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You’re exceptional at what you do.Your colleagues seek your expertise.Parents respect your judgement. Leadership values your insight. But when it’s time to present to the senior team, pitch that programme, or step into the next role - you hesitate. Not because you’re unprepared. You’ve done the research, written the proposal, earned the right to be there. You hesitate because your nervous system is screaming that visibility equals vulnerability. And here’s where it gets cleve

You’ve built your systems around staying safe. You don’t like speaking up in meetings, so you write detailed emails instead. You’d rather not lead the discussion, so you send flawless checklists. You hate presenting to SLT, so you delegate it – for their development. And it all looks so professional. Smooth. Reliable. The team runs like clockwork, and you’re the calm centre of it all. Except you know what’s really happening. Every process, every protocol, every pre-emptive up

Assert Open the diary. See "presentation". Feel your stomach drop before your brain can explain why. The SLT briefing after Ofsted, the panel interview on Teams, the first Governors' update in your new role. You handle your day-to-day with ease, then the context shifts and your body tightens. That's not a character flaw. It's a human response to stepping outside what feels familiar. Notice Susan Jeffers documented this decades ago: we are not alone in our fear. It shows up

You don't feel "small." You feel over-responsible. Over-prepared. Over-perfected. But underneath all that effort - fear is still holding...

If you've done any rehearsal at all, it was probably a disaster movie of everything that could go wrong. You're so focused on not asking...

If you’ve ever panicked in a presentation, blanked mid-sentence, or walked out of an interview wondering what just happened - you...

You already set targets. You already visualise outcomes. You’re still not shipping what matters in the moments that count. That isn’t...

I once walked away from the career I’d trained for-the one that lit me up-because my body decided it wasn’t safe. I told myself it was...

When two universities merge, the press talks about scale and innovation. What rarely makes the headline is what it does to the staff -...