A Lobster’s First Halloween

This Saturday is my grandson’s very first Halloween. He’s going as a lobster, and his parents are going as chefs. I’m now lobbying hard for their dog to go as a steak so we can have the full surf and turf.

I’ve seen the costume. Tiny claws, little antennae, and the sweetest face peeking out of all that red. He has no idea what Halloween is, and he won’t remember a minute of it. I’ll remember all of it.

I haven’t dressed up in years myself. But if you walked into my study, you might think I never stopped.

The Wall of Masks in My Study

One whole wall is covered in masks I’ve collected from around the world. Whenever someone new sees it, the questions start right away. Where did you get that one? What’s the story behind this one?

I love telling them, because every mask is really a trip. Some are from family adventures with all six kids in tow. Some are from trips my husband and I took just the two of us. Each one takes me right back to a place and a time with the people I love most.

There’s one story that wall tells that I don’t share as often. It’s the story of the mask I wore for years.

The Mask I Wore for Years

From the outside, I looked like I had it all together. I smiled, I showed up, I said “I’m fine” more times than I can count. On the inside, I was second-guessing almost everything. Was I good enough? Did I belong in the room? How long until someone noticed I didn’t?

Here’s what nobody tells you about wearing a mask like that. It’s exhausting. All the energy I spent holding it in place was energy I could have spent living, growing, and showing up as myself.

That’s why the wall means so much to me. Every time I walk past it, I remember that I get to choose which masks I wear now. Most days, I choose none.

What Masks Do People Wear at Work?

I think about how many people walk into work every morning wearing a mask of their own. The colleague who nods along in the meeting and shares what they really think in the parking lot. The new manager who’s quietly drowning and won’t ask for help. The person with a brilliant idea who starts with “This is probably dumb, but…” and then talks themselves out of saying it at all.

I recognize every one of them, because I’ve been every one of them.

What Do Work Masks Cost a Team?

I’ve seen what they cost. Good ideas go unsaid. Small problems grow into big ones because nobody wanted to be the one to raise their hand. Talented people burn out from the effort of looking like they’ve got it all handled.

When people pour their energy into hiding, the whole team performs below what it’s capable of. That gap between potential and performance shows up in results.

What a Lobster Teaches Us About Growth

So back to my little lobster.

Did you know a lobster grows by shedding its shell? For a little while afterward, it’s soft and exposed. Then a new shell forms, a bigger one, with room to grow.

We work the same way. Every time we take off the mask, even a little, we feel exposed. We say the honest thing, we ask the question we’re afraid sounds silly. We admit we don’t know yet. It feels uncomfortable, and it’s also exactly how we grow.

The very first pillar of the REAL Method® is Respect Yourself. For me, that started with believing my real voice deserved a place in the room. Yours does too.

How Leaders Can Help Their Teams Take Off the Mask

If you lead a team, you have a beautiful opportunity here.

Go first. Tell them about a time you felt unsure or got it wrong.

Thank people for bringing problems early. What gets appreciated gets repeated.

Ask questions that invite honest answers. Try “What’s worrying you about this?” in place of “Any questions?”

When you take off your mask, you give everyone around you permission to take off theirs.

How to Start Taking Off Your Own Mask

If you’re the one wearing the mask right now, start small. Share one idea this week. Ask for help once. You don’t have to take it all off at once. I certainly didn’t.

What Mask Are You Ready to Set Down?

On Saturday night, kids everywhere will put on their costumes for a few hours of fun. By Sunday morning, those costumes will be in a pile on the floor.

So here’s my question for you this week: What mask are you ready to set down?

It might feel a little scary at first. Just ask my grandson the lobster. That soft, exposed feeling means you’re growing.

Frequently Asked Questions

About the Author

Simone Knego is an international keynote speaker, two-time TEDx speaker, and USA Today bestselling author of REAL Confidence: A Simple Guide to Go from Unsure to Unshakeable. Through the REAL Method®, she helps organizations build confident, high-performing teams that close the gap between potential and performance. Learn more at simoneknego.com.

