17 Fear of Rejection Slowing You Down? Try These 5 Keys to Confident Leadership

Is the fear of rejection holding you back from speaking up, taking risks, or fully stepping into your leadership? You’re not alone. Even the most accomplished women leaders quietly wrestle with self-doubt, overthinking, and the fear of hearing “no.”

In this episode of the Joyfully Unstoppable Podcast, I’ll help you:
✨ Recognize the subtle ways fear of rejection may be limiting your growth
✨ Reframe rejection so it becomes feedback, not failure
✨ Practice practical strategies to move through fear with courage
✨ Build self-trust, anchor in your values, and redefine success beyond approval

This isn’t about becoming fearless. It’s about leading with authenticity and confidence, even when fear whispers in the background. You’ll walk away with encouragement, insights, and actionable tools to help you step into joyful, sustainable leadership.

💡 Ready to take the next step? Sign up for my free Masterclass, Breakup with Burnout: 3 Keys to Rewire Your Leadership for Sustainable Success.

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Read, Embracing Failure: Powerful Tips You Need to Grow Stronger, Faster

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Transcript

0:07

Welcome to Joyfully Unstoppable, the podcast for women who are ready to lead boldly, live lightly, and reclaim their joy. Whether you're leading a team, a classroom, a boardroom, or your own big, beautiful life. I am so glad you found us. I'm your host, Becky Ham leadership coach, speaker and founder of Women Lead Well. After years of high level leadership, I discovered that success doesn't have to come at the cost of your peace, your values, or your wellbeing. Each week, we'll explore what it means to lead joyfully, sustainably, and authentically. Even in a world that tells you to hustle harder and prove your worth, you carry a lot. Let's help it feel lighter now, friends, if you have ever held back in a meeting, hesitated before sharing an idea or overthought an email until the cursor blinked back at you like some kind of a judgey mc, judger tins, then you've brushed up against the fear of rejection. For women leaders, this fear can feel especially sharp. Because you're not only responsible for results and people, you're also navigating expectations that are often invisible and unrelenting. The fear of rejection isn't just about whether someone approves of you. It's about what that disapproval might mean. Am I competent enough? Do I belong here? What happens if they see me and decide that I don't measure up? Left unchecked. This fear influences your decisions. It can dampen your voice and it can keep you in this horrible loop of over-functioning. But here is the truth. Fear of rejection is deeply human, and it doesn't have anything to do with the objective merit of the thing you're afraid to do. And even more important, it's something you can move through. So today we are gonna talk about when the fear of rejection holds us back and show you practical, empowering steps to move out of that fear and lead with clarity, courage, and confidence. So let's go. First, let's define what is the fear of rejection? Fear of rejection is more than a passing insecurity. It is a protective mechanism that is hardwired into the human brain. Thousands of years ago, being excluded from a group meant literal danger, right? We could not survive on our own back in the Paleolithic era. But our nervous systems still carry that imprint. Even though rejection in the modern workplace, it doesn't threaten our survival, right? We're not gonna literally die. But what it does threaten. Are the things that we value, our credibility, our influence, belonging, and particularly for women leaders. One, we work really hard for our credibility, for our influence, right? We work really hard for the things that we believe in, that we value, and so this fear, it can show up in ways that look like. Way over. Preparing for a meeting or a proposal. Or an event, And you know, you probably get praised for doing it, but it's not actually healthy. Fear of rejection can look like people pleasing. It can look like perfectionism. And I wanna be clear here it is not that you don't know what you're doing. In fact, you probably know more than most of the people in the room, but the cultural and professional expectations placed on us as women. Often fuel this hyperawareness of how we are perceived. You might carry an internal narrative that tells you to not push too hard, to not risk being disliked, to not give them any reason to say no, not give them any reason to question you. And so I would invite you to ask yourself, where now as a leader, do you notice yourself hesitating, delaying. Softening your voice because you fear how others might respond. And then I want you to ask yourself, is this holding me back? What is this hesitation keeping from being possible in my life? Because this is key fear of rejection. It doesn't always come with like this neon sign and a panic attack. It can, but not always, right? More