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Suzanne Mercier. shared thisShe left a senior corporate role to build something of her own. Her work was genuinely excellent. Clients said so, results proved it. For a long time, that was enough. Opportunities found her. A former colleague referred a project. A past client followed her out the door. She never had to build a pipeline, because she'd never really needed one. She networked, of course. Coffees, introductions, the odd event. But without quite realising it, most of that energy went into looking like someone who was already succeeding - not into asking anyone for opportunities. The conversations stayed pleasant, professional, surface-level. Acquaintances - pleasant enough, but without the depth or trust that makes someone put their own name behind yours. Then the work that used to find her dried up. Nothing in the gap to catch her. The coffees hadn't built a pipeline. They'd built an image. She wasn't short on connections. She was short on the kind of relationship that generates work - the kind built by asking, following up, letting people see what she actually offered and needed rather than how well she was doing. There's no meeting list for a founder to be left off. It's quieter than that. The work simply stops finding you, and by the time you notice, you realise you never built the demand that was supposed to complement it. This week's newsletter tells a different version of exactly this pattern - same loop, different room. Worth the read whether you're leading a team or building something of your own. New newsletter is live link in the comments. #LeadershipTransitions #LeadershipDevelopment #WomenInLeadership #Transitions
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Suzanne Mercier. shared thisTruthfully I didn’t get it. Did you?Suzanne Mercier. shared thisThe answer is simple, but lots of people don't get it 👀 This ad campaign from Mindspace is a eye-opening look at the unconscious biases that continue to shape how we see women, leadership, and the workplace.
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Suzanne Mercier. shared thisThe calendar reminder didn't arrive that week. She'd been left off the list. No one decided to leave her off. No one flagged it, argued it, or put it on an agenda. She'd simply stopped being visible enough, often enough, for anyone to think of her when the list was drawn up. It landed hard. She'd already been carrying a quiet belief that she wasn't quite ready for the room. That belief had shaped how she showed up - a little smaller, a little quieter, a little less present than before. And how she showed up had shaped what happened next. Being left off the list didn't create her doubt. It confirmed it. That's the shape this pattern takes, and it's worth naming precisely because it's so easy to miss. A belief about who we are shapes what we expect. The expectation shapes how we show up. How we show up quietly delivers the proof. And the proof loops back to confirm the very belief that started it. Tighter each time, harder to question, because now there's evidence. Organisations are very good at measuring outputs. They rarely notice the moment a belief starts manufacturing its own evidence. My newsletter this week tells the story of exactly this - and what it actually took to break the loop. https://lnkd.in/gK-iPDtd #LeadershipTransitions #LeadershipDevelopment #WomenInLeadership #Transitions
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Suzanne Mercier. shared thisShe looked every bit the leader she'd just been made. Polished, articulate, entirely credible in the room. If you'd sat in on that first meeting without knowing her history, you'd have seen someone who belonged exactly where she was. But she was fighting something privately, even then. Grateful for the opportunity. Wary of what it might ask of her. It didn't show up in how she looked. It showed up in how she contributed. She told herself she was being held to a higher standard now. She wasn't. She was holding herself to one. What happened over the following months went further than she expected. What eventually broke the pattern wasn't reassurance, or a pep talk. It was a piece of paper. New newsletter is live - the full story, and what actually shifted it. #LeadershipTransitions #LeadershipDevelopment #WomenInLeadership #Transitions
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Suzanne Mercier. shared thisShe was one of the smartest people in the room. She had no idea. I worked with a leader who thought deeply, built strategies that solved complex problems, and articulated her ideas with precision. Her peers knew it. Her organisation knew it. She did not. Before every senior meeting she had already decided how it would go. Her ideas would be questioned. She would be found wanting. So when the pushback came, she couldn't hold her ground. Not because her thinking was wrong. Because she was already expecting to lose the argument. Her outcome confirmed exactly what she'd believed going in. "See. I was right. I don't have what it takes to be here." She didn't experience it as a pattern. She experienced it as evidence. This is not a capability problem. This is not a confidence problem. It is an identity problem. Until the identity shifts, the loop runs. Every leader carries a version of this. The question isn't whether it's running. It's what it's costing. Where is that loop running in you right now — and whose evidence is it, really? #LeadershipDevelopment. #WomenInLeadership. #LeadershipTransitions. #Transitions
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Suzanne Mercier. shared thisFor years I believed my value depended on being unique. Being first. Seeing what others hadn't yet seen. What I didn't understand was that this had very little to do with confidence, and everything to do with identity. I was a strategist. That was who I was. I hadn't yet become someone who also stays - who implements, who puts an offer to market and keeps it there, who builds something and remains its custodian rather than its 'inventor'. The capability to do that wasn't missing. It was like a muscle I'd never had reason to use - there, but unfelt, untested, invisible to me precisely because I'd never called on it. So when someone else appeared in the same space, I didn't experience it as competition. I experienced it as evidence that the only thing I had to offer - uniqueness - was running out. The real issue was underneath that: an identity still organised around invention, with no room yet made for follow-through. That's what I've come to understand as the recognition gap. Not a confidence problem. An identity that hasn't yet expanded to include what you're already capable of. I wrote the fuller story this week - the moment I finally recognised the pattern, and what it took to expand into more of who I actually am. It's the most personal thing I've shared in a long time. Have you ever experienced the lag between a promotion or new venture and feeling you really own that significant step? How did that show up? How did you handle it? Here's the full post: https://bit.ly/4eF3nJh
