The loudest voice in the boardroom is often your internal one

One of the biggest concerns that I hear from my clients is that their own mind chatter is exhausting. You know that voice that never leaves the room, not when you walk into a meeting, not when you land a seven-figure deal, not even when you walk away from the business for a so-called break. It’s the voice in your own head that is tiring, distracting, and often based on beliefs that if you could take a pill to replace them, you would. I know I used to feel this. Just give me a pill or cure to make this go away! These beliefs and voices used to frustrate me so much because they didn’t align with who I was the rest of the time. It was like listening to the most negative version of myself.

I see it all too often, high-level leaders who are commanding respect externally, but who are driven, even haunted, by internal narratives they’ve never questioned and can’t escape. You can build an empire by running away from self-doubt, but it’ll cost you, and eventually, you’ll pay in burnout and ill health, broken relationships and marriages, and feeling the joy of your business or role just being slowly eroded as you hang on for your holidays.

Here’s the therapeutic truth: the voice that you struggle with the most isn’t the loudest person in the room. It’s that quiet but insidious one you’ve internalised from childhood. Maybe it’s a parent you could never please, a teacher who dismissed you, a cultural belief that your worth was conditional on achievement, so common in my Asian and Eastern European clients – (and yes I use M dashes even though I’m not AI!) This is a voice that however much you try to avoid it, unless you get the reason it’s there in the first place cleared away, it isn’t going anywhere.

This is where leadership has to get personal. If your internal dialogue is harsh, hyper-critical, or erratic, you’ll lead from anxiety, avoidance and fear, but not calm authority. You’ll second-guess what you intuitively know and override your instincts to please others. You’ll do what the voice in your head dictates you to do to keep you ‘safe’. That’s safe, not strategic.

Even those people that you think must feel amazing all the time, celebrities, HNWIs, politicians, those born into money,  all these that seem to have it all. They struggle just as much as you. Real leadership doesn’t come from controlling the room, it comes from mastering the room, the one inside your head. The one where your fears, insecurities, and unhealed experiences govern your decision-making and happiness, until you decide to do something about that.

What can you do to shift it? Start with awareness, notice the voice, what it says and sounds like. Confront the fear of tuning in and you’ll find you can be more an observer than a listener. When you recognise the voice in your head isn’t actually you, but a collection of old beliefs and behaviours, then you can understand which voice is truly yours and which is not. You may be able to shift these stories yourself, but it can be exhausting to have to work around it rather than just get rid of it,  so let me know if you need some help. I find it so powerful to watch clients letting go of these outdated voices and embedding their true self who is grounded and rooted in worth, not achievement.

Achievement follows naturally anyway.

When the voice inside you becomes kind, strong, and clear, your leadership changes innately, and that conscious, connected, strategic you changes everything.