader or we have at least confidence in the person who says, why don't you take control of this project? Why don't you lead this project? So it's either borrowed confidence or in inner confidence. And we're looking externally to everybody else. Like, how does a person lead? I need to copy the teachers, the bosses, the managers, I need to copy somebody. Not a bad stance, but that's where we tend to start. We pretty quickly go down in a confidence into quadrant two, where we I call it the experiment quadrant, because it doesn't work the way it seems to for them. You know, an introvert following an extrovert boss gets tired by having to be out and smiley, and people feel like it's forced and it's just it's different. And so quickly we've we figure out what's lacking in me, how do I fix it? And so we get conferences, we go to listen to podcasts, we read books, we do certifications and classes and degrees and time management tools and all, which is all good as well, because you're learning how you learn, but you're still motivated by the question of what's lacking? What am I missing? What hopefully nobody will find out. I don't know what's going on. Yeah, it's the wizard of oz. Don't look at the man behind the curtain because he they don't what doesn't want to be found out. Many leaders that I that I know live in that quadrant, and that's they experience levels of success and all, but that's they never break out of that sort of, I'm always lacking. The doubt, though, in that this is where I think can be the gift of pushing us into listening to our internals. Like, what are the things that we have been having gut senses about the whole time? Or things that don't quite sit right with us from what we are learning from other people. And we're not throwing out the external inputs, the research, the books, those we're not trying to say throw it out, but it's honoring the other information source we have, which is ourselves and our lived experience and our team if we're doing it organizationally. That's where quadrant three happens. And there's a dozen different tools that we can that I have used with coaches, with clients. As you know, as a coach, I don't, they're not, there's not a linear step. It's whatever the client wants to participate in. But there are a dozen, there's like a toolbox to go through where you start figuring out your hardware and different aspects of your hardwiring, your goal setting. Are you just segmenting your goals? Are you doing a goals for your entire person, not just for a segment of yourself, um, your mission, vision, values, and your stories. What are the stories you're telling yourself? What are the stories you're telling others? And what's the story you want to be living into? Like at the end of your life, what is it that you want people to say about you? As you start having those conversations, you move. So you're now in quadrant three, which is lower confidence, but you're listening to your internal cues. You move back, you then start growing in confidence and move into that quadrant four, where you're more focused. I call it a focused leader. And I hesitated on that because it's not that it's all figured out. It's not like you're Nirvana, you've you've you've reached some sort of release or moksha. Yeah, exactly. You're focused because you realize there's an entire there is a map for leadership. You're only focused on the externals, and now you see the internal. So you have the whole map, and now you know if you're experiencing some dissonance or some situation, you can say, where do I need to go? Do I need to go to quadrant one and learn copy somebody, learn from somebody, be mentored, have an advisor? Do I need to quadrant two and learn a course? Or do I need to quadrant three and say, why is this consistently not working? And is that is there a way that my lack of appreciation or remembering this can actually be a different perspective that adds value to the people I serve?

Mick Spiers 26:41

Okay, so there's a thread I'm picking up, Marc. It's really good. I love the quadrants and I love that you called it the leader's journey. The thread that I'm picking up in there is paying attention to signals that are trying to tell you something and then acting intentionally with it, not on autopilot. So why do I say on autopilot? This is the common first-time leader journey, but it can happen at any time, is people land in their first leadership job and they have this a little bit of a boost of confidence at that point because they get the euphoria of finally I've been recognized for you know what I bring to the world. So a bit of a confidence boost. But then the dawning of realization that no one's shown them what it means to be a leader, and their first port of call is usually to mimic the leaders before them. And the interesting thing here, Marc, is that they may have not even enjoyed that leader. There may have been parts where they go, oh, yeah, I really like the way he or she did this, but but then there was all these things that they did that they didn't like. Why are you gonna mimic the behavior of a leader that you didn't even enjoy following? Right. So so there's if you go on autopilot, it's not very intentional, right? So the copying, and then it's gonna start feeling I use this phrase about imagine you're going to the theater, and for whatever reason the the star player that night is out and the understudy's gonna play, and they say, Oh, the role of the Wizard of Oz tonight is being played by Marc A. Pitman. I think that's what gets in people's heads is they go, Oh, I'm the leader today, so I've got to play a role. I'm I'm acting, I'm acting, and now I'm not being myself. Now I'm not and it starts to feel this is where your signals came in, it starts to feel very inauthentic, and there's something in your gut going, I'm doing what the person before me did, but this is not sitting right with me. And if we ignore that signal, we won't change. But if we pay attention to that signal, we'll start going on your quadrants. How's this sitting with you?

