Why You're Trusting Yourself Less (and Your Team is Noticing)

When was the last time you made a decision without first checking it with someone, or something?

If you had to stop and think about it for even a second, keep reading.

When I started going on sales calls, I printed MapQuest directions the night before. I left extra early, kept the pages on the passenger seat, and watched every exit and street sign, because if I missed a turn, I had to figure it out on my own. It helped me develop solid decision making and kept me focused and not distracted. My friends, those of you who remember those days, we have a connection that some generations won't understand. :)

Over time I learned the roads. I could get to a client’s office without looking at anything.

GPS can take you anywhere now, and that’s a gift. It saves us time, headaches and missing important meetings or even a friend's wedding! Think about the last time you drove somewhere new, though. Could you get back there tomorrow without your phone?

Most people couldn’t, because they were never paying attention to the route.

Your judgment works the same way. It gets stronger every time you use it and weaker every time you hand it off. After 18 years of coaching leaders, sellers and high performers, I see more of them handing it off than ever, and most don’t realize they’re doing it.

Here are four things I see wearing down self trust right now. See which ones might sound like you.

1. You hand your thinking to AI before you’ve done any research

A few years ago, someone close to me asked for advice on landing work with a specific group of companies. I spent a long time walking them through it. I knew the players, the relationships, the history, and the exact path I would take based on years of doing it myself.

When I finished, they said, “Great. I’ll run it through ChatGPT and see what it says.”

ChatGPT didn’t know any of those people. It had no idea who had history with whom, who would take a call because of a mutual connection, or who hated being pitched. It would have given a clean, confident answer built on none of that.

AI also tends to tell you you’re right. And yes, I know you can train it, so if you don't know, then use it as a tool and train it to check your thinking so you don't get a polished version of what you already believed. It feels like confirmation, but you haven’t tested anything.

You can see the effect in your inbox. The LinkedIn pitches all read the same, and you can tell within one line that nobody wrote them for you. Inside companies, people run emails through AI to look more polished, so what used to be two warm sentences now arrives as a perfectly outlined email that reads cold and nothing like the person who sent it. Then the reply gets run through AI too, and two tools end up talking to each other while two people wonder why the relationship feels off and they can't come to a solution faster.

2. You ask everyone else first

Asking for input feels responsible. It sometimes feels like making sure everyone is included. The problem is that every person gives advice through their own filters: their experiences, their fears, and what worked in their situation. That advice might be good, or it might be built for a life that isn’t yours. I worked with someone closely who did this often, thinking it created inclusivity. It actually created doubt in the leader. They seemed uncertain and afraid to disappoint others even when they were skilled and experienced enough to make the decision. It lead to decisions being delayed, many meetings to come to a conclusion and roll out a new iniative.

I learned this the hard way. In college I was decisive. I flipped the belief that I wasn’t smart and finished my last two years in under a year and a half with almost all A’s, even after someone close to me told me to take it easy, take a lower course load and take my time. Then I joined the corporate world, and because I lacked experience, I started following everyone else’s lead. It took me years to get that decisiveness back.

Nobody knows your situation better than you. When you ask five people before you’ve formed your own opinion, you end up with five versions of their judgment and filters based on their experiences and none of yours.

3. You never give yourself a moment of silence

Think about how much of your day has something playing. A podcast on the drive, headphones on the walk, music in the background, TV in the background, your phone in your hand between every meeting.

None of that is bad on its own. Together, it drowns out the part of you that notices things. Your instincts are still there, but you stop hearing them. Do that long enough and you forget what your gut feels like when it’s trying to tell you something.

Your best thinking needs space, and most leaders I coach haven’t given themselves any in months.

4. You move too fast to have real conversations

Everything runs on speed now. Better systems and better tools mean projects move faster, and that’s a real advantage. The cost shows up when speed replaces conversation.

Since 2020, a lot of teams have gone hybrid, and some work almost entirely or partially off camera. Fewer people pick up the phone. Emails go out and nobody checks how they landed. Assumptions fill the gaps where conversations used to be. That can turn into blame shifting and not seeking out someone's understanding.

When you stop talking to people, you lose the information that only comes from hearing someone’s voice or sitting across from them. You lose what they care about, what worries them and what they’re not saying. Reading people's tone and body language is a skill. This happens in your personal relationships too. When communication drops off, trust can start to leave with it.

Several years ago, a prospective client kept asking for more meetings before deciding to move forward with a training project and pushed back on everything I suggested. Early in my career, that pattern usually meant someone wasn’t serious. This felt quite different.

Rather than guessing or assuming, I picked up the phone and talked to people who had worked with them. I learned they had been burned by vendors before. They needed to see credibility and real ROI before committing, and once I knew that, I could give it to them. That relationship turned into a project that lasted several years and helped build a lot of trust.

Those phone calls told me something no research tool could: why they were hesitating.

Your team can feel it

When a leader stops trusting their own judgment, it shows up as uncertainty. People pick up on even a small amount of it, and once they sense you aren’t confident in your decisions, their confidence in you starts to slip.

The people around you also mirror you. If every message you send sounds like it came from a tool, they’ll start writing that way. If you poll everyone before every call, they’ll stop making calls of their own. If you never pick up the phone, neither will they. Most of the leaders I coach who are facing challenges with their team don't realize that their team is matching a lot of the same behaviors, from the word choice they use, to how they prioritize their time, delegate and communicate.

Use the tools, and keep your judgment

I use AI every day. In the car, it reads my emails to me, I dictate the reply in my own words, and it types it out. I use it to go through my financials and pipeline. It plans my calendar and protects white space. It researches companies and podcast guests before I talk to them.

What I keep for myself are the big decisions in my business and the way I sound when I talk to people. I’m upbeat and high energy and I want people to hear that when they read my email or interact with me.

How to rebuild trust in your own judgment

• Go back to a hard decision you figured out on your own. Walk through how you got there, what you noticed and how you weighed it. That’s proof your judgment works.
• Decide before you ask. Write down your answer first, then check it with AI or a trusted person. If you change your mind, know exactly why.
• Write the first draft in your own voice. Let a tool clean it up, but don’t let it decide what you think.
• Pick up the phone after the email. Ask how it landed. Hearing someone’s voice tells you more than a reply ever will.
• Teach your team to use AI well. Show the people who resist it where it saves time, and show everyone where their own judgment has to stay in charge. Allow them to take courses to help learn how it can help them. If they resist, encourage them. It's a necessary part of work now and it will elevate performance when used properly.
• Make room to think. Take one drive or walk a day with nothing playing and see what comes up.

My question for you this week: which of these four is costing you the most?

And if your team read your last three emails, would they recognize your voice? Where can you add more of who you are to create more and more connection.

Where trust breaks down in organizations

When leaders lose confidence in their own judgment, trust and engagement drop across the team. I wrote The Leadership Gap Most Companies Are Not Measuring about the trust gaps holding teams back and how to close them. Download it here...