Are you carrying certain beliefs that might limit your ability to lead? Leadership coach Muriel Wilkins explores how hidden beliefs — like “I need to be involved in everything” or “I can’t make a mistake” — quietly limit leadership potential. She shares a practical three-step framework to help uncover, unpack and reframe these thoughts.
Are you carrying certain beliefs that might limit your ability to lead? Leadership coach Muriel Wilkins explores how hidden beliefs — like “I need to be involved in everything” or “I can’t make a mistake” — quietly limit leadership potential. She shares a practical three-step framework to help uncover, unpack and reframe these thoughts.
Show Notes
[00:00] Brett Hendrie on hidden beliefs
[1:12] Meet Muriel Wilkins, author of Leadership Unblocked: Break Through the Beliefs That Limit Your Potential
[2:26] What are internal beliefs?
[4:27] The complete list of blockers and what they mean.
[6:01] Situations where these types of blockers are more likely to manifest themselves.
[7:03] Honing in on one blocker: "I need it done right now." What does that blocker reveal about a person, and how does Wilkins coach people past that immediate urgency?
[9:09] Another example blocker: "I can't make a mistake" — a relevant blocker for those who may have perfectionist tendencies. Wilkins explains how she coaches leaders to get past that mindset?
[11:03] Exploring how different blockers can sometimes overlap.
[12:27] Wilkins provides advice on how to move past the blockers.
[14:24] How Wilkins overcomes her own blockers.
[16:13] Advice on how to potentially help colleagues to see their own blockers.
[18:00] Final thoughts: you can lead with more ease if you remember how much your mindset matters, so try to leverage that.
If you enjoyed this episode, why not give some of our back catalogue a listen? If you want to dig deeper into leadership topics, check out Cutting through the noise: How to make better decisions with Nuala Walsh, or Michael Bungay Stanier on the secrets to coaching others.
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Brett Hendrie: You’re an accomplished professional. You’ve carved out an expertise, you’ve delivered results and you’ve definitely earned your place at work. But despite all of that, have you ever found yourself feeling stuck anyway?
Maybe you're a manager, and you feel yourself getting pulled into more decisions or details from your team than you’d like. Perhaps you jump in to solve problems that your employees could actually handle on their own. Or maybe, a different kind of scenario: despite your experience, you catch yourself wondering whether you really belong in the room.
These thoughts are often less about our ability, and more about the beliefs we carry with us. And often, they quietly limit our ability to lead. So what do we do about this? Author Muriel Wilkins has the cheat code. She joins us to talk about how hidden beliefs can quietly undermine your leadership goals – and what to do about it.
Welcome to Visiting Experts, a Rotman School podcast for lifelong learners exploring transformative ideas about business and society with the influential scholars, thinkers and leaders, featured in our acclaimed Speaker Series. I'm your host. Brett Hendrie, and today we're excited to welcome Muriel Wilkins. Muriel is the CEO and founder of Paravis Partners, a sought-after C-suite advisor and executive coach with a 20-year track record of helping senior leaders take their performance to the next level. Muriel's insights have been featured in major media outlets such as Forbes Business Insider and the Wall Street Journal. She's also the host of the acclaimed Harvard Business Review podcast, “Coaching Real Leaders.” Her latest book, “Leadership Unblocked: Break Through the Beliefs that Limit your Potential” was recently published by Harvard Business Review, and it explores how our mindsets can be the biggest barrier to reaching our potential. Muriel, welcome to the Rotman School and to the podcast.
Muriel Wilkins: Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here.
BH: Congratulations on the book. I really loved it. I thought that it was very practical and very accessible for leaders and for aspiring leaders, because it explores how people can get stuck with internal beliefs and they might not be external factors like strategy or culture that are blocking them. Can you help us unpack what you meant by that - that it's these internal beliefs that are holding people back?
MW: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I think first we have to understand what beliefs are before we can start unpacking how they impact us. Beliefs are basically the narratives that we tell ourselves, right? They're the assumptions that we carry our interpretation of what is happening, whether it's a meeting, a conversation, or even the context of the world that we're in. And so how they might get in the way is that before we actually behave, before we take actions, we have our own internal operating system, which is made up of these beliefs, just like if you were to plan a business, and you have assumptions that go into that business model, which will dictate then what you do and the outcome. The same goes for us. And so it's really important as leaders or aspiring leaders, if you really want to change the results, not only do you have to look at your actions, but you have to look at the mindset that's driving those actions.
BH: That makes sense. And one of the things that I love in your book is that you explore how these mindset beliefs that we have can actually create blockages and block us from achieving everything that we want to achieve. Can you walk us through what you mean by blockers?