Emotions As Data And Hardwiring

Marc A. Pitman 28:45

It's sitting well. I think what I want to add add to that or make sure isn't heard is that leading is different than doing, then doing the work, like being an individual contributor, leading people to when you're your success no longer comes from doing the thing, but helping other having others do the thing, your success is working through others, that is destabilizing and different. Um, and so that's not just you're gonna feel uncomfortable one because it's new. That's so there's a whenever we learn something new, there is discomfort. But what I hit like what you're saying is the persistent discomfort even after that, of something isn't sitting right. And most of our schools are our and Western culture train us and and parents sometimes and coaches to ignore our body, ignore our emotions, let the thoughts lead. Yeah, I was trained, you know, the books I read said your train, your head and your thoughts are the the engine of the train and your feelings are the caboose, they'll go wherever your brain takes you. And there is helpfulness in that. There is some aspect of fake it till you make it in leadership that can be healthy, but then it can become toxic if that's if you stay there. Because it's yeah, it's listening to why do I feel like I'm faking it? So, yeah, I think you're it's really good. Really, you're master summate summarizer, summationer.

Mick Spiers 30:03

So, what I'm what I'm feeling here is some of the heart of emotional intelligence that this is an emotion, this gut feeling that you got is an emotion. And my theory on this is like that all emotion is information. It's trying to tell you something, Marc. And it's trying to tell you, are you listening? So, what is this emotion? Why this emotion? Why this emotion now? What is it trying to draw my attention to? I'll go a little bit further just to test my hypothesis and see what you think. For me, it's trying to tell you about either a met need or an unmet need. So a positive emotion like happiness is trying to reward you for a met need, like love and belonging or something else. So it's rewarding you and going, oh, I'm happy now because I just I felt the cherish of the thing that I needed. I feel I needed today to feel like I belong. I did something that made me feel like I belong, so now I'm happy. And then when you have a negative emotion that's trying to draw you to an unmet need, I'm feeling I'm not feeling respected. I'm not whatever it is. I don't want to go into too many examples, but a negative emotion is trying to tell you about an unmet need. So why ignore it? Why ignore it? And we and often we we suppress it, like you, you like you're saying, and we we bottle it down. We still should challenge it. Do I know this to be true and and this kind of stuff? But what is this emotion trying to tell me instead of ignoring it?

Marc A. Pitman 31:26

And I think there are some things where our bodies are designed to make things feel good and then may not be happy. When I have a bourbon, I really like it. And I'm a home brewer of beer. I like I like alcohol. If I have too much, it still feels good to a point, but it's not healthy to keep going. So there's some there can be some false positives there. But I think one of the things that we find, I find in the hardwiring case is exactly what you're talking about. It's the um, are you familiar with the Highlands ability battery?

Mick Spiers 31:54

No, no.

Marc A. Pitman 31:55

Okay, this is a they took the Highlands folks took a whole bunch of corporate tests where they were studying for a particular skill. And so they it's a three-hour battery of seemingly stupid tasks that you need to do under time pressure. And it helps you to see what you what actually comes naturally, not what you most of the assessments are how do you think? Do you it's all about how you think you present, but this is just testing you on this is how you perform. And it's not good or bad. It's you could be really agile at some things and really slow at others. And what I love about that is it shows you, oh, maybe that's why I'm stressed. For me, it was like paperwork, it was one of the things that came out is just I need to allot more time for it because my words were high, but my typing was slow and my idea productivity was high. So I kept getting in my way of actually doing the paperwork, whatever the for the test. But so some of the times that disconnect can be it's outside of my skill set, like, or I just need to add extra reserves. I'm being unrealistic, unrealistic in myself and thinking I can do this thing in 30 minutes when I I should have scheduled two hours for it. But then, yeah, I also I do like the idea that something I also I guess the other thing I would say is something negative could actually, how did you frame it? Is it something that you're missing? Or is it making you aware of something?

Mick Spiers 33:10

Yeah, it's making you aware of an unmet need.

Marc A. Pitman 33:13

Unmet need, okay. I would wonder, and I how do how would you respond to is it an unmet need in yourself, or you could you might be identifying an unmet need in someone else?

Mick Spiers 33:24

For me, it's an unmet need in myself, but I still need to challenge it to make sure that I've we're starting to get into a diagnosis of mixed species here, but it's that's fine. But the unmet need in myself, but I need to make sure that I've diagnosed it correctly because similar to what you were saying before, and you know, Seligman talks about the difference between joy and pleasure, and pleasure is usually that short-lived thing like the bourbon that your example. The problem is, is it's pleasure's got an increasingly shorter uh half-life, and this is where addiction comes in, where all of a sudden I don't drink drink one bourbon, I need three bourbons to feel as good, and I need it more often, and things like this. So that's pleasure. Whereas joy is more the long-lasting happiness of oh, that brought me joy today. They're helping other people, the coach ease, eyes lighting up when they get unstuck. That's that brings you joy. That's different, right?

Marc A. Pitman 34:18

So Gallup Strengths Finder has been really helpful for me with that. I don't know. Have you done that assessment?

Mick Spiers 34:22

Yes, yes, yes.