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My daughter Emma just started her first job in art conservation, in Scotland. Getting there took grit. She triple majored in biology, psychology, and neuroscience and planned on medicine. Then she followed her heart into conservation and moved to Wales for her master’s degree.

Then came the job search. Conservation is a niche field with only a handful of openings, and Emma filled out application after application. So many places never responded at all. No interview, no rejection email, just silence.

I don’t know exactly how many applications she sent. I just know it was a lot. And it was so frustrating to watch her put real time into every one of them and then never hear back. 

Honestly, I think a no is better than silence. Even a quick note that says “Thank you for your application, we’ve gone in a different direction” gives you something. Real feedback would be even better, so you’d know what to work on. I understand why most companies don’t offer it, because it takes time. But when all you get is silence, you start filling in the blanks yourself, and the story you tell yourself usually isn’t a kind one: I’m not good enough.

Applying into silence: why new hires start out doubting themselves

Emma isn’t alone. In a September survey, 93% of job seekers said they’d applied for a job and never heard back. Career experts estimate new grads often send 100 or more applications before they land a single offer.

And I think it’s just as hard for people applying later in their careers. When you have to apply to that many jobs to land one, it’s hard not to start believing you’re not good enough.

So when they finally land the job, a lot of them walk in the door already doubting themselves.

Most of them won’t tell you how they feel. They’re grateful to finally have the job, and they don’t want to risk it by looking unsure. So the doubt shows up in quieter ways. They apologize before asking a question, or start every email with “I just wanted to check.” 

When a leader notices those habits and responds with encouragement and clear feedback, a new hire can let them go and start showing what they’re really capable of.

How new hire confidence affects your bottom line

A new hire who doubts themselves holds back from day one. They stay quiet in meetings and wait for permission before they take initiative.

It takes them longer to contribute, and if they never get comfortable, they’re more likely to leave. Every new hire who walks out the door takes the time and training you invested with them. They’re also the people you were counting on to lead your organization five years from now.

Leaders can change this

The first few weeks are when you have the most influence. How you treat a new hire early on tells them whether they belong.

You can shape how confident your newest people feel starting in their very first week.

How to build confidence in new hires with The REAL Method®

1. Respect Yourself. Your newest people take their cues from you. When you stay steady during uncertainty and speak about yourself with respect, you show them what confidence looks like under pressure. Pay attention to how you talk about your own work in front of them. If you constantly downplay your wins, they’ll learn to do the same.
2. Embrace Your Failures. Your newest hires may have just spent months hearing nothing back. Share one of your own mistakes and what it taught you. Better yet, tell them about a time you didn’t get the job or the promotion and how you moved forward. You’ll give them permission to make mistakes too.
3. Ask Yourself What You Want. Then ask your team. A simple “Where do you want to be a year from now?” gives new hires a sense of control the job market hasn’t given them. Revisit the question every few months so they know you meant it.
4. Live Without Limits. Hand new hires real responsibility early: a client call, a project to own, a seat in the meeting where decisions get made. Be available when they need you, and then let them run with it. Every small win becomes proof they can point to the next time doubt shows up.

Help new hires change the story they tell themselves

After months of silence, many new hires carry a story into work with them: I got lucky. They’re going to figure out I don’t belong here. One of the tools I teach is Ctrl-Alt-Delete, and leaders can use it with their teams.

• Ctrl: Notice the story. When a new hire hesitates, ask what they’re telling themselves, and whether it’s real and helpful.
• Alt: Offer a better one. “What if I mess this up?” becomes “When I figure this out, I’ll be the one teaching the next person.”
• Delete: Clear out the habits that don’t serve them, like comparing themselves to coworkers with ten years of experience.

A two-minute conversation like this can change how someone shows up for the rest of the week.

Your entry-level team is your future leadership team

Emma did land her job in the end. Watching her search reminded me how much a single response can mean when you’re just starting out.

The next generation of leaders is sitting in your entry-level roles right now. How they feel about themselves this year will shape how they lead later.

Think about your own first job. Someone probably took a chance on you or gave you more responsibility than you felt ready for. That person shaped the leader you became. You can be that person for someone on your team.