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Suzanne Mercier. shared thisInside an organisation, the gap rarely gets named. Not because anyone's avoiding it - but because most people have no language for what they're feeling. There's just a heaviness. A low-level dread that shows up before a big meeting, a flatness where confidence used to be, a sense of carrying more than the role should require. It doesn't look like a gap. It looks like tiredness. Or imposter syndrome. Or just a hard year. Meanwhile the role carries some of the authority. The title does some of the work. There's a team, a structure, a hierarchy that quietly absorbs the cost - so the feeling persists, unexplained, sometimes for years, because nothing forces it to be named. That's the part most people get backwards. It isn't that the capability is there and confidence hasn't caught up. It's that the capability stays largely inaccessible - unexpressed, underused, sometimes entirely unseen by the leader herself - until identity shifts to include it. Inside an organisation, that shift can be deferred almost indefinitely. The structure absorbs the gap. Nobody has to name it. I wrote this week about what happens when that structure disappears - when someone leaves the organisation entirely and discovers the gap was never about confidence. It was about an identity that hadn't yet expanded to include what she'd always been capable of. The same gap exists for leaders who've never left. Its just more easily obscured within the system. What might open up if you stopped managing the feeling - pushing through, staying busy, telling yourself it's just a hard year - and got curious about what it's actually telling you? Full story in this week's newsletter: bit.ly/4eF3nJh
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Suzanne Mercier. shared thisMost of us can pinpoint the external moment a transition happened. The promotion. The resignation. The decision to build something of our own. What's harder to see - sometimes years harder - is what didn't transition with us. I've been reluctant to write this one for a while. Not because the insight isn't real. But because it requires me to be honest about something I'd rather have figured out faster. This week's newsletter is personal. It's about the barrier I kept running into - in different forms, at different moments - before I finally heard the little voice that had been trying to get my attention for years. "There you go again." If you've ever loved what you created and then quietly abandoned it before the world had a chance to respond - this one is for you. Whether you're leading inside an organisation or building something entirely your own. The recognition gap doesn't discriminate. When did you last back yourself through a transition - not just make the leap, but hold your ground on the other side?It took me years to recognise what I already knew.It took me years to recognise what I already knew.
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Suzanne Mercier. shared thisWe've been talking about what organisations choose to count ... and what it costs when the wrong things carry the weight. But there's a version of that question that sits closer to home. Who taught you to count yourself? Every environment you've ever worked inside has handed you a set of criteria. This matters. This doesn't. This is worth something. This isn't. Most of us absorbed those criteria without realising we were doing it - and carried them forward long after we'd left the environment that created them. So we count our hesitations more carefully than our capabilities. We count the gap between where we are and where we think we should be. We count the evidence that confirms the doubt and quietly discount the evidence that doesn't. And whether you're navigating a transition inside an organisation, or building something entirely your own - the counting problem is the same. The external shift happens. The internal count doesn't change. That's what next week's newsletter is about. For now - just one question to sit with. When did you last count what you actually bring?
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Suzanne Mercier. reacted on thisSuzanne Mercier. reacted on thisThe future of small homes is not more square footage. It is smarter square footage. Transformable furniture turns one room into many: office by day, dining area by evening, bedroom by night. But the real innovation is not the dramatic fold, lift, or swivel. It is designing space around changing human routines. For compact living, furniture cannot just look clever in a video. It has to be fast, safe, durable, repairable, comfortable, and easy enough to use every day. Otherwise, it is not innovation. It is choreography with hinges. The best designs will not make small spaces feel like compromise. They will make every square meter work harder. Chances your innovation strategy is broken are 94% https://lnkd.in/e9mMYShp #innovation #innoweek #venturestudio #companybuilder #startupstudio #vc All rights and credits are reserved to the respective owner(s). Contact us to add you as a reference or for content removal.
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Suzanne Mercier. reacted on thisSuzanne Mercier. reacted on this“Winning is important. Knowing how to win is even more.” At just 10 years old, after winning a jiu-jitsu match, Giovanna Kohler chose not to celebrate her victory alone, instead, she embraced her defeated opponent. That simple act of respect, rather than the medal itself, is what captured the world’s attention and went viral.
