If you’ve ever felt like you’re stuck in “worker mode”—always pushing, overthinking, proving yourself, you’re not alone. That’s what I call the employee mindset.
But here’s the thing: if you’re reading this, you’re not meant to stay there. You’re being called into the leader mindset… a way of thinking and being that unlocks confidence, clarity, and the ability to create results without burning yourself out.
No judgment here… we’ve all been there. What matters is noticing when you’re in it so you can shift.
Before you can lead others, you’ve got to lead yourself.
For me, it looked like overworking, skipping breaks, ignoring my health. I thought if I just pushed harder, the results would come. But that wasn’t leadership—that was survival mode.
When you start leading yourself with integrity, you naturally build the confidence to lead others.
This one is huge. Leaders don’t give away their power by outsourcing every decision. Yes, advisors and mentors are valuable—but at the end of the day, it’s your vision, your path.
Failure? It’s not the end. It’s information. It’s feedback. Every decision (even the messy ones) builds trust in yourself, and that’s what creates real confidence.
A lot of people hold back from leadership because they’re afraid it will be “too much.” Overwhelm is a real concern—especially if you’re already stretched thin.
But here’s the reframe: responsibility isn’t a weight, it’s a muscle. The more you carry it, the stronger you get.
I never thought of myself as a leader when I started. Honestly, I didn’t even want the title. But as I grew into my authentic self, leadership was the natural next step.
So if you’re here, reading this all the way through, take it as your sign. You’re ready.
Ready to lead yourself first.
Ready to trust your own guidance.
Ready to step into responsibility with courage instead of fear.
If you’re a high-achieving entrepreneur, executive, or business leader and you know it’s time to stop holding back, I’d love to help. Book a Test-Drive Consult and let’s map out the exact shifts you need to step into your leadership with clarity and confidence.
Full Transcript
Welcome to the show, leaders. If you are new here, my name is Lisa Jeffs and have been coaching business leaders and entrepreneurs for almost 12 years now. And what I want to share with you today is how to rewire your brain to go from being an employee mindset to a leader. And I’m speaking to my senior leaders. I’m speaking to my executives. I’m speaking also to my entrepreneurs because a lot of people will go into business for themselves and create another job as opposed to really seeing themselves as a leader. [Music]
You may be surprised to know that at one point I did not see myself as a leader at all. In fact, I didn’t even desire to be a leader. It wasn’t even something I thought to myself, hey, I would really like to lead. Becoming the leader that I am today and guiding and coaching others was really a process of me first stepping into my inner leadership.
Moving away from the employee mindset can show up as I have to work really hard. I don’t trust myself. I’m always looking outside of myself for guidance. I’m not trusting my own answers. It can look like feeling like everything is a mess. It’s all over the place. Maybe your personal life isn’t in order. Maybe things at home feel all over the place and it can show up in your work as giving off an energy of can I trust this person? Can I really trust this person to lead me? They don’t really seem like they’re leading themselves.
So, the first step in my journey was inner leadership. I had to really start to look at where am I not showing up taking care of me. And again, if you know my work, will you release all judgment? This is not about judging yourself. This is not about being self-critical and pointing the finger. This is about just being curious. Getting curious. Okay, where am I feeling like I am not leading myself?
So for me, my patterns, it showed up in what I was eating, what I was doing or not doing. So I would overwork. I would sit at the computer for far too long to where it was becoming a health concern. I wasn’t getting up. I wasn’t moving around. I was sitting there. I was working feeling like I had to make something happen. This goes into the energy of creation. If you’re new here, you know that I talk about the practical and I also talk about the energetic. I like to call it high performance with soul. We are not just physical beings doing. We are energetic beings.
So for me, what was driving this mindset, this employee mindset was, I have to do all this. I have to figure it out. It’s all on me. I need to work really hard or else I’m not going to get the results that I want. A lot of my shift into leadership happened about 10 years ago where online it was really popular, the whole hustle mentality. It still is out there but not nearly as much as it was 10 years ago. And I fell into that and it was more about how much can I produce than really stepping back and looking at it as a leader and saying is what I’m doing even giving me the results that I want or am I just staying busy for the sake of staying busy.
So, first step, taking an honest look. Where is your inner leadership? What gauge is it on? Is it lacking? What area is it lacking in? Are you taking care of your body in whatever capacity that is for you? It’s important that you know what works for you, not just following a cookie cutter plan that you don’t feel good in.
So this is the inner leadership part because the more you focus on inner leadership, looking at your thought patterns throughout the day, are you allowing the inner critic to run wild? Are you allowing fear and lack and limitation to dictate how you are feeling throughout the day? The more you can assess and make adjustments where needed, the more you are going to feel confident in your own ability to lead yourself, which in turn you’re going to feel confident in leading others.
If you are feeling like you are not even leading yourself, it’s going to be very hard to step into the role of a full embodied leader to lead others when you have this story going on in your mind of but I don’t even I don’t even have my own stuff going. How am I going to lead others? So that is number one, air leadership. And if you need support with this, if you need help, you can book a test drive consult or you can email me at infolisadajs.com and learn more about my offerings.
So number two, this is a big one and this is one that I really had to learn myself. Learn how to trust yourself. Now caveat here that having a set of advisors is beneficial especially when you are starting out. If you’re just starting your journey it is helpful to have a small group of advisors one to three that you trust. However, we don’t want to become codependent on these advisors and trust them blatantly without learning how to tune into your own system and how to trust yourself. Because as a leader, part of your job is to determine we’re going to go this way or we’re going to go that way or we’re going to do this or we’re going to do that. and trust in yourself enough to follow through.