often than not, it sneaks in through the everyday behaviors that seems small, but compound over time. so you might recognize yourself in one or more of these patterns. You edit emails over and over chasing the perfect wording so no one misinterprets you. You say yes when your whole body is screaming. No, because disappointing others feels unbearable. And I wanna pause here and say, you know, I have a whole module inside Frantic to Flourishing that teaches women how to say no confidently without remorse. And we talk about how saying no is actually a leadership strength, that it actually grows you and makes you more successful as a leader. So if Saying no is hard for you. You might wanna think about frantic to flourishing. we'll talk about it at the end, but I've got a free masterclass coming up on September 18th that you might wanna get registered for so you can learn more about that program. So now you might notice that fear of rejection is coming up for you if you withhold feedback from a colleague because you're more worried about their reaction than their growth. You might delay applying for a promotion until you've mastered every single qualification three times over, and even then you might think you're not ready. You stay silent in a meeting even though you've got a valuable perspective because you're not quite sure it'll be welcomed because you're not convinced that it aligns with what the boss thinks or what your colleagues think. And so maybe you'll just keep it to yourself. These individual behaviors are subtle. Their impact isn't each and every time you let fear of rejection dictate your choices, you reinforce the belief that approval is more important than authenticity. Over time, this chips away at your confidence. It leaves you exhausted from trying to meet unspoken standards that frankly, my friend might not even exist. Unspoken standards that you have created in your own mind. Instead of leading from your strengths. So what do we do about that? How could we reframe the fear of rejection in a way that could actually set us up for growth? How do we get past this impulse to play it small? And so before we dive into the strategies, I wanna spend a second, To talk about how we view rejection itself, because that can be the kernel of the fear that we experience. Many women, and not all, but many women, treat rejection as proof of inadequacy, If somebody disagrees with me, if somebody says no, then that means that I was wrong. In reality, rejection is just a universal part of growth. It is inevitable if you wanna be successful. You shall fail. And I've had a blog post on this. I will try to remember to link the blog post in the the show notes, But this is a cornerstone of the growth mindset that all of us are rejected at some point. All of us fail. Every influential leader you admire has faced rejection, sometimes publicly. What sets them apart is not immunity to rejection, but resilience through it. And so one thing you can do is to look at rejection as information, not as identity. A no from a supervisor, a client, a colleague. That doesn't mean you're not capable. It means that this particular idea in this particular moment wasn't the right fit, or maybe it was, and it just wasn't communicated as clearly as needed for that person to pick it up and see the value. Regardless. That's good data to get. It's not a verdict on your worth at any point, but it's just information for you to then take to process to make your ideas, your products, your services, your whatever it is, make your presence more effective. So when you stop equating rejection with personal failure, you shift into that growth mindset and you unlock the ability to experiment, to risk, to innovate, to do things differently, and to find real growth from that process. So friends, the next time you face rejection. I want you to answer these three questions and write them down now, because I really think these are helpful. I mean, they help me a ton, and so I am sharing with you something that I do myself as a personal practice. Write them down so you have them later. Question one, what happened factually? No judgment, but just write down like you were transcribing the event, what actually objectively happened. Question two, what story did you tell yourself about what happened? This is where your feelings, your stories, your loops, your, back of the brain, that lizard brain comes out and frames what objectively happened in light of a particular narrative. What's that narrative? And then question number three, How can you reframe what actually happened and the story you tell yourself about what actually happened in a way to grow? How do you reframe in a way that takes the totality of the experience? What actually happened and what you told yourself about what happened, and how do you turn that into feedback redirection. How do you grow from that experience? And now, so I tell you every time, every time I do that kind of postmortem, I do those three, I answer those three questions and that third one is kind of less of a question and just more