You got the promotion. You have the title, the team, the budget. And somehow you feel less sure of yourself than you did a year ago, when you knew less and had less riding on it.
So you do what has always worked. You get better. You read more, prepare more, learn the system, master the tool. You tell yourself the feeling will settle once you have been doing this for a while. It is the confidence vs competence bargain almost every capable woman makes, usually without noticing she has made it.
And the feeling does not settle. Every time you get further up, it gets louder. Which leaves you with a quiet, uncomfortable question you probably have not said out loud: if getting good at this did not fix it, what exactly is wrong with me?
This week on the From a Woman to a Leader podcast, I sat down with Tori Jenae, a Transformational Life Strategist with three degrees in psychology who has been coaching high achievers since 2010. Before that she spent twelve years in HR, and by the age of 30 she was head of HR for a 7,000 person company, telling men twice her age what to do, with none of the upbringing that would normally prepare a person for that.
But that is not really what we talked about. We talked about the thing most confidence advice skips, which is that the doubt is not a knowledge gap you can close. It is usually an old belief about yourself that you have never gone back and examined.
Below are the insights from our conversation, with my own experience and concrete steps you can take this week.
1. Confidence vs Competence: The Feeling Does Not Arrive When the Skill Does
Tori’s whole practice rests on a claim that contradicts the advice most of us were given. We are told confidence is the reward for getting good. She says it is not, and she says the reason we keep believing it is that we are looking in the wrong direction for it.
“A lot of people talk about confidence and we use confidence as something that we want an external factor to give us. But what I’ve learned is it really has to come from deep inside and that some of our past wounds really get in our way and that’s kind of the missing factor for most women that I’ve worked with.”
Then she named the swap directly:
“Confidence, like we believe it comes from competence, but I believe that confidence really comes from healing the core, the root of what shook our confidence in the first place.”
Here is what I see again and again in my coaching. A woman comes to me with what she describes as a skills problem. She wants to be a better presenter, a better negotiator, a stronger technical leader. We start working, and within two sessions it is clear the skill was never the issue. She presents well. She just does not believe she is allowed to take up the room while she does it. Adding competence to that does not touch it. It only gives her a more impressive platform to feel like a fraud on.
How to apply this: Take the thing you have decided you need to get better at before you can step forward. Ask yourself honestly whether a genuinely objective person would say you are already good enough at it. If the answer is yes, the gap you are trying to close is not a skills gap, and more training will not close it.
2. The Doubt Gets Louder Every Time You Level Up, and That Is the Correct Response
This is the part I most want women in tech to hear, because it reframes the doubt from evidence of a problem into evidence that you are moving.
“The biggest thing I always want women to know is that doubt’s never going to go away because every time you hit a new level, you don’t have a frame of reference psychologically for how to do that. We’re all building our wings as we go, as we jump off the cliff.”
The doubt never goes away, and why that is normal
She does not suggest getting rid of it. She suggests changing what you do with it:
“So it’s really learning how do I deal with that doubt? How do I step through it? How do I use that doubt as an ally and saying like, okay, I may not have the answers, but what I can lean on is that I’ve always figured it out in the past.”
I coached a new leader the same week we recorded this, and she said almost word for word what Tori describes. She felt she did not know what she was doing. I told her that is exactly where she should be, because that is what stretching feels like from the inside. If you have a full frame of reference for the role you are in, you are not growing in it. Sound familiar? The women I work with tend to read the absence of a map as a personal failing rather than as proof they have gone somewhere new.
How to apply this: When the doubt shows up this week, do not try to argue it away. Name what is actually new about the situation, out loud or on paper. “I have never run a team this size before” is a fact. “I am not cut out for this” is a story. Separating the two takes about thirty seconds and changes what you do next.
3. Write the Badass List, and Make Yourself Get to Twenty
This is the most concrete exercise in the episode and the one I would hand to a client tomorrow. It is deliberately uncomfortable.
“So you have to write 20 things and it’s hard for a lot of women. They’ll write like a few that you’ve done that you didn’t think you could do, and I don’t care if it’s like traveling alone, getting a degree, speaking up in a meeting.”
The badass list
The point is not the list. The point is the evidence you build by making it:
“But anything you did that you were scared and somehow you figured out how to do it, and going back to those things, even if it’s a note in your phone and reminding yourself, even when my back was against the wall before, I always figured it out.”
And the line she closed it with, which I have been repeating ever since:
“So we’re not starting from nothing, we’re starting from experience.”
Twenty is the number that matters. Most women can produce four or five without much effort, and then it gets hard, and the hard part is where the work happens. To get to twenty you have to count the things you have quietly written off: the move, the hard conversation, the relationship you left, the language you learned, the year you held a team together while nobody noticed. Those all count. You have been treating them as ordinary because you were the one who did them.
How to apply this: Open a note on your phone tonight and title it whatever you like. Write twenty things you did that scared you and that you were not sure you could do. Do not stop at eight because the rest feel too small. Read it before your next hard meeting.