MW: Yeah, absolutely. I mean I call them blockers. I actually call them hidden blockers because they're so habitual that you know, left undetected. They just go about doing their own business. And these beliefs, which are these blockers, a lot of times, are what have made us successful. Have made us high performers, high achievers. So they're not bad. The issue is they don't necessarily align with the context that you might be in as a leader at this point. So what I mean by that is what made you successful as a student, and then an individual contributor, and then even maybe a mid-level manager, isn't necessarily what's going to make you successful as the CEO, not just in terms of what you do, but also in terms of the way you think about the work that you're doing. So these hidden blockers that I identified were the ones that I saw as most popular, if you will, that got in the way of leaders being able to scale as well as being able to just lead in a very sustainable way.
BH:I want to share the list of blockers with our audience, because I think they'll really resonate with people - and then I've got a question for you on the other side. The blockers are: I need to be involved. I need it done now. I know I'm right. I can't make a mistake. If I can do it, so can you. I can't say no. And, I don't belong here. You've coached hundreds of executives. What are some of the blockers from this list that you have seen most prevalently in the people you've worked with?
MW: Yeah, absolutely. So you know, what was interesting is I wasn't quite sure if there was any pattern there. I just became curious around this whole thing blocker. So not only that, I look at my clients, but then I analyze the set of my clients, over 300 of them that I had coached, and lo and behold, yes, there were seven that were most consistent, most popular, some of the ones of the seven that really sort to the top one is I need to be involved. And it sounds so simple, but what it does is, when you think about, if you operate with this, I need to be involved. What it leads to is really engaging at a level which you might not need to be engaged at, particularly, again, if your responsibilities have grown, if you're supposed to be thinking strategically and leading strategically, but you find yourself in the weeds all the time. So that's one example. Another example which comes up quite a bit is this feeling of. Or belief of I don't belong here, which really is then what drives to these behaviors that lend themselves to imposter syndrome as we know it. So this sense of depending on your role, or even in a meeting or position, sometimes in a company, that you don't belong here, and carrying that around as your narrative, recognizing how it might impact the way that you show up, the way you communicate, or oftentimes don't communicate as a result of that.
BH: Have you noticed, are there any conditions or situations where the types of blockers that you talk about in the book these are more likely to manifest themselves?
MW: You know, that's so interesting, because I actually thought that that would be the case, right? Like, for example, the I don't belong here is often attributed to. Well, if you're part of an underrepresented group, then that is the one, and certainly it's exacerbated in those conditions. But what I found is these beliefs actually cut across the board. And as you said, Sometimes we're carrying multiple of them, right? I know, when I started writing this book, I thought, Oh, I know which two I have. And every time I would end a chapter, I'd be like, Oh, my God, I had this one too. So in a sense, they're kind of like a family that are operating there. And the reason why they're so pertinent for the folks I work with is because they are the ones that have sort of catapulted being a high performer. It's just that when you become a leader, that's not your only job is to be the high achiever, high performer. You also now need to lead. So in this case, they might be getting in the way.
BH: You've mentioned two of the blockers that you have. I want to walk you through some of the other ones and just help us understand them in a way that I think our audience will probably be able to relate to them, because they're again, very common and understandable. One of the ones that you mentioned is the idea that I need it done right now. And I think you know, people can probably think back to bosses that they've had at different points in their career that insist on things being urgent and it has to be executed immediately. What does that blocker reveal about the person? And what are some of the ways that you've coached people past that sense of immediate urgency?
MW: Yeah, and Brett, you raised a really good point, right? Like, I think around you probably had the boss who was like, I need it done now. And I think this is a key part, is recognizing when the belief that you're holding is actually your own or one that you have internalized from the outside, ie, your boss, your parent, society, whatever it might be. So the I need it done now lends itself to a very high level of productivity, but often that becomes toxic productivity, which means we want everything done at all cost, and so we, the person carrying the belief often doesn't recognize the impact this might have on a team, right? Often, the way the team feels is, there are no priorities. Everything's urgent. We're drinking from the fire hose. It's the crisis of the day. Is what we're working on. And so coaching somebody through that really starts with, first of all, recognizing that there's a dissonance between the impact they want to have on the team or others, or even on themselves, and what's actually happening. Then it's understanding, oh, this might be the belief that's driving me. How do I reframe this belief to be more aligned with the result that I want? So if what you want is for your team to feel like they can manage their priorities. What is the belief that would actually support that versus the I need it done now maybe it's I need. I need the things that are on our priority list done right, or I need to focus on the things that are of most value. So the reframe is, what's really important? My role as a coach is to ask the questions that can help those leaders reframe, but eventually that they can ask the questions themselves. Right? We all have an internal coach, and so my job is to build that capacity so that then they can coach themselves in any given situation to go through the exact same process.