Marc A. Pitman 34:23

Okay. So learning is one for me. There's responsibility maximizer and a bunch of others. But learning, there are some days I'd be really drained at the end of the day. And after a coach led me through this process and I learned that learning is one of my things. Now I can just go to YouTube and find out more about my iPhone or my CRM. It can be just a two-minute video, but all of a sudden there's a deposit made in that part of who I am. And I feel like, okay, I've I've done something today. Even though I've done all the right things, yeah, I can leave on a net need. Yeah, that's interesting.

Imposter Syndrome As A Signal

Mick Spiers 34:53

Yeah, very good. All right. So we're processing this information that's coming to us, including the doubt. And we're making sure that we're not ignoring it. So let's come back to the doubt. Your whole book, The Surprising Gift of Doubt. So when a leader is moving between, let's say, quadrant two and quadrant three, and that doubt creeps in, what's the first step? What do I do? Like if that doubt has me stuck, or if that doubt has me second guessing myself, how do I process that, Marc?

Marc A. Pitman 35:22

My friend Denise Jacob says that the only people to not get imposter syndromes are impostors. Okay. So if you're feeling imposter syndrome, that means you're not an imposter. Like the impostors are the only ones that don't feel it. So the I think I love that. Yeah, it was she's a brilliant keynote speaker. So when I when you feel that imposter syndrome or that I'm making it up, I think it's giving yourself permission to be for that to be okay. And like you said about the mask, you can't, especially in a leadership position of any level, you can't just be spilling your guts here. This is where vulnerability is good, but strategic vulnerability. I had a leader who said to me, I'm told to be vulnerable and I'm supposed to be a vulnerable leader, but there are a hundred people that are depending on their paychecks from my leadership. I can't just be sharing all the unknowns that I see in front of me and being vulnerable at all the confusion or doubt I have, because they need to know that I need them to feel confident in their getting a paycheck again and continuing to show up to do the work. So, and that was she was right. So, but I think it's that being aware of you're not necessarily broken. We could there's you know, we might need therapy, we might need some other form of help. There may be something that needs to be fixed. But just I what I find is that possibility that I might not be broken, that I might be the right person, the exactly the right person that this position needs is the start. And that's where then there's all sorts of different ways. It could be looking back at assessments. I've mentioned a few. Uh, it could also be looking at your I found a values inventory to be very helpful for people to just go through and just seeing what are the things that I say I value and what are the things my organization seems to value, and seeing if there's a disconnect. I did this on one training and everybody had took time to do it and then came back. And I said, Any, what are your reflections? And one person said, Well, my values are clear. I came up with them very quickly, and I don't know at all what my organization stands for. And I'm wondering if this is why I'm trying to get out because I don't know what my purpose of my life is if I'm investing the better part of my day to an organization I can't get behind. So it's choosing. So I would I would say choose one of three areas to look at. Is it are you interested in your own story, how you fit your like what you think you're on the planet for? Are you interested in how you operate on the planet, like your hardwiring? Or are you looking at your goals and and the path, the plan I have for that I call magnet goals? The first step is to list a hundred things you want to do in the next year: ideas, dreams, visions, fantasies. What help uh happens with a hundred is that it forces you to be creative and it forces you to let off the shoulds and the iottas. And it it makes you it kind of gets you into the space of Pittman said to do a hundred. So darn it, I'm gonna throw this on here too. This is totally crazy. One of my friends did that uh a few years ago, and he only got up to 10. And he thought Marc is just over over the top, 100 is way too much. Three years later, he emailed me and said, Thank you. I was already doing fanciful, I'm just gonna do this because to to show Marc it doesn't work stuff on the ton. And he said, I'm living seven of those 10 now. Because as you know, as you I'm sure from the talk that you've done, something just about getting something on paper or in front of us, there's a part of us that starts being oriented to that. And I think it's Maxim Wallace that says we're goal-seeking individuals. We're like a heat-seeking missile, we're goal seeking. And as we start clarifying our goals, we get to move toward that direction. So looking at your story, looking at your hardwiring, or looking at your goals could be really good. The easiest on-ramps to quadrant three I found in Western society is assessments, because it feels like a test and a report that we can we're used to that kind of interaction in values inventories because it's a light lift. There are million online, and you can just start getting some putting some names to the things that that are totally directing your choices on a daily basis, and you're very usually unaware of, like an iceberg. You only see you're the iceberg and you forget about all the values that are underneath influencing that.

Mick Spiers 39:34

Really interesting, Marc. I'm taking something very deep from this. I want to share it back to you and see whether I'm getting it right, first of all, but see how it lands with you. So one of the things was about the hard wiring, and this sounds like another intentional action of paying attention to what really matters to me, what really matters to me. That's gonna come up again. Then I heard the mismatch of if I wake up one morning and I ask myself, why am I doing this? Or I'm working at a company that doesn't seem to have the same values as me. This is the I'm gonna say that's the journey to burnout. That's the journey to burnout where joy joy has left the room a long time ago, and you're just doing what you think you should do. And that's my third part is the word should. That was the most interesting word that you said for me because I think when people write a lot of goals, they externalize it and they let societal expectations come in of oh Marc, he's a successful guy. That means that he should do X. Well, no, that's an external, that's not intrinsic. That's an extrinsically driven societal expectation. Now you're trying to meet a standard that wasn't even yours.

