87. The Leadership Trap of "I Don't Know"

Yann Dang: If you constantly feel behind, if you're over focused on your gaps, if one piece of feedback emotionally takes you out, if you walk into rooms wondering what everyone else knows that you don't, this episode is going to change the way you lead. Because most high achieving women are unconsciously trained to scan for deficiency, for not enoughness. What's missing? What haven't I mastered? What should I know by now? How? And that pattern quietly disconnects you from your actual intelligence, capability, leadership and presence. Today we're talking about why ambitious women emotionally collapse under pressure. How nervous system activation creates self doubt and one of the most powerful leadership shifts you can make. Moving from I don't know to what do I know? By the end of this episode, you will stop spiraling around perceived inadequacy. Understand how nervous system activation distorts your thinking, learn how to reality check and rebuild grounded self trust in leadership moments.

Narrator: Welcome to the Balanced Leader, hosted by Yan Dang um, a leadership and life coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second generation immigrant, Yan understands the unique challenges women face in male dominated workplaces. Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills and building emotional intelligence. Join us, uh, to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.

Yann Dang: Hey podcasters, welcome to today's episode. This is all about what happens when you are full of fear and when you are scanning for what is missing, right? And I wanted to share this pattern because recently in one of my group coaching courses, this woman was full of fear because she was sharing with a group of people at her company that like, hey, I'm new here. And the CEO interjected and said, you're not new. And she had such an emotional reaction to this, you know, and I was asking her like, okay, well, what did that mean to you? Like, what were you worried about when he said that? Because she had been with the company for about six weeks and she's like, well, I'm still new. There are things I don't know. I don't know everything about this company. You know, this is a whole different industry for me. And so I wanted to ask her some of these questions because I think what happens to a lot of women, right, is that we really focus on scanning for threats, scanning for deficiency, scanning for not enoughness. And there's a healthy part of that, right? A healthy part of us being like, okay, we don't know. But when that part of us is scanning and when we're feeling lots of fear, we can get into very unhelpful patterns. So let me break this down for you. So in the scanning for deficiencies, oftentimes you may notice in yourself you're asking what's missing? What other people know better. What might I fail at? What haven't I mastered yet? We've put this, like, really high bar of like, competence and knowledge. Like, I need to know this stuff, right? And really, I think a lot of times women feel like if I know this information, I'll feel safe in my body and I will feel like, less vulnerable. I'll feel confident, right? So it's almost like a lie that, like, if we know enough stuff, we're not gonna have emotions or feel like a human person, right? So what happens is you over prepare. You hesitate to speak, or you're afraid to ask questions. Cause you're like, is that a stupid. Or you mentally collapse after feedback because you're like, you're so triggered by it. Or you wait until certainty arrives, like at a 95% level before saying something. Or you assume others are more confident and knowledgeable and competent than you are. Right? So women are often trained to earn safety through preparedness and knowledge, right? Preparedness and knowledge is valuable, but deficiency scanning is exhausting. And the reality is, in this real world of AI, knowledge is so much more powerfully there for us. We can actually put something in chat and ask it some question and ask it to look up all of the relevant resources. And so I feel very strongly that this question that women often ask themselves or say to themselves, like, I don't know, I don't know. It's like, well, now we have something that does know, and now we can use this information. And instead of feeling like this, I don't know, almost like, I need oxygen, right? Like, I need to know in order to breathe. We can learn how to quiet that voice for ourselves, to really ground ourselves and connect to ourselves, right? So let me just dive more into this specific story, right, of this person, of my client that I was talking to. Because I was asking her, like, what's coming up for you? Of like, why are you so triggered by needing to say that you're new? Like, why is this so important? And for her, she was like, well, I haven't been in this industry for like the 20 years that most people have. And there were just thoughts about, like, that somehow she's behind, that she should know more by now, and that she was like, disappointed in her own leadership. But what I asked her is, do you know what your strategy is? Do you know why they brought you in. And here's the thing, she did know. She was very clear and it was amazing. This is why group coaching is amazing. Because when you're in this group with other people, they can notice your energy shift right away. You shift from this. I don't know. Energy. I'm scared. I don't know. It's almost like this damsel in distress energy. That's how I would say it because that was kind of my thing too. It's like, oh my God, I don't know. I don't know. Somebody help me. You know, like, uh, I'm um, grasping for air. But then when somebody asks you a really grounded, clear question, like what do you know? And I asked her, what do you know? Why did they bring you in here? And she said, I know exactly how to grow this company to double digit growth. They want that, they want my knowledge and my experience to do this. And I said, well, do you know how to do it? And she's like, yes, I know exactly how to do it. So part of it was like, yes, you don't know things, but what you don't know actually isn't that important if the goal of them hiring you for the specific need you're very clear on. And in that moment, her whole energy shifted. She knew what she was talking about. She seemed very confident in herself. She seemed very grounded. And even people in the room noticed it. They were like, wow, you just shifted from like this, I don't know, frantic energy to this grounded leader that was certain, that was convicted, that was very clear in why she was there and how she was going to really help this company. Right? That's the reality check that we have to give ourselves. We can give it to ourselves when we're nervous system is activated or we can ask for it from other people too and even reality check the situation. So I asked her, you know, hey, are you willing to ask somebody in the room, like how do they interpret your CEO asking that question? And she actually found out afterwards that it's like a joke that if you're with the company for more than four weeks, you're not new anymore. And she was with them for six weeks. Right. And even getting clear and reality checking, I think that's super powerful for her because no longer is she thinking that maybe this CEO is making fun of her or is talking down to her or has this expectation of her, that's unreasonable. Now she's like, oh, it was just a joke. I've been here six weeks and what's even more powerful is that she's very clear that she knows what she's doing. She may not know all of the knowledge and the data, but that's what subject matters are there for. That's what her team is there for. That's what research and AI is there for. Right? You don't need to know all of the things, right? There comes a moment in every leader's journey where more information isn't the answer. You know what to do. You understand the challenge. You've thought about it from every, every angle, and yet you still feel stuck. Not because you lack talent, ambition, or strategy. There's something beneath the surface quietly shaping your decisions, keeping you circling, holding yourself back. That's why I created the Leadership Edge, a complimentary live coaching activation experience for women who are ready to step into their authority on June 30th. You'll experience real coaching, uncover patterns holding you back, and discover what's possible when you trust yourself more. This isn't a webinar. This isn't theory. This is real leadership work happening in real time. Because leadership isn't about doing more. It's about becoming more. Click the link in the show notes to register. So one gap became bigger than her entire body of knowledge, right? So that's why it's so important. Because when we have this thought in our minds, I don't know, right? We are disconnected from what we do know. And for her, she knew about her leadership. She knew about strategy, team dynamics, organizational growth, communication, even business judgment. So we really need to watch ourselves and listen to ourselves when our nervous system is activated and when the thought in our head is, I don't know, I don't know. When the nervous system is activated, ambiguity feels dangerous, fear feels factual, criticism feels catastrophic, and learning feels like failure. An activated nervous system is not an objective narrator, right? When you are activated, when your emotions are high, your critical thinking is low because your prefrontal cortex actually isn't online. It's actually your nervous system is online trying to protect yourself. And this is why reality checking is so important. This is why slowing down is so important. You can ask yourself, what actually happened? What facts do I know? What assumptions did I add? Or what am I assuming here? What else could be true? Is this discomfort or danger? This is where you can slow yourself down. Because so often, right? Women are more emotionally in touch with themselves and feel much stronger emotions than men do. And this is actually what makes women really amazing leaders, especially when there's a big group of people because they can scan the room and feel the emotions. Now, on the opposite side, if you can feel the emotions but you don't feel grounded in them, those emotions can really take us for a ride without reality checking. Ambitious women weaponize ambiguity against themselves constantly, right? So you use this, I don't know, this uncertainty against yourself versus if you're grounded in yourself and you feel safe in your body, that you can feel these emotions and that an emotion is happening, you're able to move things forward. So oftentimes, even with myself, when my brain is offering me I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I often ask my brain, what do you know? Let's ground into what do you know? Because this is the shift from that frantic energy where it's like, I need more, more, more, more, more, and I can't breathe right to I can slow down, I can calm down, and I can ask myself, what do you know? And having this really honest, grounded conversation with yourself, you want to ask, what do I know? What strengths already exist? What perspective do I bring? What experience can I trust? What value am, um, I already adding? Grounded leaders do not ignore gaps. They simply stop making gaps, their identity. So these are practical ways of really thinking about this. Speaking before perfection, being able to have this relationship with yourself where you're like, I'm going to do it. Contribute while learning, trusting, pattern recognition, staying emotionally grounded under uncertainty. Right. I'm, um, actually going to share with you guys a thought that I've been really working on for myself is that I can hold desire and uncertainty. As I've been doing all of these different new offerings for my business, I am really holding onto this thought that I can hold the desire for wanting to help and empower more and more people, and the uncertainty. I am, um, as an entrepreneur, testing things out constantly. And we need to be willing to test things out and to hold the uncertainty while we're doing it. And what I teach in my groups to women, right? And, you know, you probably heard about commands if you've been listening to this podcast for a while. It's my group coaching container. It's a leadership accelerator for women. And what I actually teach is staying connected to yourself while learning tolerating uncertainty, not outsourcing your authority and leading before you feel ready. And it all starts with what do I know? Not I don't know, I don't know. The women who advance are not the women who know everything. They are the women who stop collapsing every time they don't know something. And this is why it's so important because you are going to be doing amazing things in your life. You're going to be expanding and there are going to be a lot of things you don't know. But you do not need to make not knowing a problem and you do not need to spin around in, I don't know, energy. And you can bring yourself back to what do I know? How much energy are you spending scanning for what's missing? I want you to do an audit. I want you to inventory this instead of grounding into what's already true about you in what you know about you. And what would change if you stopped entering rooms trying to prove yourself and you started entering them remembering yourself. Remember who it is that you are being in that moment and who you're becoming. Your leadership expands the moment. Uncertainty stops meaning inadequacy.