BH: Another one of the blockers that you mentioned is: I can't make a mistake. And I think for people who have perfectionist tendencies or feel like their work is constantly being judged, that's one that I think would be very relevant to them, what have you explored with the people that you've coached in terms of getting past that mindset?
MW: Yeah. So I think this one again, is important to understand, like, where did that narrative, that rule of engagement, come from, right? And so if we have this narrative of, I can't make a mistake, what's useful in that one is to understand, well, why can't. You make a mistake, and in what circumstances Can't you make a mistake? What often comes up is, yes, that might be a rule that I abide with, but it's not a universal rule. There are certain areas where making a mistake is okay, it's inconsequential, it's not as it's not going to be a huge catastrophe. So it's helping them understand the rule that they might be applying across the board, they might need to be a little bit more situational with so what that often turns into is I can make a mistake, or when I can't make a mistake, depends on the level of risk associated with what I'm dealing with, and them starting to define their role, not so much as being the perfectionist the avoidance of mistakes, but being a risk manager as part of being a leader, and that reframes then how they look at things, right? They also the other pieces. If they're trying to cultivate innovation. Again, it always goes to, what are you trying to do? This that is probably the number one question I ask my clients, what is it that you want? Right? And so they say, I want my team to be innovative. Okay, let's roll that back. How does that work? When your narrative with them is you can't make any mistakes yet, I want you to be innovative. What would be the belief around mistakes or just attempts that would be more aligned with them being able to innovate? And so that's how we end up unpacking it and getting to a point where they're able to not necessarily let go but not necessarily rely on that rule all of the time.
BH: It's so interesting to see the overlap between a blocker, like, I need to be involved, and I can't make a mistake, there's a lot of parallels there in terms of the impact that it can have on
MW: …Workforce, absolutely, and on ourselves, right? I mean, they, all of them, really do overlap, because they're, you know, beliefs don't come out of nowhere. They serve a purpose. And so they serve a purpose, not only in terms of what you're trying to do, but they also serve a fundamental purpose in terms of providing us with our needs as human beings, which, by the way, leaders are humans, right? And so, you know, they're really three fundamental human needs that we all have once we get past the lowest, you know, level, it's shelter and all of those things, they're the need to feel like we're safe, the need to feel like we are accepted, or like we belong or we're connected, and the need to feel worthy. And so many times, all of these beliefs are there to provide us with that need. If I don't make a mistake, right? If I can't make a mistake, that will keep me from feeling unsafe, or if one of the beliefs is I can't say no, well, that narrative keeps us, gives us the illusion, because what happens if you say no, oh, people aren't going to like me, or I'm going to be disconnected. That boss isn't going to work for me. That surface is around protecting the need of feeling part of a tribe, right, part of the collective. So they all serve a need. But that doesn't necessarily mean you've got to use them every time you can resource some other way, right?
BH: One of the things that I appreciated most in your book is that you actually give a little bit of a framework on how people can move past these blockers? Can you share that with us?
MW: Yeah, absolutely. So the framework is basically three steps. The first step is to even just uncover that you might be blocked by a belief, right? So how do you do that? If you're feeling challenged, if you're facing a situation, you're not getting the results, or you don't like the way you're feeling, just asking yourself, what is it that I'm believing in this moment, about myself, about the others, about the situation, and name what that belief is. And then just ask, is it helping me right now? Is this helping me align with the results that I want? If it's not, then you can move on to the second stage, which is unpack. Unpack is basically becoming familiar with that belief. I call it, cozying up with it, recognizing it. Why? Because most people just want to move to action. And that's where I take the pause. Become familiar with it, understand how it has helped you. Why? Because this is not about getting rid of the belief. This is about just putting it to the side until you need it again. So I liken it to, you know, anybody who's played golf, even if you haven't played golf, there's a lot of clubs in that bag. Be able to use all of them. And that's the same with your beliefs. Don't just rely on the same one all the time. And so when you familiarize with yourself with it, you then can then understand when you need to bring it back into the picture, and it gives you a choice, which, in my mind, is really what agency is. Once you do that. You can move to the third step, which is about really unblocking, and that's where you reframe to a new belief, as we talked about before, that is more aligned with the outcome that you want. How do you do that? You say, Well, this is the outcome that I want. Let me reverse engineer and say, what would I need to believe in order to increase the probability of me being able to do that thing, or get to that thing right? And then you can move to action. What are the actions that reinforce that belief? And then see if it gets you to that outcome. And you just keep going with that process.