Marc A. Pitman 40:46

Yeah, it's like putting on somebody else's clothes. And you wonder why it doesn't fit.

Mick Spiers 40:50

Yeah.

Marc A. Pitman 40:51

It was made for you.

Mick Spiers 40:53

So in these, and by the way, for those watching on the video, Marc has got a number plate behind him that says goal guy. So wasn't I'm not surprised at all that we got to this topic. But if you're writing goals that said, you know, by 40, I should be a VP, that's not your goal. That's some kind of societal expectation that you just put upon yourself.

Marc A. Pitman 41:16

Nice. This works with values too. Brent Mansoir in his book Black Sheep Values, great book on values, he talks about core values versus aspirational values. So oftentimes, because of faith, family, tradition, community, we put values on our initial list that aren't ours really. We think we should have this as a value. So he said one way to separate the two is to write your values. And if you can look back and put a story to each value, this is when I lived out integrity, and this is when I lived out honesty, and this is when I lived out adventuresome. Then those are more likely core values. If there are other ones where you really don't have a good story of a specific time when you live that out, then maybe it's aspirational and maybe it's not bad to have, but don't center on that. Because he talks about you want to every day feed your feed your flock, your five uh values, for three to five core values. You want to make sure are being fed on a daily and weekly basis.

Mick Spiers 42:13

I gotta say that we're coming a bit full circle here because now what we're doing when we be true to ourselves in this way, we're removing that shadow and we're removing that mask. And our ego and our projected identity start matching.

Marc A. Pitman 42:27

That's okay. For me, I didn't know that, not know that in Jungian terms, but that's where beauty comes. Because you start seeing people actually show up in ways that don't feel there's still leadership is still hard and heavy, and there's still there's still obligations and all, but it's a different lightness, there's a different solidity because uh it's almost like you have an inner gyroscope. No matter what is thrown at you, you're able to still keep your center in the in the midst of the chaos because you're not there, I guess there's because that disconnect is less and less, and you're more in, I call it integrated. You're more the the model of uh quadrant three is the integration model because as you start doing things more and more intentionally, you become all the gears start meshing together and you start you're feeling like, okay, I'm getting some traction here. I understand why I do what I do, and I understand where my blind spots are, but I also understand where my strengths are and where I can press into them.

Mick Spiers 43:21

Okay. All right. Now we've done some work now on self-doubt as a leader. And I want to summarize a cue a few basic things because we got a bit deep there, but people need to know how to start. How it starts is to stop, stop ignoring those signals. Pay attention. What is that signal trying to tell you? And then take action around it. Don't just go and autopilot the whole time and copying what you think you should do. I'm going to keep on using that word should. I love it. You should.

Marc A. Pitman 43:50

Yeah, I always I love saying don't shoot on people.

Mick Spiers 43:56

That's a great quote. Right. So stop shooting on people and start. Start paying attention to the signals and start being more true to your own intrinsic values, not what you think you should do. And then you can start taking action around these doubts. The other one I don't want you to miss of what Marc said is that everyone has them. Even the most confident person you've ever met in their life, they have doubts too. So you're not alone. You're not alone. You're not alone.

Fear Of Judgment And Better Questions

Marc A. Pitman 44:24

I had a college professor that was invited us to think to consider that that which is most personal is that which is most common. And an illustrated way of saying that was he said, Well, if you walk into a room and you're so personally like you don't you don't know how you belong, you really don't know anybody there, you don't feel like you fit, you don't know what's expected of you, it is likely that that's exactly what most other people are feeling as well. So that could be the indication, the wisdom for you to know, oh, that's the need I need to fill. So I will go and introduce myself to people and I will start doing, you know, being that, meeting that need in other people. You're laughing. I gotta know.

Mick Spiers 45:04

I can't help but go on to a bit of a tangent here, but it's gonna be it's gonna be worth it. It's gonna be worth it. I hope it's gonna be worth it for you. So yeah, we're all feeling like this. Now I'm gonna I'm gonna extrapolate on this one. And and it's it's another one that gets people stuck, by the way. And it's the fear of judgment. I've got this theory, Marc, that we're all walking around fearing judgment from others. So we're walking around, and let's say it's you and I meeting for the first time. And I'll I'll use a silly example and go, Oh, I didn't polish my shoes this morning. And go, oh, Marc's gonna, Marc's gonna judge me because my shoes are dirty. The probability that you walk up and actually instantly judge me like that is so minuscule. And the most likely, here's the interesting thing for me the two most likely things that's going on in Marc Pitman's head is he's actually thinking about himself and something else. Like he's, I've got to get milk on the way home, or I've is you're thinking about something else you've got to do today. That's the most likely. The second most likely, this is my theory. I haven't fully tested it. My second most likely is Marc Pitman is sitting there going, worried that Mick Spears is judging him. So we're all walking around in fear of judgment of each other.