That’s the heart of my keynote, The Confident Leader. If you’re planning a leadership event or offsite for 2027, I’d love to help your leaders build confident, high-performing teams. Explore my keynotes.

Frequently asked questions

About the author

Simone Knego is an international keynote speaker, two-time TEDx speaker, and USA Today bestselling author of REAL Confidence: A Simple Guide to Go from Unsure to Unshakeable. She helps organizations increase profits by building confident, high-performing teams through The REAL Method®. Learn more at simoneknego.com.

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Two letters, $120,000

This summer, UN Women shared a study of 133 AI systems used across industries. These findings raise a crucial question: is AI bias against women? Forty-four percent showed gender bias. More than a quarter showed both gender and racial bias.

Numbers like that can feel abstract. So let me make it personal.

Imagine two job candidates with the same degree, the same experience and the same role in mind. Both ask ChatGPT what salary to request.

The man is told to ask for $400,000. The woman is told to ask for $280,000.

The only difference in the prompt? Two letters. “He” became “she.”

That’s a real example from a 2025 study by researchers at the Technical University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt in Germany. They tested five popular AI models, and every one of them consistently advised women to aim lower. Across the study, the gap usually landed around 10%. Some professions showed more, some less.

I want to be fair here. That $120,000 example is the most dramatic result, and the study hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet. But think about what a 10% gap means. It’s 10% less in your first offer, then 10% less in every raise built on top of it, for an entire career.

And it doesn’t stop at salary. In May 2026, researchers at Stanford and MIT Sloan asked about 1,000 Americans to write their own money questions for AI. Then they simulated a lifetime of following the answers from GPT-5.2 and Gemini 3 Flash. The women ended up with about $60,000 less by age 60, because the AI steered them toward more cautious choices with less money in stocks.

Here’s the twist. About two-thirds of that gap came from how the questions were asked. Women’s prompts focused on debt, credit and safe savings. Men’s focused on stocks and investing. When women used growth-focused language, the advice they got looked much closer to what men received. Hold onto that. We’ll come back to it.

Millions of women now ask AI for career advice. Many of them have no idea the advice might be shaped by their gender.

So where did AI learn to do this?

AI learned it from us

AI models learn by reading enormous amounts of human writing. Books, articles, websites, job postings, forum threads. Decades of it. And that writing carries every assumption we’ve ever made about women.

In 2024, UNESCO tested several popular AI models to see how they described men and women. The results were hard to read. The models connected women’s names with words like “home,” “family” and “children.” Men’s names showed up next to “business,” “salary” and “career.” In stories written by Meta’s Llama 2, women were placed in domestic roles four times as often as men.

It’s still happening with today’s tools. A March 2026 study by the communications firm LLYC looked at how ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Mistral and Llama responded to young women aged 16 to 25 in 12 countries. The models described them as “fragile,” encouraged them to look to others for validation and nudged their goals toward traditional roles. Those are the exact messages so many of us spent years unlearning.

We’ve seen where this leads. A few years ago, Amazon built an AI tool to screen résumés. It learned from ten years of the company’s past hiring, and most of those hires were men. So the tool decided men were the better candidates. It downgraded résumés that included the word “women’s,” as in “women’s chess club captain.” It marked down graduates of two all-women’s colleges. Amazon tried to fix it and eventually scrapped the project.

Nobody programmed these tools to underestimate women. They picked it up from the patterns in our history. And then they repeated those patterns back to us, with the confidence of a machine.

That last part matters. When a person gives you biased advice, you might question it. When a computer does, it feels objective. It feels like math.

Is AI even hearing you?

This one’s personal for me. I make my living with my voice. So I paid close attention when I learned how technology has treated women’s voices.

For years, speech recognition has struggled to hear women as clearly as men. Linguist Rachael Tatman studied YouTube’s automatic captions and found they were noticeably more accurate for male speakers. In her sample, if you picked a random man and a random woman, there was almost a 70% chance the man’s words would be transcribed more accurately. A separate study of doctors using dictation software found higher error rates for female physicians. These tools have improved since then. But the pattern tells you who they were built and tested for first.