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Suzanne Mercier. reacted on thisSuzanne Mercier. reacted on thisIt has been 8 months since my last suicide attempt. The first photo is what I looked like a few days after. I had survived, but I didn't know why. I felt hopeless. I took the second photo today. In the last 8 months, I have become a fully-fledged Executive Director and public speaker. The Hope Network is a thriving organization with nearly 300 HopeKeepers (volunteers) around the world. Help One Person Exist has actually saved lives. But the reason these two photos look so different has to do with more than just work. I also learned to cook. Found stable housing. Fell in love. I found reasons to stay beyond helping other people. I found joy in my own life and the beauty all around me. I still struggle with suicidal ideation, and some days I still wonder why I'm here. But this post is to say that today is not one of those days. 8 months later, I'm not wondering. I know why I'm here, and I'm glad that I am. Thank you all for being part of the journey ✨ #suicideprevention #livedexperience
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Suzanne Mercier. reacted on thisOh oh, here she comes Watch out boy she'll chew you up Oh oh, here she comes She's a maneater🥰🥰🥰🥰
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Suzanne Mercier. reacted on thisAs a deaf woman with a profound hearing loss, below is a video of Jodie who explains what it’s like to take off her cochlear aid which is totally relatable to my experiences when I take off my hearing aids. Not all deafness is the same. Every deaf and hard of hearing person has a unique experience, shaped by the type and degree of hearing loss they have. Therefore each person’s communication needs and experiences are different.
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Publications
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Liberate Leadership: How the Imposter Syndrome undermines leadership capability and what to do about it
Green Olive Press / Kindle Version 2nd Edition
See publicationLeadership has long been recognised as critical to business success. However, in spite of the significant investment organisations are making in identifying and developing emerging leaders, up to 75% of leaders are rated as incompetent. These leaders lack personal and interpersonal capabilities. A key reason for this incompetence is the Imposter Syndrome. This book demonstrates how the Imposter Syndrome impacts on leadership and provides Principles of Shift to move leaders into a more engaging…
Leadership has long been recognised as critical to business success. However, in spite of the significant investment organisations are making in identifying and developing emerging leaders, up to 75% of leaders are rated as incompetent. These leaders lack personal and interpersonal capabilities. A key reason for this incompetence is the Imposter Syndrome. This book demonstrates how the Imposter Syndrome impacts on leadership and provides Principles of Shift to move leaders into a more engaging and inspiring leadership space.
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Emerging Trends in Professional Selling, Volume 1
Trend Business Publishing
Chapter Contribution:
"Are your Sales People sales imposters?
How to overcome fear to create great sales results.
We all feel fear. In sales situations, fear can create a limitation we can do without. Suzanne Mercier examines the nature of fear and how it can play out in the business world, especially in our roles as sales people and business development specialists. Suzanne outlines some simple yet powerful models to help us deal with our fear and create great sales results in the…Chapter Contribution:
"Are your Sales People sales imposters?
How to overcome fear to create great sales results.
We all feel fear. In sales situations, fear can create a limitation we can do without. Suzanne Mercier examines the nature of fear and how it can play out in the business world, especially in our roles as sales people and business development specialists. Suzanne outlines some simple yet powerful models to help us deal with our fear and create great sales results in the process. -
Stepping into Leadership: Are you ready?
Up to 70% of individuals experience a phenomenon called the Imposter Syndrome. The Syndrome shows up as a feeling of not being good enough, of feeling like a fake and fraud, denying successes while focussing on weaknesses and failures. It is a totally distorted self-view. Without denying the external uneven playing field, this feeling of not being good enough stands in the way of many women stepping up to the leadership careers they want. the White Paper provides a pathway to move beyond the…
Up to 70% of individuals experience a phenomenon called the Imposter Syndrome. The Syndrome shows up as a feeling of not being good enough, of feeling like a fake and fraud, denying successes while focussing on weaknesses and failures. It is a totally distorted self-view. Without denying the external uneven playing field, this feeling of not being good enough stands in the way of many women stepping up to the leadership careers they want. the White Paper provides a pathway to move beyond the syndrome to a deep-seated feeling of confidence and fulfillment.
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Smart Moves: planning for success in your small business
McGraw Hill
Business planning is an essential discipline for successful businesses yet the Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that almost 80% of small businesses (SME's) have no business plan. Perhaps coincidentally, around 80% of SME's go out of business in the first 12 months. This book guides business owners through the process of planning for their success.
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Smart Start: tips to fast-track success in your new business
McGraw Hill
Many of us start up new businesses filled with hopes and dreams without having assessed some of the challenges, risks and consequences. This book guides readers through their purpose for starting up the business, their vision and how they will implement that to create a successful business.
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