I know what it’s like…
to have done everything right and still feel like confidence is something you're performing — and that sooner or later someone is going to see through it.
Imposter syndrome. You've probably heard the term and recognized yourself in it.
What most people don't talk about is what it actually feels like to live inside it— because it doesn't ease even with promotions, results or recognition. Underneath the achieving is a belief that you are only as good as your last result so the goalpost keeps moving.
Most of my clients arrive already leading. What they haven't yet built is the internal ground to lead from depth rather than deficit.
We can't lead well if we don't understand the conditioned patterns that shape how we see ourselves and quietly govern where our attention goes, how we spend our energy and what we're willing to reach for.
Your performance comes down to not just the agenda you're driving but the agenda that is driving you without your awareness.
The women I work with tend to be highly attuned — perceptive, conscientious, deeply invested in their impact. They notice more than most people do. They feel the weight of a room, read what's unspoken and care deeply about how they're landing. These are genuine strengths. They're also what makes the pattern so costly. The more you perceive the more there is to monitor. The more you care about your impact the more it hurts when the external evidence doesn't come in the way you need it to.
Most of them are capable, accomplished, often impressive in a room. They're leading genuinely, but from a place of deficit rather than depth. From the part of themselves that says, day after day, that they still haven't quite earned it yet.
Everything they're doing is insurance against being evaluated and found lacking. What makes this so difficult to see is that it works. Vigilance and over-preparation produce results. The cost stays hidden inside the output until you rise high enough that leadership requires more visibility, more complexity, more tolerance for imperfection. That's when the strategy that got her where she is starts to cost more than it returns.
The cost shows in the bandwidth consumed by constant external monitoring. The over-preparation that takes three times the energy it should. The way one critical comment can undo ten pieces of positive feedback. She is constantly looking outside herself for proof of what she needs to feel on the inside. The next credential, the room's response, the leader's approval, all of it gathered to produce a feeling of authority that should be the starting point.
get to know Liane
Hi I’m Liane WansBrough
For me this ceiling showed up in my 40s. I had a successful nutrition practice, clients, results, opportunities. And I was white-knuckling through all of it. Performing competence convincingly while running on empty underneath. What I was calling drive was anxiety dressed up as motivation. Beneath the facade was a lot of self-doubt I had never named because I was too busy outrunning it.
My own coaching process changed that. The most concrete shift wasn't a sudden surge of confidence. It was the development of genuine internal authority. The overthinking, the second guessing, the not-quite-ready feeling started to ease.
Professionally, I went from walking into client sessions wondering if I was good enough, whether I was out of my depth, whether I was bringing enough value— to being present. Trusting that whatever came up I could handle. Deeply listening instead of monitoring. Going with the flow instead of managing my performance while trying to do my job at the same time. The difference showed up in my clients. They told me they felt calm around me, that they felt seen and they opened up in ways they hadn't before. Which meant we could get to the real issues faster. I felt safe to follow my instincts, to take risks and trust what I was seeing rather than second guessing it. That's when my work got genuinely good.
That's what internal authority feels like. The ability to be fully in the room without half your energy going to the voice that's questioning whether you belong there.
The same shift happened personally. As a wife and mother I had been running the same pattern at home without realizing it. Making choices organized around earning my worth in those roles too. Doing too much, asking for too little, spending time and energy on things that were leading to resentment and overwhelm rather than anything that filled me up.
When that started to shift, the choices I made started coming from a different place. From recognizing my value rather than needing to earn it. What deserved my energy and what didn't. What I needed and how to ask for it. Small changes that made an enormous difference to how I was showing up.
The differences were significant enough that I couldn't believe that we're not taught this — how to see the mindset we're running on and work with it rather than just running harder inside it. Not as an add-on or a nice-to-have. As a fundamental skill for anyone who wants to lead well and enjoy doing it. That's when I made the pivot from nutrition to coaching.
The coaching methodology I use draws from neuroscience, emotional intelligence, mindfulness, Internal Family Systems and sports psychology—because imposter syndrome is often complex enough that no single framework reaches all of it. I've used this integrated approach in one-on-one coaching, leadership development as well as training and mentoring coaches in a signature high performance method that’s been proven to get results over two decades of practice. That work takes me inside organizations including Nokia, where I lead corporate leadership and emotional intelligence development for their teams, as well as past work for RBC, Facebook and Mt. Sinai Hospital.
Companies I’ve Worked With
If any of this resonates,
I'd love to connect.
I know what it's like to be the woman in the room who has earned her place there and still finds it hard to fully believe.