of a reframing. I do that task and I tell you what, man, every single time it opens up a new avenue for me. Every time taking the time to do that. Helps me grow as an individual, as a leader, makes me more confident, makes me more fearless, more willing to take risks, and it objectively improves my leadership. So I commend that to you. I tell you, man, just you, you will love it. And now understanding our fear is only half of the work. We wanna move past it, right? And this takes deliberate practice. So here are five strategies that can help you not only manage the fear of rejection, but transform that fear into a source of growth. And again, these are things that I have done myself. These are things I work on with my clients, and so I share them with you because I know they work. So fear of rejection is really holding you back again, man, you've already got your notes out. Keep writing these five down. You're gonna love'em. Number one, you've gotta start with self-trust. So work on building your self trusts first. Confidence in leadership, confidence in life. It doesn't appear overnight. It is built on a million seemingly inconsequential decisions. And so each time you follow through on what you said you'd do, you'd strengthen the belief that you can rely on yourself. And people say this all the time and a lot of, a lot of us just kind of blow it off, but I am telling you it is pure gold. Why? Because self-trust becomes a shield against rejection because when you trust yourself, your worth is no longer tied exclusively to others' opinions. So ask yourself, where can you make one small promise to yourself this week and then keep it. And again, this self-trust, I think it is so important. It is so core to the work that I do with my clients that it is where we start in frantic to flourishing. We start with that building our sense of self-trust and internalizing our own sense of safety. Because once we feel safe in ourselves, once we're grounded in who we are, that rejection from someone else doesn't touch us. Again, it's information. We use it to grow better, but it doesn't. Wound us the same way as when we rely on others' validation to define our worth. So that is step one. You grow that self-trust with yourself. Step two is I want you to practice small little acts of bravery. You don't have to leap into your scariest fears right away, right? Just start small. Ask a clarifying question in a meeting, suggest a new process improvement Decline a meeting request that doesn't align with your bandwidth. Each tiny little act of courage signals to your nervous system, I can survive this. No. And over time, those small risks compound into big resilience. So. You've already identified the one thing you can do to build self-trust this week. Here's the next question. What is one tiny no risk action that you could take today that nudges you outside of your comfort zone? And here's what I want. I want you to do it, and then I want you to share with me on social media at Women Lead, well across all social media platforms. I'm even on TikTok now y'all 50 years old and I'm on TikTok and it's insane. It's like the Wild West. I love it. we have the Women Lead Well Community Group over on Facebook. You can join the Women Lead Well Community and you can share your wins there. And if you've identified something and it really is too scary for you to do it, then one, it's not tiny enough, go smaller. Pick something that you can actually do. But if you do want some help, uh, pumping yourself up, getting yourself ready to, to do the action, to step into that fear, to do the tiny little micro bravery, then just join us in the Facebook group and we would love to cheer you on and encourage you through it. All right. Step three, and This one is a great one. Rehearse the worst case scenario out loud. Why? Why would you go there if it's the thing you're trying to avoid? Because fear multiplies in vagueness, How many times have we avoided action because the imagined rejection feels catastrophic? Hi. I know I have. I've done it a ton. By naming that worst case scenario out loud, you strip away its power. You do. So ask yourself, what is the absolute worst thing that could happen here? Whatever the scenario is where you, um, are afraid to take action. What's the worst thing that could happen here? And then ask yourself, could I survive that? What does it really mean if that happens? Because almost always the answer is yes. If this happened, you would actually be okay. This is something I do with my coaching clients routinely, and it is so rewarding. You can just see the expression change on their faces when they realize that the thing they have been so afraid of doesn't actually hurt them. That they actually are okay no matter what. And you can use the so what ladder for this, if you guys aren't familiar with that, for each fear that you have, ask yourself. So what if that happens? So what if it happens? I speak out loud and and they laugh at me. Like they wouldn't laugh at you, but let's just say, okay, so I speak, I speak up in a meeting and