Then there’s the voice that talks back. Think about Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant. For years, all of them used a female voice by default.

In 2019, UNESCO published a report called I’d Blush If I Could. The title came from Siri’s actual programmed reply when a user called her a sexist slur. The report argued that female-voiced assistants send a quiet message millions of times a day: that women are agreeable helpers, always available and always eager to please. It also noted that companies tended to use women’s voices for household tasks, while navigation systems more often used men’s voices.

Sit with that for a second. The helper sounds like a woman. The one who knows the way sounds like a man.

Siri’s reply has since been changed, and most assistants now offer other voice options. But the defaults we lived with for a decade shaped what millions of people heard every day.

Should you say please and thank you to AI?

Women are more polite to AI than men. Pew Research found that 62% of women had said “please” to their smart speakers, compared with 45% of men. A YouGov survey across 17 countries found the biggest gap in the United States, where women were 14 percentage points more likely than men to use polite language with AI.

I love that. Good manners are part of who we are. But does politeness change what AI gives you back?

The research is mixed. A 2025 Penn State study tested ChatGPT-4o with the same 50 questions written in five tones, from very polite to very rude. The very polite versions got 80.8% right. The very rude versions got 84.8%. The researchers were quick to say they don’t recommend being rude, and an earlier 2024 study found rude prompts often made answers worse. One small study isn’t the final word.

Here’s the part that caught my attention. One theory is that very polite prompts tend to be indirect. “Could you possibly tell me…” leaves more room for confusion than “Tell me…”

That’s a habit many of us learned long before AI.

We soften our asks, we add “if it’s not too much trouble” and “I was just wondering if maybe.” We do it in emails, in meetings and in salary negotiations. Now we’re doing it with a machine.

So if you want, keep your please and thank you. Then say exactly what you want: “Please give me a salary range for a senior marketing director in Tampa with 15 years of experience, and aim for the top of the market.” That’s polite, and it’s clear.

And what about thank you? Someone once asked OpenAI CEO Sam Altman how much it costs the company in electricity when people say please and thank you to ChatGPT. His answer: tens of millions of dollars, and he called it money well spent.

I’m with him. Gratitude is a habit worth practicing everywhere, including with a machine. Thank AI when it gives you a strong answer. And if it ever tells you to ask for less, skip the thank you and ask again.

Use your voice anyway

Here’s what I want you to take from all of this. AI is a tool. A powerful one. And like any tool, it reflects the people who built it and the data it learned from.

That means you get to stay in charge. Here’s how:

1. Test it yourself. Ask an AI tool for salary advice as a man. Then ask the same question as a woman. Compare the answers. You’ll never read AI advice the same way again.
2. Push back. The first answer is a starting point. Be direct about what you want. Ask, “Is that number on the high end of the market?” or “What would you tell someone who wanted to aim higher?”
3. Give it your full value. Share your results, your wins and the real market rate for your role. The more context you give, the less room there is for assumptions. And when you ask about money, ask about growth and investing, too.
4. Use AI more. Research shows women use these tools less than men. Every time a woman uses AI, questions it and corrects it, she adds her voice to what it learns.

I know using AI more can feel risky. A May 2026 study showed people two identical AI-written résumés, one from “James” and one from “Emily.” Reviewers saw James as resourceful. They questioned Emily’s integrity. Some of the harshest comments came from Gen Z men.

That double standard is real. It’s also one more reason to use AI openly and confidently, until it’s simply normal for women to use the same tools men use every day.

Confidence has always meant knowing your worth before anyone else confirms it. That includes a computer.

So the next time AI tells you to ask for less, push back and ask for what you’re worth.