Narrator: Right?

Yann Dang: We have to have this different relationship with fear and uncertainty. They are part of the journey, they're part of the ride, they're part of the discomfort. We just don't need to allow them to take us on a ride. We need to move ourselves into, what do I know? Space. Who am I when I'm grounded, convicted and in command? And let's have that conversation with that woman inside of you because she already exists. You just need to connect back to her and you need to find your way back to her consistently. And uh, this is exactly what we do in command. So if you are interested in command, find out more about it. Go to my website and you can find about the next enrollment launch for it. But this is where you exercise that muscle every single week for six months. And you start building that self trust. You start building that internal authority, that conviction within yourself. All right, have a beautiful day forward. And if that thought comes up where you say, I don't know, take a deep breath and shift to what do I know? This is a powerful tool for you. Use it and tell me about it. Find me on LinkedIn DM me. I always love to hear from all of my listeners. All right, have a beautiful day. I will see you next week. Bye.

Narrator: Thank you for being a part of the Balance Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Jan, visit us at Aspire Dash Coaching Co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.

Yann Dang: Hey, if you're ready to stop second guessing yourself, holding yourself back and start leading with clarity, grounded authority, self trust and power, join me for the leadership edge. It's on June 30th. You'll experience live coaching. Uncover the patterns holding you back and discover what's possible when you trust yourself more. Click the link in the show notes to register now. M.