My journey in this was when I got into this world again when I started to open my business and I really started to step into the leader role. I had my coaches and I had my mentors and at the beginning these people really helped to shift how I viewed myself, my confidence and they did give me guidance on my path. Now what I found after years was I needed to start trusting myself. Of course, you’re going to have your support team, especially if you are someone who is learning and growing and expanding. As you expand, you’re going to have more questions.
Things are going to be new. You need to have a group. And your advisor group is going to learn and grow and expand with you. You may change these people. However, what I’m saying is it’s not to not get support, but always run it through your system because this is your life. This is your journey. And if you are a leader, part of your soul growth is going to be to learn to trust yourself, back yourself, and not worry if the decision you make goes wrong.
That is all part of the journey. A lot of people hesitate and sit on decisions and they either miss out or they get so worried that something is going to go wrong or it’s going to fail that they never do anything. We want to fail. Failure is simply data. It’s information that we can take and use to improve. Trust yourself. You are not on this journey as a coincidence. You are on this journey because you are a leader. And part of that is checking in with yourself, trusting.
This part of the work that I do with my private clients is we start tuning into the body. A lot of the leaders I work with are very heady. So they’re constantly in their mind. They’re constantly thinking. They’re constantly analyzing. We have to start tuning into the body. Start listening to the guidance of the body. The body never lies. The body is going to tell you what’s up.
And the more you can learn to trust your body, the more you can learn to trust your intuition and then look at the facts and then look at the data and then look at the information and then make a decision. the more you’re going to build confidence in yourself. You’re going to build confidence in your decision- making and you’re going to step more deeply and embody the role of a leader.
Last one. Last one. Number three, don’t be afraid of responsibilities. I know a lot of people who will not go after something or not step into a new project because they’re scared they’re going to get overwhelmed. And this is a valid fear because a lot of the people that I work with are already at that edge of burnout. So I’m not telling you if you are already feeling burnt out to take on a whole another project. But I am telling you that if you are in a place where you are avoiding a level of leadership because you think it’s going to be overwhelming or you think it’s going to be too much for you, I want you to really take a step back and see it from a clearer vantage point.
Because a lot of times we go to the end point and say, “Oh, this is going to be so much. I don’t know if I can do it.” and just look at it in what’s now, what’s next. That’s all I’m focusing in. Knowing that as you take on this responsibility, as you move forward and you build that muscle, you are going to develop your character. You are going to develop your inner strength. Your inner leader is going to develop. And as you move forward and you’re taking on more responsibility, you’re going to build more competence. What does competence lead to? Confidence. What does competence and confidence lead to? Taking more courageous actions.
By the way, you don’t need to do it in that order. you can not feel confident or competent and you can take a courageous action which I encourage my private clients to do and you can then build that competence very fast very effectively. So to reiterate the path to begin to rewire employee mindset to leader mindset to really help you embody the energy of the leader and again you can do this no matter where you are starting from. I had no even thought of myself as a leader earlier on much earlier in my journey. It was not even in a little seed of a thought. And then as I started to become my most authentic self, what we call it in the magnetic leadership accelerator is your authentic power self. Being a leader, showing up as a teacher, showing up as a guide is it was just the natural progression.
So, first we’re going to work on being an work on your inner leader. How are you taking care of yourself? If you’re not, you don’t judge it, but you look at where the gaps are. What do you need to fill those gaps? Two, learn to trust yourself. Don’t outsource all your decisions. Of course, have your advisors, but always tune into here. What is this telling you? And trust and follow what your body is saying. And if you have trouble tuning in, it’s a process. You can book a test drive consult and we will help you create a plan to start tuning in.
And three, don’t be afraid of responsibilities. Don’t be afraid of stepping into the more leader role. If you’re still watching this video, if you’re still listening to this podcast, you are ready. You are ready. The people who are not ready, they wouldn’t even have clicked on it or they’d be gone in the first two minutes. You are ready. You are ready for the responsibility. It’s likely not as overwhelming as your brain is making it.
And if it does become overwhelming the trick here, you still might be in the employee mindset because what does the employee mindset do? that works really hard instead of being strategic and saying, “I’m a leader. This is becoming overwhelming. Who do I need to get on this team? Who do I need to outsource this to? Who can I hire on for to help me so it’s not overwhelming anymore?” Because as the leader, you’re not meant to get bogged down in the nitty-gritty. not meant to get bogged down in the task.
If what’s overwhelming you is a responsibility, a feeling of responsibility for others as I’m feeling a lot of overwhelm for members of my team. Then who can you get on board for that support? Who can you get on your team to support you through the journey? Leaders need other leaders. We all need to activate our inner leader. We are all in this together. We are all working for our highest good. If you’re watching this at least leader, I love you. I appreciate you. I hope this was helpful.
As we move into the end of the year, I know it’s only September, but a lot of us are already thinking of 2026 because the energy, it’s a little wild right now. If you have a question that you want me to answer on the podcast, you can go to my website. You can go to the podcast, click on my website, and you can send me a text message with your question. If it makes sense to answer it in the podcast, I will do and you’ll get your question answered. I appreciate you. I love you. And as always, let’s stay connected.