4. Something Small Someone Said to You Is Probably Still Running the Show
I told Tori something on this episode I have told very few people. In high school, a teacher told me I could not write. She was harsh about it. And I believed her for years, went into computer science, and told myself I was an analytical person and words were simply not my thing. I write almost every day now.
Tori did not treat it as a small thing, and she gave me a definition I have not stopped thinking about:
“These are what we call the small T traumas. And trauma is really anything that disconnected you from feeling safe. And it changed a belief you had about yourself.”
Then she told me her own version, which happened in fifth grade. She had changed schools so often that she had missed multiplication tables entirely and was falling behind in long division.
“He pulled me into the hallway and then he said, you know, girls aren’t good at math. So that’s okay. Instead of trying to help me or like teach me or tell me what to do, he said, that’s okay, girls aren’t good at math.”
“But I recognized that that fifth grade teacher had changed how I felt about my ability to do math for 18 years of my life.”
She also gave me the question she uses with clients when doubt comes up and will not move:
“When’s the first time you remember having this fear?”
Most people land somewhere immediately, and that is the tell. This is where women get stuck, because the belief does not feel like a belief. It feels like an accurate assessment of who you are. I did not think I was carrying a wound about writing. I thought I was being realistic about my strengths. That is what makes these so durable. Nobody argues with a fact.
“For me, 98 % of the time, if I find a current behavior, I can find something that happened in the past that has kind of swayed us away from our authentic self and into the protect, what I call the protective self.”
How to apply this: Pick one thing you have decided you are simply not good at. Ask yourself who first told you that, and how old you were when you agreed with them. If you can name a person and a moment, you are not looking at a limitation. You are looking at an old sentence you never updated.
5. Your Brain Is Not Weak. It Is Protecting You.
If you have ever started something with real commitment and watched yourself abandon it three weeks later, this section is the explanation you have been missing.
“I love to explain to people why big swings don’t work. It’s not that anything’s wrong with us. It is actually our brain is designed to keep you safe. And what is known is safe, even if it’s not healthy.”
Her example is the January workout plan. You cut the food, add the training, and do it all at once.
“The body literally thinks she’s trying to kill me.”
So it starts generating reasons to stop. It is six in the morning. The kids were up. You are sore. You will restart Monday.
“That’s not that you’re weak or you have bad discipline, any of that. That is your brain trying to keep you safe.”
And the line from her professor that made me laugh and then think for a week:
“Your brain doesn’t know the difference between a bear and a tax bill. It just knows both of them make you upset.”
Her answer to this is not more discipline. It is a smaller step:
“I love to tell my clients if you get 1 % better every week, at the end of the year you’re 50 % better.”
This matters enormously for career change, and it is why I am so insistent with clients about small consistent moves rather than dramatic ones. The woman who decides she will completely rebrand herself, rebuild her network and change functions in one quarter is not more ambitious than the woman who has one new conversation a week. She is more likely to stop. Her nervous system will make sure of it, and then she will conclude she was not serious enough, which is exactly the wrong lesson.
How to apply this: Take whatever big change you are planning and find the version of it that is small enough to feel almost trivial. One conversation. One paragraph. One meeting where you speak first. Do that version every week for a month before you scale it up.
6. Vent Up, Never Vent Down
Tori was lucky in her first leadership role in a way that most women are not, and she is clear that it made the difference.
“I remember my first leadership job. I was very lucky they got me a coach because they were like, you’re the youngest person ever to have this role, and we’re kind of afraid for you.”
Her boss, another woman who had worked her way up, arranged it. Her advice to anyone without that is to build the equivalent deliberately:
“So I also say like, get someone, even if it’s a friend or a mentor or colleague, someone that you look up to who can kind of process things with you.”
And then the rule that I think every woman moving into leadership should have written down somewhere:
“I would say vent up, never vent down in an organization.”
She also made a point about competence that sits interestingly next to everything else in this episode. When she became head of HR she suddenly owned workplace safety and knew nothing about it, so she took a two week OSHA certification. She describes it as the most boring thing she has ever done. But she came out of it able to hold the conversation, and that changed how she felt walking into the room.
So competence is not irrelevant. It is just not the foundation. Learning the specific thing you are missing gives you footing in a specific situation. It does not, on its own, build the underlying belief that you will be okay.
How to apply this: Identify one person you can vent up to, and if you do not have one, that is your task this week rather than something to feel bad about. A peer in another company counts. A former manager counts. A paid coach counts. What does not count is your own team.
About Tori Jenae
Tori Jenae is a Transformational Life Strategist with three degrees in psychology, a background in HR leadership, and deep training in Energy Medicine, functional medicine, nervous system science, and spiritual development. Born into a world of addiction and trauma, she rebuilt her life from the ground up at 17, completely sober and entirely self-funded. She left home at 17, put herself through college without taking out a single loan, and was running HR for a 7,000 person company by 30.
She has been coaching since 2010, helping high achieving individuals do the same, and works holistically across every dimension of her clients’ lives: identity, relationships, business, family, and health. Clients stay with her for years, refer their spouses and children, and credit her in published books. She works with international clients from Beverly Hills, California.