Marc A. Pitman 46:13

It's almost like you listened to a conversation I had with a friend yesterday. We're going to a beach area for family vacation, and I called her up and I just said, you know, I'm the amount of self-critical judgment I'm having about my body shape and my body image and all. And I said, I know, as my wife would remind me, nobody's going to be looking at me. Like I'm not the center of their world. And she said, after 31 years of marriage, they shouldn't be looking at you. You should be looking at me. So she's letting me know where her center is. But you're absolutely right. It's the and she laughed. She said, Nobody, the only thing they'll notice is if you fall over into the pool with your drink. And if you come up with your drink and you say it didn't spill, then everybody will cheer. Uh she said, people are there, just have a good time. They're coming as they are. But I love that. If everybody is, if most of the people we're interacting with are afraid of being judged, what would your how would you respond to that then? If you're if you know that that's probably the likelihood.

Mick Spiers 47:11

I would start a conversation with them to be curious about them. Like so to yeah, just break the ice and get beyond anything and say, you know, I'm genuinely curious about who you are, not not how you look or or anything. By the way, the the beach metaphor is a perfect one. This is it's better than my dirty shoes one.

Marc A. Pitman 47:31

Well, the dirty shoes one, I was thinking, how shallow am I if I really judge you on your shoes? Like that could be a it could be a really good character flaw to show out to get out in the open early. Okay, Pitt's probably not somebody I want to do business with.

Mick Spiers 47:43

But the beach, the beach one's even even better because if you're walking around going, oh, did everyone notice that I'm carrying a bit of weight around my my midriff, right? They're not. A, they're not. A, they're not looking at you at all. They're in their own world. And B, the second most likely, is they're sitting there going, Oh, did that guy notice my cellulite? They're thinking the same thing. Let's just get beyond it. Let's just get beyond it, all of us.

Marc A. Pitman 48:09

Here are two quick questions that I use in every social situation that your listeners may translate well for them too. Because of that, just why am I here? What do I say? Um, when I'm at a buffet line or in a networking situation, I usually ask, what do you do when you're not here? And I do that in part because some people choose not to work because they want to be an at-home parent or they're not in a position to work or something. And in many of our cultures, they feel less than if they don't have if people say, What do you do for work? Well, I'm out of work right now, or whatever. So asking, what do you do when you're not here frees them up to feel seen and it you get great answers. Some people are like, I'd go hand gliding. Um, I do skydiving, or or they'll tell you you work. And the second question that's super easy after that is, Wow, how did you get into that? And it does exactly what you said. It shows you, it shows them that you're interested in them as a human being. And it's I think it was Winston Churchill, but it could have been Dale Carnegie that said the best conversationalist is the one who asks the questions. They're not the ones that are talking about themselves.

Mick Spiers 49:09

Yeah, be uh interested, not interesting, is the key here. But what I love about your questions, and I'm gonna walk away with this one as a takeaway for me today, there's no judgment whatsoever in that question. Whereas if I ask you what do you do, the person, whether they're unemployed or not, they're instantly gonna go, If I if I tell him I'm an engineer, is he gonna think that I'm not worthy? Even though I I'm proud to be an engineer, by the way. But you know what I mean? If I tell him an engineer and he turns around and goes, Oh, that's interesting, I'm a brain surgeon, all of a sudden there's some kind of Yeah, what's the pecking order?

Marc A. Pitman 49:45

Is there judgment? Oh, wow, that's so good. Thanks for picking that up.

Helping Others With Self-Doubt

Mick Spiers 49:49

I love that there's no judgment in that question. It's really cool. Okay, now I need to go one more topic. Sorry, Marc, I know that going a while. We've spoken a lot about self-doubt. The next one I want to talk about is what about a leader who identifies the self-doubt in others, right? So the imposter syndrome in others, and they've got someone who, you know, almost the very definition of imposter syndrome that has persist persisting self-doubt despite contrary evidence. So everyone else can see the label on the jar from outside the jar, and the other person just keeps on like a brilliant uh accountant, let's say they're absolutely brilliant at their craft and they keep on doubting themselves. How do we help others on this journey, not just ourselves, Marc?