BH: How have you incorporated this framework into your own life and your own work? You’re, I'm guessing, not immune to some of these challenges, either. So how has it helped you, and how have you navigated it in a way that's been useful?
MW: I consider this a practice that will be with me for as long as I'm breathing, right? Because in my experience, it allows me, and again, this is what I see with folks that I work with. It just allows me to have more choice in the way that I live in this world or lead my business, et cetera. So how do I use it every chance I can get, and sometimes I don't, and I notice the difference, okay, so I have been doing this long enough that whenever I feel I don't have to wait for something to go, you know, quote, unquote wrong. But whenever I just feel like, Huh? So. Something is off. I'm preparing for a presentation, or I'm about to meet with a client. I feel that level of stress. What's going on? I will go through that very quickly. What is it that I'm believing either about me, the person, the situation I'm about to walk into that's leading me to feel this way, which is not the way I want to be feeling right now and okay not to say that that's wrong, and it's not to make up something new. But is there another way that I can be thinking about this that is more aligned with the way that I want to feel right now, which is calm and composed and confident, right? So I use it either before, kind of as foresight, as I say, sometimes in the moment, which is insight in the moment, and sometimes it's hindsight, right? And though Hindsight is great, because what it means is, oh my goodness, I haven't fully learned that yet, and there's an opportunity to learn. So I actually think the goal here is not to get it right every time. The goal is to be able to catch yourself and course correct as often as you can and as quickly as you can.
BH: I wanted to ask you, for people who see those beliefs manifesting either in their bosses or in the people under them. What advice do you have for them to help their colleagues to recognize that this is something that might be holding them back...
MW: That is so tempting to do, right? I mean, it is so much easier to see it in other people, or think we see it. Because here's the thing, when it comes to beliefs and assumptions, we actually don't know what people are thinking and assuming because we're projecting our own thoughts on them. My advice to everyone is always start with yourself first. Okay, start with yourself first. Practice this on yourself. Practice the self-awareness. Identify when a belief is holding you back. Understand the power of beliefs in terms of shaping the outcomes that will give you a lot more equity. To be able with eloquence in the face of a colleague or a boss not to say, let me walk you through the three stages, or point out, hey, I think you have a hidden blocker. But to be able to just ask, out of curiosity, to be able to ask, you know, I noticed that this is the way you're going about this work, I'm just curious, what are your assumptions about the work that's leading you to operate this way or to approach it in this way? So the point is not for any of us to point out the hidden blockers in other people. The point is that we can coach ourselves so that we increase our capacity to then notice that maybe something is off with the way somebody is going about something and then have the curiosity to lead as a coach with others, which is really about asking the question so that they can discover it themselves.
BH: Muriel, you’ve shared so much with us. We’ve gone through the blockers, we’ve talked about some of them in detail, and we’ve talked about the strategies people can have to move past these blockers, For our audience who are listening, if you want them to walk away with one key idea that can really help improve their mindset or move past some of these blockers. What would that takeaway be for our audience?
MW: I mean, I think, you know, my hope is that everyone understands that they have a lot more choice than they give themselves credit for right, that they have a lot more in control. And if we would start focusing on the things that we have in our control, it would actually enable you to lead with more ease. And your mindset is, is probably the biggest asset that you have, that actually is a superpower that is in your control, and so why not leverage it? It's like an untapped equity that you have right here in front of you. So my hope is that folks understand that and that they can give themselves more choice and agency in the beliefs that they pick up, so that then they can lead with more expansion and more ease.
BH: Muriel, I really appreciate that, and I appreciate this conversation, because for leaders and aspiring leaders who are looking to create change in themselves and advance their careers and improve the dynamic of their workforce, it's really helpful to keep in mind that the change starts with ourselves. Sure does. Muriel, thanks so much for being on the podcast and joining us here at the Rotman School. Thank you, Brett, thank you so much. Our guest has been Muriel Wilkins, and her new book is leadership unblocked break through the beliefs that limit your potential. This has been visiting experts the Rockman school podcast for lifelong learners, exploring transformative ideas about business and society with the influential scholars, thinkers and leaders featured in our acclaimed speaker series to find out about upcoming speakers and events. Visiting us here at Canada's leading business school, please visit Rotman.utoronto.ca/events, this episode was produced by Meaghan MacSween and Megan Haynes, recorded by Dan Mazzotta and edited by Damien Kearns. For more innovative thinking, head over to the Rotman Insights Hub and please subscribe to this podcast on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for tuning in.