Sources

• THWS: Artificial Intelligence Gives Women Lower Salary Advice
• ZME Science: ChatGPT advised women to ask lower salaries than men
• UNESCO study on bias in large language models (via Daily Sabah)
• HPCwire: UNESCO study details
• Reuters via HR Reporter: Amazon scraps AI recruiting tool
• Daily Dot: Gender bias in Google’s voice recognition
• ScienceDaily: Voice recognition errors with women’s dictation
• CBS News: UNESCO report on Alexa and Siri
• HBS Working Knowledge: Women Are Avoiding AI
• TODAY: Pew Research on politeness to smart speakers
• Stacker: YouGov survey on AI politeness
• Decrypt: Penn State “Mind Your Tone” study
• IPS News: UN Women on AI and women (June 2026)
• 24/7 Wall St.: Stanford and MIT study on AI investment advice
• IBTimes UK: How women’s prompts shaped the gap
• OECD AI Incidents: LLYC study on young women
• Allwork.Space: Identical AI-generated résumés study
• Digit: Sam Altman on the cost of please and thank you

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For years, people looked at me and saw a mom of six who had it all together. A full house, a full calendar, and everything handled. Whenever anyone asked how I was doing, I had the same answer: “I’m fine.”

What I didn’t say was how I actually felt. When my friend Jaime Marco shared what FINE really stands for, it was a true aha moment for me: Freaked out, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional. That was exactly what my “fine” meant.

I never felt like I was allowed to struggle out loud. So I did what so many of us do. I kept going. I kept showing up, kept smiling, and kept saying “fine,” while I was quietly running on empty.

Today there’s a name for what I was doing: quiet cracking. And it’s happening on teams everywhere. Researchers at TalentLMS found that 54% of employees experience some level of it, and 20% feel it frequently or constantly. People keep showing up, keep delivering, and keep smiling on camera, while their engagement drains a little more every week.

This Friday, October 10, is World Mental Health Day. The World Federation for Mental Health chose this year’s theme: “Lived Experiences Heard: Real Voices, Real Change.” I can’t think of a better reminder for leaders. Quiet cracking stays quiet because people don’t feel safe saying what’s really going on.

Why it’s costing you more than you think

Quiet cracking hides well. Output looks steady for months. By the time it shows up in missed targets, rising turnover, or a surprise resignation, the damage is already done.

The numbers back this up. Employees who are quietly cracking are 152% more likely to feel undervalued at work. Gallup found that only 31% of U.S. employees were engaged in 2025. 

Every disengaged person on your team represents a gap between potential and performance, and that gap is where profit quietly leaks out.

How the REAL Method® helps you catch it early

R: Respect Yourself. Your team watches what you do far more closely than what you say. If you never take a break, answer emails at midnight, and call exhaustion “dedication,” your people will follow your lead. Respecting yourself out loud gives them permission to do the same.

E: Embrace Your Failures. Teams that can name a mistake openly can also name stress openly. Go first. Share a time you struggled and what you learned. That one moment of honesty makes it safer for someone else to raise a hand before they crack.

A: Ask Yourself What You Want. Then ask your team. Feeling stuck and unsure about growth is one of the biggest drivers of quiet cracking. A simple question like “What do you want to be doing a year from now?” tells people you see a future for them.

L: Live Without Limits. Invest in growth. Employees who received training in the past year feel 140% more secure in their roles. Development is one of the fastest ways to turn a quietly cracking employee into a confident, high performer.

Three things to try this week

1. Ask a better question. Swap “How are you?” for “What’s one thing making your week harder than it needs to be?” You’ll get a real answer instead of an automatic “fine.”
2. Run a team Ctrl-Alt-Delete. This simple reset helps your team catch the thinking that holds it back. Ctrl is awareness: notice the story the team is telling itself about a project or goal, then ask, “Is it real? Is it helpful?” Most of the time, the answer is no. Alt is the alternative: tell a better story together, so “What if this fails?” becomes “What happens when we succeed?” Delete is letting go: clear out the habits and beliefs that don’t serve the team, like the comparison game or the fear that you’re not enough for the challenge.
3. Notice the quiet ones. Watch for cameras that stay off, ideas that stop coming, and people who used to push back and now just nod. Check in privately and listen more than you talk.

Real voices create real change

World Mental Health Day is a great reason to start this conversation, and the best leaders keep it going all year. When your people feel heard, they bring their full confidence to work. That’s how you build a team that performs at its peak.

I still think about all the times I said “I’m fine” and hoped nobody would look closer. I wish someone had. That’s what I want for you as a leader. The next time someone on your team tells you they’re fine, get curious about which kind of FINE they mean.

