Waiting until you're ready is a mistake

I recently had a conversation with a music professor at the conservatoire, during my flute lesson with him.

He said: “I have taught you the basics. Now you need to learn how to fly. And you cannot do that without jumping out of the airplane. If you don’t jump, you will never know whether your parachute opens. And you will never learn to use your skills.”

That got me thinking.

How many times in our professional world do we prevent ourselves from progressing, because we don’t expose ourselves to the environments we could learn from, and instead live under the illusion that we should get ready first?

Research shows women wait until they meet 100% of criteria before applying for a role. Men apply at 60%.

I know that myself. When I switched into a software business, I undersold myself and took a lower level role, because I didn’t trust myself to apply for Director positions. And that was painful. When I started, I realised I could have easily done my manager’s job. I felt like my hands were tied - I could see what needed to be done, but it wasn’t my place to do it. I made it my aim to prove my leadership potential, and within about half a year started making inroads into a different role. It took me almost a year to recover from that one decision. One decision to not trust myself.

That experience sits with me every time I see a woman hesitate in front of an opportunity she is more than ready for.

How would you be able to learn how to lead a large team unless you actually do it? How can you ever prepare for that? You’ll never be ready unless you put yourself in the situation, trust yourself, and try it out.

Or how would you know how to chair a Board meeting unless you actually do it? You can study how it’s done, you can watch others - but you won’t know you can do it until you do it.

Waiting until you are ready is a chicken and egg situation. Because you can never prove to yourself you are ready unless you try it out. But you won’t try unless you feel ready.

And yes - sometimes you jump and it’s harder than you expected. That doesn’t mean you failed, it actually is part of the learning.

So how do you actually make yourself jump?
 

How to use what you already know about yourself

I have tried many ways. Here is the one that works best for me.

Think about a different area of your life where you already trust yourself to perform under pressure.

Do you play sports, and have won competitions? Or you cook at a level that you once felt is completely beyond you? Then you know you can trust yourself when it counts. Or like me, you are a musician - every time I perform a concert, I remind myself that I can do hard things I don’t feel quite ready for.

Then ask yourself: if I can do it there, why wouldn’t I be able to do it at work? If I can walk out on stage and perform music I find genuinely challenging, why couldn’t I handle a leadership moment that makes me nervous?

This is what psychologist Albert Bandura called mastery experience. It’s the single most reliable source of self-efficacy (the belief in your ability to execute and reach a goal), because it draws on real evidence, not just self-assurance.

A practical way to build self-trust at work

But how do you translate this into your day-to-day at work?

First, create your personal highlight reel. Think of all the situations where you experienced that you could really trust yourself. List them out, then pick the 2-3 most impactful ones.

For each situation, I want you to visualise: what was it like? What did you see, hear, feel? Sit in that moment mentally for 10-15 seconds before moving to the next one. By the end, you should have a short 20-30 second movie in your head across those 2-3 moments.

Then, the next time you face a challenging situation where self-doubt creeps in, bring up your highlight reel. Watch it with your inner eye. Let it remind you of what you already know about yourself.

The jump is always scary. But the parachute has opened before. And it will open again.