Marc A. Pitman 50:34

Oh, such a good question. And that's the I mean, you people have to want to be helped. That is part of it. Yeah, I think a lot of us, those of us who have kids or have been kids, uh, may have experienced a parent trying to do this to us. And that can be when you're doing it to something, to somebody else, then that can feel really uncomfortable. Is the person that you're talking about in a like in an employee, employee, uh, employee boss, boss, and direct report relationship? Okay. So then it would be starting, I would often see this with my clients is um starting to have action plans. Um, and just saying, you know, do you realize that people aren't saying all those negative things about yourself? And trying, there's a couple of one one of the things I really like helping people do is try to get a picture of what their direct report story is. Because most of our direct reports don't see themselves there to serve our needs or serve the business needs. Yes, they're adults, they sign up for a job description, but they usually have a story that's bigger than the position that they're holding. It could be involving their family, it could be long-term directory, it could be you know self-employment later on, it could be whatever. And so being a leader that sees their bigger picture and then being able to match their job's position or job's requirements within that bigger picture can be really helpful. You're squinting. So let me, could I give you an example?

Mick Spiers 51:58

Yeah, please.

Marc A. Pitman 51:59

Yep. So there was uh one CEO I was coaching who had hired somebody who she thought was going to take over the organization as like succession planning. But it became really, really clear that this person was not only not fit for that position, but was actually really toxic in the organization. And what she found out was that her, this direct report wanted to be a consultant. So, you know, the look, your department's the only one that's having these issues in the organization. There are other departments are are thriving and doing well. The common denominator in all these, after year over a year of working on this, is you. That was still that person still didn't want to change. That person still wanted to be this rabble rouser and nonconformist and culture divider. So what she started to do was say, remember how you want to be a consultant? This served two purposes. One, it was there's an exit strategy to get you out of here. And remember how you wanted to be a consultant? This won't necessarily serve well in organizations. Organizations will have a hard time bringing you in to deteriorate their culture. Or what kind of organizations are you going to look for to help? So she was able to try to get the her direct report's eyes vision away from what she thought she was doing to protect her team and more to a bigger picture and then recalibrate some of her work. And she did become a little bit better of a team player before she did end up exiting the organization because it really wasn't it didn't line up with what she had been hired to do. So, what did you hear from that? Because that was a sad story.

Mick Spiers 53:34

I heard two forks. I'm going to start with the positive fork. And I hope I took it away. And I was squinting because I was trying to unpack what you're saying. The first fork, what I was hearing, is making sure in the story that we tell ourselves about the group now, not just the you know, the individual stories we say in our head, to show the person the value that they bring and the purpose that they bring, that without them we wouldn't be having this impact, that they matter, showing them that they matter, but more specifically, and I'm gonna use that word again in a moment, specifically how they matter, not you're great at your job or all this kind of stuff. It's when you did X, it enables us to do Y. And it helps us with the mission of why this team exists in the first place. And the more specific we are, is when they're gonna believe it, Marc. So let me double down on that and then I'll come to the other fork in a moment. When someone has this persisting self-doubt, just let's say that they've just done a presentation and they come off the stage, and in them in their mind, they didn't do a very good job. Look, whether they did or not, the story they're telling themselves is they didn't do a good job.

Marc A. Pitman 54:45

Well, and part of it is I think the adrenaline is now ebbing, flow leaving the body. And so that brings in that feeling of that we associate with, oh, I didn't do well. You're just tired. Your body is just put out a lot. So yeah, okay. So they're in that state.

Mick Spiers 54:58

And then you say to them, Oh, great presentation, well done. They don't believe you. They don't believe you.

Marc A. Pitman 55:04

You have to say that. Yeah, you have, yeah. You don't mean it, you have to say that.

Mick Spiers 55:08

Yeah, yeah. You're just telling me because that's what you want, that's what you think I want to hear or whatever, right? Whereas if I say to the person, I loved it at the start of the presentation, when you use that story about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and the impact was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They can't not believe it.

Marc A. Pitman 55:24

On that, we were I I have you heard of the student group? No, no. When I was in that running a hospital foundation, they were in healthcare. I don't know if they're still in existence now, but one of the things we had to do as managers in this healthcare organization was write thank you, two thank you notes a week that were super specific like that. It wasn't just, I love that you do, but it was, hey, when you interacted with that patient, it was amazing to see how you you also brought in their family. Thanks so much for doing that. We're proud to be here. Two, three lines, but very specific. Then we were supposed to send the card to HR so it could be photocopied and put in their employee, their employee file. And the HR would then send it to their home so that they'd open it up at home and they'd be around their family, being able to see their work give praise to something specific, their brilliance that they showed up at work with.

Mick Spiers 56:13

Yeah. So I've got I've got gratitude, purpose, and mattering all in there, but the word specific, right? So if it's generic, two things. If it's generic, they don't believe it. And second, they can't repeat it. If it's specific, they believe it, and they can repeat it. And now you're adding gratitude, purpose, and mattering into it all, and that's going to bring joy. We're back to joy uh and selling uh delignation. Okay. Now the other fork was a mismatch. The other fork was a mismatch. So when someone actually, yeah, no, this is not working out. But what I loved about what you did is you started on something we can agree on. Oh, you really wanted to be a consultant, right? That's a great way to start the conversation because it's not not an attacker-defender conversation now, it's a co-created conversation of let's let's see how we can make that work for you, kind of thing. And by the way, it's not here, it's somewhere else. But the mismatch was the the values are not matching. Coming back to shadows and masks, the values are not matching anywhere. They're not happy. You're not happy, they're not happy. But let's start with something that would make them happy. That's what I took with the second four.