And let me ask you: when’s the last time you said “I’m fine” and didn’t mean it?

Want to build a team where real voices get heard and performance follows? Learn more about The Confident Leader keynote at simoneknego.com.

Sources: TalentLMS research via The Interview Guys · AOL on quiet cracking and Gallup engagement · World Federation for Mental Health, 2026 theme

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I was a stay-at-home mom of six. I had no hiking experience. And once I started telling people about it, I kept hearing the same question.

“Do you really think you’re going to make it to the top?”

My answer?

“No. I think I’m going to make it halfway.”

People laughed. A few looked relieved, like I’d finally come to my senses.

Honestly, I was just being funny. I didn’t have a comeback prepared and I wasn’t about to debate anyone, I also wasn’t going to let their doubt climb that mountain with me.

I made it to the top.

Why do other people’s doubts feel so loud?

That wasn’t the first time someone questioned a big decision of mine, and it wasn’t the last.

When we decided to adopt our daughter Mili from Ethiopia, the question just changed shape.

“Do you really think you should have six kids?”

Here’s what I’ve learned from both of those moments. Questions like these usually sound like concern. Sometimes they are. More often, they tell you about the other person’s comfort zone. They’re measuring your mountain against their own legs.

Mili came home at two years old. Years later, her oldest brother helped me move her into American University. I think about that question every time I look at our family.

Our brains are wired to pay extra attention to anything that feels like a threat, and doubt from someone we care about can feel like one. One skeptical comment can stay with us longer than ten encouraging ones. That’s why it matters so much what we let in.

What does this look like at work?

You don’t need to climb a mountain to run into this. It shows up in conference rooms every single day.

“We tried that in 2019.”

“That’s not how we do things here.”

“Are you sure you’re ready for that role?”

Each comment seems small. Over time, they add up. People stop raising ideas. They stop volunteering for stretch assignments. They start shrinking their goals before anyone else has the chance to.

That’s how potential quietly stays potential. And for HR and L&D leaders, that’s a real cost. You can invest in development programs, leadership pipelines, and training, and still lose ground if the culture teaches people to wait for permission to believe in themselves.

How do you keep other people’s opinions from bringing you down?

This is where the REAL Method® comes in, especially two parts of it: Respect Yourself and Ask Yourself What You Want.

Here’s how I put it into practice.

1. Consider the source.
Before you absorb someone’s opinion, ask yourself: has this person done what I’m trying to do? Do they know what I’m capable of? Feedback from someone who’s been there deserves your attention. Doubt from someone who’s never tried deserves a polite smile.

2. Keep the useful part and leave the rest.
Some concern carries real information. “Pack warmer layers than you think you need” is advice worth taking. “Do you really think you can do this?” gives you nothing to work with. Take the first kind with you and let the second kind go.

3. Get clear on what you want.
When you know exactly why you’re doing something, other people’s opinions have much less room to move you. I knew why I wanted to climb. I knew why we wanted to grow our family. That clarity was my anchor.

4. You don’t owe anyone a debate.
When someone questions your big goal, you don’t have to defend it, prove it, or win them over. A little humor works just fine. I laughed off “Do you really think you’ll make it?” and saved my energy for the climb. Your energy is limited, so spend it on the goal.

5. Choose your climbing team carefully.
On the mountain, the people around you affect your pace, your mood, and your belief that you’ll make it. The same is true at work and at home. Spend more time with the people who ask “How can I help?” and less time with the ones who ask “Are you sure?”

What can leaders do to protect their team’s confidence?

If you lead people, you have a lot of influence over which voices get the loudest.

Notice who shuts ideas down in meetings, and how often. Try swapping “Will that work?” for “What would it take to make that work?” Celebrate progress along the way, because that’s where people decide whether to keep climbing. And when someone on your team shares a big goal, be the person who helps them pack for the trip.

Confident teams take smart risks, speak up sooner, and bounce back faster. That’s what it looks like to Turn Potential Into Performance.

So, what’s your Kilimanjaro?