- Website: torijenae.com
- Instagram: @tori.jenae
What I Took From This Conversation
The idea I keep returning to is that most of us are trying to solve a belief problem with a skills solution, and then concluding we are broken when it does not work. Another certification, another year of experience, another quarter of proving it. None of that reaches the thing that is actually generating the doubt, because the doubt was installed long before the job existed.
What struck me most was how ordinary the origin stories are. A teacher in a hallway. A comment in a classroom. Nobody meant permanent harm, and the damage lasted eighteen years anyway. That should be freeing rather than depressing, because a sentence somebody said to a ten year old is not a fact about who you are. It is just a sentence you have not questioned yet.
And I loved Tori’s definition of what confidence actually is, because it removes the impossible standard most of us are holding ourselves to:
“Confidence is not that you’re always going to feel great walking in the room. Confidence knows that you’re always going to figure it out and you’re going to be okay either way.”
I go deeper on my own take in this week’s solo episode, where I share more about the teacher who told me I could not write and what it cost me to believe her.
You Don’t Have to Figure This Out Alone
If you are reading this and recognizing yourself, if you have been getting better and better at your work and quietly waiting for the feeling of being sure to arrive, I want you to know that you do not have to sort this out on your own. I work with women in tech and leadership on exactly this: on stepping into roles before the certainty shows up, on being visible without performing, and on going back and looking honestly at the beliefs that have been quietly setting the ceiling.
Book a promotion strategy call, and we’ll figure out your next move together.
Where to Start This Week
Write the badass list. Twenty things you did that scared you and that you were not sure you could do. Get past the easy five. Keep it in your phone.
Ask where it started. Take one belief you hold about your own limits and ask who first told you that, and how old you were. Name the person and the moment.
Shrink the next big change. Whatever you are planning, find the version that takes fifteen minutes a week and start there. Your nervous system will let you keep that one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does confidence come from competence?
Not primarily, according to Tori Jenae. Competence gives you footing in a specific situation, but it does not build the underlying belief that you will be okay, which is why highly skilled people often feel less sure of themselves as they advance. She argues that confidence comes from resilience and from addressing whatever shook your confidence in the first place, which is usually an old belief rather than a skills gap.
Why do I feel less confident after a promotion?
Because you no longer have a frame of reference for what you are doing. Tori Jenae describes this as the normal psychological response to hitting a new level: you have never done this before, so there is nothing in your experience to reassure you. The doubt is evidence that you have moved into new territory rather than evidence that you are not capable, and it will return at every subsequent level.
What is the badass list exercise?
It is a written list of twenty things you did that scared you and that you were not sure you could manage. Tori Jenae gives it to clients because the number forces you past the obvious achievements and into things you have quietly discounted, such as travelling alone, leaving a relationship, learning a language, or speaking up in a meeting. The purpose is to build a record of evidence you can return to on the days when you cannot generate it from memory.
What is small t trauma?
Small t trauma is anything that disconnected you from feeling safe and changed a belief you held about yourself, without being one of the severe events people usually associate with the word. A harsh teacher, a critical parent, a manager’s offhand comment, or a single sentence in a performance review can all qualify. Tori Jenae notes that people often fail to recognise these as significant precisely because they seem too small to matter.
How do I find out where a limiting belief came from?
Ask yourself when was the first time you remember feeling this way. Tori Jenae uses this question with clients when doubt surfaces around a specific situation, and most people land on a memory almost immediately, which is itself the signal. If you can name a person and a moment, you are looking at a belief you absorbed rather than an accurate assessment of your ability.
Why do big life changes never stick?
Because your brain is designed to keep you safe, and what is familiar registers as safe even when it is not healthy. When you make a sweeping change, your system reads the discomfort as a threat and starts generating reasons to stop, which most people interpret as weak discipline. Tori Jenae recommends small consistent steps instead, on the basis that getting one percent better each week compounds into a substantial change across a year.
What does vent up, never vent down mean?
It means processing your frustrations with someone senior to you or outside your reporting line, never with the people who report to you. Tori Jenae uses this rule from her twelve years in HR leadership, because venting downward damages team confidence and puts your reports in an impossible position. A peer at another company, a former manager, a mentor, or a paid coach all work as places to vent up.
Who is Tori Jenae?
Tori Jenae is a Transformational Life Strategist based in Beverly Hills, California, with three degrees in psychology and training in Energy Medicine, functional medicine, nervous system science, and spiritual development. She spent twelve years in HR leadership and was head of HR for a 7,000 person company by the age of 30 before starting her coaching practice in 2010. Born into addiction and poverty, she left home at 17 and put herself through college without loans, and now works with high achieving international clients across identity, relationships, business, family, and health.
Links
🎧 Listen to my conversation with Tori Jenae: Confidence vs Competence: Why Getting Better at Your Job Will Not Make the Doubt Go Away
📺 Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ZZ4O9Xh-3ek