Marc A. Pitman 57:23

Nice. My friend Phil Jones, who wrote Exactly What to Say, talks about the the OFQ, warm opening, mutually agreeable fact, and then a curious question, which is just what you said. So when you have that, hey, how you know, good to see you. The fact, you know, remember you're still interested in being a consultant, right? That's I remember when we talked about you wanting to be a consultant? Great. How do you think that's gonna impact? How do you think you're gonna be able to sell what just happened in that staff meeting to a client when you're a consultant? That's powerful, Marc. I love it. And you're you're not coming at them as defensively because you've already had that connection of the mutual agreeable fact, just like you said. That's great.

Mick Spiers 58:03

All right, brilliant. All right, we're we've been talking for an hour, and I feel like I could talk to you for seven hours, Marcus. I think so too, but I don't think everybody would listen. That's right. Let's bring it to a close. Like, so so we've been through so many things here. The first, the biggest takeaway I want you to take from this discussion today is that we all have doubts. We all have doubts. And now to use Marc's title, The Surprising Gift of Doubt, stop seeing it as a negative, start seeing it as a gift that if you're paying attention to, you can make pivots in your in your life and in your leadership that bring you back to the your true self, your own sense of self, your own values to get back to a match instead of a mismatch. So stop ignoring the cues, pay attention to them and go, what is this trying to tell me? And then do something with it. And that's when you can start heading up the quadrants, quadrant three and then quadrant four, to be that focused leader that is true to yourself and is authentic. And that's the type of leader that others want to follow, by the way. The one that is authentic with the strategic vulnerability that Marc is talking about.

Marc A. Pitman 59:14

I want to underline that what you're saying there too, is that that question is a curiosity question, which isn't necessarily an action question. I think the first start is just that pause. Roll May talks about the space between stimulus and response that allows us to respond instead of react. And that curiosity is substantive substantive and real. And it's okay if you don't have an immediate answer. If you're just wondering, what if it's not this? What if it's this? You know, that is a creative and very good space to be growing into.

Mick Spiers 59:45

Very good. Yeah, very good. And this is where freedom lives. This is where freedom lives, is that is that difference between the instant reaction. The instant reaction is it's more back to shoulds, by the way, Marc. Yeah, it's so true. Right. Whereas a considered response is more true to yourself. And it can take time, and that's okay too. But pay attention and work out what is it trying to tell you. Ask yourself questions. Do I know this to be true? The what if? Well, what if this is true? What if this is true? Right. So all of those what if questions are really powerful. Then we spoke about the inner inner story that we tell ourselves and how powerful it is. And if you and the language that you use, the way that you talk to yourself, your inner critic. Shut that inner critic up or reframe it really. It's you can't shut it up, but reframe it into language of what can you do instead of what can't you do and what not what you're good at and not good at, but what are you working on, the growth mindset, all of these things. And this is how we can work on ourselves. And then how we work with others, how we work with others to help them. Everyone has it. So let's help others with their doubt through specific feedback of the impact and the purpose and the gratitude and purpose that Marc was talking about with the thank you notes, but specific thank you notes. And if someone isn't a match and they're they're not feeling good, you're not feeling good, help them find out who they truly are and help them on a journey towards authenticity. And they'll be happier and you'll be happier. So there's so many takeaways. I feel like I could summarize for 45 minutes as well, Marc. But this is this has been absolutely wonderful. I'll leave the floor to you for the last statement before we go to our last four questions. How does someone start? Like if someone's listened to all of this, what is the baby step that they can do to lean into everything that we've just said?

Marc A. Pitman 1:01:39

What's coming to mind right now, and um, I hope this is okay, is do it going to Concord Leadershipgroup.com/slash style and taking a two-minute leadership style preference quiz. It's based on university level research of leadership styles. And the five questions have been spookily accurate according to some people. They really it shows what your default style is, and it also helps you unlock, oh, there are other ways to do this. Then you'll also see there's a link to the Leader's Journey, which has a uh tip sheet to help people be the best they can in each quadrant. If your direct report's in quadrant one, help them learn who's trustworthy to follow and how do they identify who's the right copy? If they don't even know that they're in quadrant two, you know, that if they haven't moved there, help them be the best that they can be in the space that they are.

Mick Spiers 1:02:28

Yeah, really good, Marc. Okay, that's a great action. Excellent.

Marc A. Pitman 1:02:31

Right.

Mick Spiers 1:02:31

So let's go to our rapid round. These are the same four questions we ask all of, I guess. What's the one thing you know now, Marc A. Pitman, that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Marc A. Pitman 1:02:41

I wish I knew that my constant fear of screwing up and totally taking on everybody with me was overstated and didn't help me as much as I trusted it for the first five decades of my life. Okay. Very powerful. We all needed to hear that.