Somebody in your life has probably already asked you some version of “Do you really think you can do that?”

You don’t have to argue with them, you don’t even have to convince them, you just have to keep walking.

And if anyone asks whether you’ll make it to the top, feel free to tell them halfway. Then go prove yourself wrong.

Want to bring this conversation to your team? Learn more about my keynotes at simoneknego.com/speaking, pick up REAL Confidence, or listen to more stories like this one on Her Unshakeable Confidence, the podcast I co-host with my daughter Olivia.

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I was signing books at Barnes & Noble in Tampa last week, and something struck me. People would walk right past my table, eyes down, moving fast, like making eye contact might cost them something. A few even did that thing where they angle their whole body away, just in case I might say hello.

At first I thought, okay, maybe they think I’m going to sell them something. And sure, some of that is probably true. We’ve all gotten defensive around anyone standing behind a table with a stack of books and a smile. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized this isn’t really about book signings at all. It’s about something bigger that’s happening to all of us.

We’ve stopped looking at each other.

TL;DR: People increasingly avoid eye contact and small talk with strangers, not because they dislike connection, but because they consistently overestimate the risk of rejection and underestimate how much they and the other person will enjoy the interaction. Research from the University of Chicago backs this up. Simple habits like making eye contact, saying hi, giving a genuine compliment, and asking one real question can reverse the pattern.

What I Noticed

It wasn’t just the avoided eye contact. It was the absence of small things that used to be automatic:

• A simple “hi” as someone walks by
• A compliment tossed out just because
• A moment of small talk with a stranger
• Genuine curiosity about the person next to you

I started paying attention a few days later on my flight home from Scotland. An entire row of people sat shoulder to shoulder for hours without a single word passed between them. Everyone had headphones in, eyes on a screen, present in body only. And I get it. I’ve done the same thing. But it made me wonder: when did we decide that connection with strangers wasn’t worth the risk?

Why This Is Happening

I don’t have a perfect answer, but here’s what I think is going on, and it turns out there’s real psychology behind it too.

We’re protecting our energy in a world that already asks too much of it. After a full day of notifications, meetings, and decisions, a stranger’s small talk can feel like one more demand on a tank that’s already empty.

We’ve been trained to expect an angle. Somewhere along the way, a lot of us learned that when someone approaches us with a smile, they usually want something. A sale, a signature, a follow. So we’ve built a reflex to protect ourselves from it, even when nothing is actually being asked of us.

Screens gave us permission to disappear. A phone in hand is the modern version of crossing your arms. It signals “I’m not available” without anyone having to say it out loud.

We’re wired to expect rejection that almost never comes. A meta-analysis of over 2,300 people by psychologists Gillian Sandstrom and Erica Boothby found people consistently underestimate how much they would enjoy talking to a stranger, how interested a stranger would be in talking to them, and how much a stranger would end up liking them. A separate University of Chicago study found commuters who talked to a stranger on their train ride had a more positive experience than they expected, and were almost never rejected. In other words, the awkward, unwanted conversation we’re all bracing for almost never actually happens. We’re avoiding a risk that exists mostly in our own heads.

None of this means people don’t want connection. It means we’ve gotten remarkably good at predicting rejection that isn’t actually coming, and that fear is enough to keep us looking down.

What We’re Actually Losing

Here’s the part that stays with me. Every person we don’t look at, don’t greet, don’t ask a question of, is a door we never open. And you genuinely never know what’s behind that door.

The stranger next to you on a plane might be a client you’d never have met, or the biggest cheerleader you’ve never had, or someone who says exactly the thing you needed to hear that day. The person browsing the shelf next to you at a bookstore might become a friend, a collaborator, or just a five-minute conversation that reminds you people are actually pretty wonderful when you give them a chance.

We’re not just losing small talk. We’re losing possibility.

How to Do This Differently

You don’t need a personality transplant to change this. You need a few small, repeatable habits.

Look up first. Before you reach for your phone or glance away, try just looking at the person in front of you. Eye contact is free, and it’s the first sign of “I see you.”

Say hi, even if you don’t have to. At the checkout counter. In the elevator. Next to you at the gate. A simple hello costs nothing and often gets one back.