they laugh at me. So what if that happens? Well, that would feel embarrassing. Well, okay, so what if that happens? What if you were embarrassed? Well, it would be uncomfortable. So what if you're, so what if that happens? So what if you're uncomfortable? Oh, well, I mean, it would last for a couple minutes and I'd get, I'd move on, right? You just keep going with the So what's, and I guarantee you're gonna find at the end of all of those questions is an outcome that you can actually live with. Practice number four. Anchor in your values. I talk about values a lot on this podcast because they are that important. Approval, especially approval from anyone other than your own self. Approval is fickle. Values are stable. When your actions align with your values, courage, integrity, service freedom, whatever it might be, you lead from your authenticity. And authenticity and fear are not compatible. So if you're leading from your authenticity, that fear naturally dwindles because the two cannot coexist at the same time. Even if rejection comes, you can stand in the piece of knowing you acted in alignment with what matters most. So ask yourself, which of your values do you want to embody more boldly, even if it risks rejection? And if you aren't clear on your values, just download my free values clarification exercise linked in the description below. Step five, redefine success beyond approval if success equals universal approval. You are always gonna be chasing and, and you know this, I'm telling you something you already know. Like you are never gonna please everyone, right? So instead, redefine success as taking action that aligns with your vision, regardless of outcome. Did you pitch the idea? Did you set the boundary? Did you show up authentically? That is success. As you do those, as you have those successes, you will have additional success. My former boss, I think I've talked about it here before, his catchphrase was nothing succeeds like a little success. And so over time, holding onto your definition of success, it builds that courage muscle that you need for your bigger leadership moves. And so I want you to ask yourself, how would you define success? If approval weren't part of the equation, because let's be real, like that fear of rejection, it might always whisper, but my friend, it does not have to hold onto the steering wheel. The more you notice it, reframe it and practice courage, the more space you create for authentic leadership. So I'm giving you a lot of homework with this episode this week. I want you to choose one action, big or small. That stretches you beyond the need for approval. What's one thing you can do that meets your definition of success? Detached from anyone else's approval? Maybe you share your idea in the meeting. Maybe you say no to the request that drains you. Maybe you ask for feedback, even if it feels risky. Each step is your way of saying, you know, rejection might be possible. But my growth is certain. Your leadership is not defined by how many people approve of you. It's defined by how fully you live your values, your voice, and your vision. The teams you lead don't need a perfect leader who avoids rejection. They need a whole actual leader who is willing to show up authentically rejection in all. If you're ready to go deeper in this work to rebuild confidence, set aligned boundaries, and reclaim joy in your leadership, I would love to walk with you, just DM me at Women Lead Well on Instagram, and we can set up a time to talk because the next chapter of your leadership is not about avoiding rejection, it's about putting yourself in situations where rejection is a real possibility. And growing stronger and more effective as a result. And if your fear of rejection has you deep in over functioning, people pleasing and approval seeking frantic to flourishing was built for you. In this 12 week group experience, you will clarify what's next without abandoning what matters. You'll reconnect with your voice, vision, and vitality. You'll build rhythms that support your highest contribution without burning out step fully into the next evolution of your leadership with courage and joy. I'm hosting a free 60 minute webinar. Breakup with burnout. Three keys to rewire your leadership for sustainable success on September 18th at noon Eastern. Registration information is in the description box below, and I would love to see you there. Now, if this episode spoke to you, I would love for you to share it with a friend who's running on empty. We need more women leading from alignment, not adrenaline, and don't forget to like and subscribe. Next week we're talking about how to lead sustainably. Even when everything feels chaotic, you won't wanna miss it. You can also grab one of our free resources, like the Mental Load Reset, or the Values Clarification exercise@womenleadwell.net. And linked in the show notes below. Remember, joyful, sustainable, and authentic leadership is possible, and you deserve to enjoy every minute of it. Until next time, I'm Becky Ham and this is joyfully, unstoppable.