Mick Spiers 1:02:58

Okay. What's what's your favorite book?

Marc A. Pitman 1:03:00

When I was, as I was listening to your previous episodes of your podcast, I was going to say Franklin, uh, Stephen Covey's Seven Habits. It's something that my mom wrote in 1989. She said, This sounds like the way you live your life, Mark. And I was still in high school here in the United States. So this was it's been part of the the, it's what I do. But in the case of talking about what we're talking about now, there's an author, NK Jemison, J-E-M-I-S-I-N. There's a book called The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, where talks the her sometimes fiction curies that allows us to unlock things that we see in the world around us, but it we more clearly in fiction. And her understanding of power dynamics and expectations within cultures and uh societal structures that are positioned to preference other people is was mind-boggling to me. That's not why she wrote the book. She wrote the book about this wonderfully ornate and very complete world, but that was coming to an end. But there are all these different dynamics and leadership structures and peer influencers and stuff that was really remarkable for me to learn from. So NK Jamison, she's written a lot of books, but the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is the one I would recommend.

Mick Spiers 1:04:08

All right, nice. Oh, thank you.

Marc A. Pitman 1:04:09

Well, what's your favorite quote? My favorite quote is the I vastly I already mentioned Roland, uh, so I won't have to quote him, but it's so I'm gonna say for this, uh, it's Warren Bennis, and this has been quoted a lot. So uh, but it's becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It's precisely that simple and it's also that difficult.

Mick Spiers 1:04:32

Oh wow. Okay. That isn't that nice with what we've talked about today. That's it.

Marc A. Pitman 1:04:38

Well, the permission that that gives, too, of because sometimes we feel like if I'm becoming more of myself, I'm not I'm not doing the job I was hired to do or or the task and running this company that I was supposed to be doing. Somehow we feel guilty that we're we're growing ourselves or taking space to learn and grow. But we're actually serving those, it's putting on your oxygen masks first. It's being able to be a better leader and creating a healthier environment for the people that that follow you as well.

Mick Spiers 1:05:05

Yeah, that's golden. I really like it, Marc. Now, I learned something very interesting in today's conversation, which were that is that either 100% of us have either got imposter syndrome or we're an imposter. So all of us need your help, Marc. How do people find you?

Marc A. Pitman 1:05:23

Um, I try to make it ridiculously easy to find me by uh if you Google Marc with a C Pitman, P isn't Peter I T M A N, LinkedIn is where I'm the most active, but uh Concord Leadership Group.com is where my leadership writings are. That leadership preference quiz, the leader's journey all reside there and blogged for years of blogs. Values assessments, all sorts of tools that can help people continue their own journey.

Final Takeaways And Listener Challenge

Mick Spiers 1:05:51

Yeah, brilliant, Marc. Well, thank you so much for your time today and for the gift of your wisdom and your experience and making us stop and really think. Through, but not just think about it, but think about what we can do to step into the breach of working with our doubt instead of working against it. That's my big takeaway. Work with your doubt. What can you take from this doubt? Not see it as something that makes you capitulate. What are you learning from this doubt and what are you going to do about it? So thank you so much, Marc. Wow, that was enlightening. So let me ask you, what story are you telling yourself right now? Is it a story of doubt, of not being ready, of not being enough? Or is it a story of growth, learning and becoming? Because one of the most important takeaways from this conversation with Marc A. Pitman is this doubt is not always a signal to stop. Sometimes it's a signal to pay attention, to get curious, to ask better questions, to understand what's really going on beneath the surface. Because the leaders who grow the most are not the ones who eliminate doubt. They're the ones who learn how to work with it. So here's something to reflect on. Where is doubt showing up for you right now? And instead of pushing it away, what might it be trying to tell you? Is it fear? Is it growth? Is it a signal to prepare, to adapt, or to step forward? Because your story matters. And the way you interpret the story shapes the leader you become. In the next episode, we take a step back and connect all of the conversations that we've had with our guests this month together. The weight of leadership, the culture we create, the meaning we're searching for, and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves in our own mind. And we'll explore what it all means for how we lead moving forward. So until then, stay curious, stay grounded, and as always, lead better. You've been listening to the Leadership Project. If today sparked an insight, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with one other person who would benefit from listening to the show. A huge thank you to Gerald Calibo for his tireless work editing every episode. And to my amazing wife Sei, who does all the heavy lifting in the background to make this show possible. None of this happens without them. Around here we believe leadership is a practice, not a position. That people should feel seen, heard, valued, and that they matter. That the best leaders trade ego for empathy, certainty for curiosity, and control for trust. If that resonates with you, please subscribe on YouTube and on your favorite podcast app. And if you want more, follow me on LinkedIn and explore our archives for conversations that move you from knowing to doing. Until next time, lead with curiosity, courage, and carefully.