Rewriting the Inner Script: How Coaching Helps Leaders Challenge Limiting Beliefs
Rewriting the Inner Script: How Coaching Helps Leaders Challenge Limiting Beliefs
As a modern leader, your mindset shapes more than just your performance—it sets the tone for your entire team. Yet even the most capable leaders carry hidden beliefs that quietly sabotage progress: “I’m not strategic enough,” “I don’t handle conflict well,” or “I’m just not a natural leader.”
Where do these beliefs come from—and more importantly, how can you shift them?
The Science Behind Limiting Beliefs
A 2019 study published in Scientific Reports uncovered a key psychological mechanism: people form beliefs about their own abilities using a negativity bias—that is, we tend to weigh negative feedback more heavily than positive feedback when updating our self-beliefs (Müller-Pinzler et al., 2019). This tendency is especially strong when we think we should be improving, such as in professional roles with high visibility or complexity.
For leaders, this bias can calcify into limiting beliefs: persistent, untested assumptions about your capabilities. Over time, these beliefs shape behaviour and decision-making, often unconsciously.
Why Coaching Works
Professional coaching provides a structured, confidential space where leaders can surface and challenge these assumptions. Drawing from developmental psychology and cognitive behavioural approaches, coaching enables leaders to:
Identify unexamined beliefs: Coaches use reflective questioning to bring hidden scripts to light.
Challenge their origins and validity: What feedback are you over-weighting? What strengths have you under-valued?
Experiment with new narratives: Leaders test new, empowering beliefs through action—and build confidence through results.
As psychologist Carol Dweck’s work on mindset has shown, adopting a growth-oriented belief system can profoundly impact learning, resilience, and leadership effectiveness.
From “Not Good Enough” to “Growing Every Day”
Through coaching, leaders often reframe limiting beliefs into more helpful alternatives. For example:
“I’m bad at strategic thinking” becomes → “I’m still learning how to think long-term, and I’m getting better with practice.”
“I avoid conflict” becomes → “I value harmony, and I’m learning how to engage constructively when it matters.”
“I’m not a natural leader” becomes → “I lead in my own way, and I’m developing the presence and confidence to do it well.”
These reframes don’t rely on toxic positivity—they're grounded in self-awareness, behavioural experimentation, and support.
The Cost of Doing Nothing
Unchecked limiting beliefs cost more than self-esteem. They affect how you lead others, take risks, and pursue opportunities. Left unexamined, they can result in stagnation, burnout, and imposter syndrome.
As Bachkirova and Jackson (2024) found in their study of leadership coaching, many leaders begin coaching by grappling with confidence and self-doubt—yet by the end, the focus shifts toward identity, purpose, and empowerment. Coaching doesn’t just resolve problems; it unlocks growth.
Final Thought
You don’t have to be ruled by the stories your brain wrote in a moment of doubt. You can rewrite the script.
If you're curious how coaching could help you surface and shift the beliefs that may be holding you back, I’d love to talk.
👉 Get in touch to explore what a coaching conversation could open up for you.
AI technology was utilized in the research and drafting of this piece. Final content reflects the author’s analysis and perspective.
