Biggest challenge to professional women is self confidence, feeling an impostor in their role – result of my interviews

I interviewed about 30 women about the challenges they face in their work in corporate roles and also in their personal lives.

I’ve recently joined Twitter. A great way to connect to others and share ideas and resources. (Follow me here.) And a challenge to speak (or tweet) – in 140 characters.

I challenged myself to summarise the results of last year’s interviews and survey into 140 characters.

The result is shown at the beginning – Biggest challenge to professional women is self confidence, feeling an impostor in their role – result of my interviews

As revealed above, the most commonly mentioned challenge is that of self confidence. Most of the women directly mentioned wanting more self confidence. Four spoke of finding it hard to sell themselves. Three women spoke of a new role which was scary. Two more spoke of the challenge of being themselves at work, without compromise.

First self confidence, second work life balance

The second most common challenge was that of juggling and of work life balance. Five women mentioned this directly.

Five women spoke of having no ‘me time’ – one in fact said her challenge was to cope without having this.
Three women mentioned the conflict of being a mother who wanted time with her children and also career success. Two mentioned juggling career with house maintenance.

One spoke of wanting to say “No” to longer hours and another spoke of setting boundaries. In my opinion, being able to set firm boundaries and say “No” when you want to is part of a healthy self confidence.

Interestingly, single women, married women, those with and without children all spoke of the challenge of juggling their time.

Job satisfaction?

At least two women, both senior in their fields, wondered if their current job was what they really wanted to do.

ACTION CHALLENGE:

Identify what challenges you face at work and home? How do these impact you? What will you start to address?

Do these challenges match your experience?  Post your comments below.

Want more self confidence?

My one to one  3 Steps to Greater  Self-Confidence coaching package will increase your self confidence and also give you a taster of life coaching. Life coaching will give you a greater sense of comfort in your own skin, knowing who you are and what matters to you.

Contact me to explore further how we will work together to overcome your challenges and gain greater self confidence.

I’ve posted some of the participant comments on my events page. And will also post future events there.

It was our first workshop and felt like a gentle and enjoyable first step.

Sometimes I get caught up in the urgent and leave the important. The most important thing must be our health, including our mental health. It’s important to take care of our bodies, minds and spirits. When we have done that we have the physical, mental and spiritual energy to care for others. It can be so easy to procrastinate, can’t it? Leaving things until they become BIG tasks, instead of little ones. Like sorting out finances – failure to pay bills resulting in penalties and interest payment.

I’m not going to beat myself up. I have tackled and finished what was an outrageously long list of DIY tasks. I have started my tax return early. And dealt with two other tasks which I had been delaying for literally years.

ACTION CHALLENGE: Make a list of the important stuff that you’re putting off. Or a list of slightly less important but with BIG consequences if delayed. Or a list you’ve been putting off for AGES and wince whenever you think of it.

Pick the issue which has come up in your mind and if it is quick then do it now, pick up the phone or whatever. Otherwise, timetable when you can do it. A trick I have used in the past is to meet with a friend who also procrastinates the odd thing,have an evening together and both tackle a task we’ve been avoiding. It turns a chore into a pleasant social event.