Give the compliment. If you notice something, say it. Great shoes, great energy, great laugh. You don’t need a reason. A genuine compliment can be the best part of someone’s day, including yours.

Ask one real question. “What brought you here today?” “Where are you headed?” “How’s your day going, really?” People light up when someone shows real curiosity about them.

Stay curious instead of guarded. Not everyone who approaches you wants something from you. Most people just want to be seen. Give them the benefit of the doubt before you give them the cold shoulder.

The Real Shift

This isn’t about becoming an extrovert or talking to everyone everywhere all the time. It’s about remembering that the people around you, in line, on a plane, at a bookstore, are not obstacles to get through. They’re opportunities to learn something, feel something, or make someone’s day a little better.

That day in Tampa taught me something I wasn’t expecting to learn. The people who walked past without looking up weren’t rude. They were protecting themselves from something that probably wasn’t even a threat. And I think a lot of us are doing exactly the same thing, walking through our days a little too guarded to let anyone in.

So here’s my challenge, to you and to me. Look up. Say hi. Give the compliment. Ask the question. You never know what you’ll learn, who you’ll meet, or what one small moment of connection might turn into.

The post Why We’ve Stopped Making Eye Contact (And What It’s Costing Us) appeared first on Simone Knego.

I’m writing this from Scotland, where I’ve spent the past two days helping my daughter Emma move into her new flat. Today, she starts a new job at Falkland Palace, where she’ll spend the next year working in art conservation.

Her path here wasn’t a straight line. And that’s exactly the point.

From Pre-Med to Art Conservation

Two years ago, Emma took a risk and moved to Wales to pursue a master’s degree. Her original plan had been medicine. She’d triple majored in biology, psychology, and neuroscience to get there, years of coursework built around one goal. She’d spent her college years in labs and lecture halls, building toward a future in medicine that made sense on paper and looked impressive on any resume.

But somewhere along the way, she realized medicine wasn’t her calling. Art was.

That’s not a small thing to admit after years of coursework across three demanding fields pointed you in one direction. It would have been easier to finish the path she’d already invested so much in. Most people, once they’ve put in that much work, keep going simply because stopping feels like waste. Emma didn’t. She looked honestly at what she wanted and made a different choice, even though it meant starting over in a field she hadn’t trained for.

She applied to the master’s program in art conservation at Cardiff University. She got in. This past week, in Wales, she finished it.

A New Country, A New Chapter

Now she’s in Scotland, a country where she doesn’t know a single person, starting an entirely new chapter. She had two days off between finishing her program in Wales and starting her new job here. Two days to pack up one life and step into the next.

I’ve watched her do this before, and I still find it remarkable how calmly she handles the in-between moments, the ones with no certainty attached. There’s no roadmap for moving to a country where you don’t speak the local shorthand yet, don’t know which grocery store has what you need, and don’t have a single friend to call if something goes wrong. She’s building that from scratch, starting today.

Even the everyday logistics look completely different here than they would back home. Her commute to Falkland Palace is an hour each way by bus. Getting a car isn’t really an option either, since a UK driver’s license isn’t something you can just walk in and get. So she’ll be walking to the grocery store and the pharmacy, and relying on buses and trains to get to nearby cities when she wants to explore. It’s a smaller, slower kind of life than what she’s used to, and she’s stepping into it without hesitation.

Today she begins a yearlong role at Falkland Palace, working in art conservation, the field she chose for herself after realizing medicine wasn’t it.

Is It Worth the Risk?

Was this an easy move? No.

Is it worth the risk? Absolutely.

Will there be hard days? Absolutely.

Building confidence isn’t about avoiding hard days. It’s about being willing to walk into them anyway. This is the heart of my REAL Method®: real confidence gets built by embracing the failures and uncertainty along the way, not by waiting until everything feels safe.

I won’t pretend this is easy for her. Emma is stressed. She’s anxious. Moving to a new country, starting a job she’s never done, and doing it all without a single familiar face nearby is a lot to carry at once. But she’s showing up anyway, stress and anxiety along for the ride. That’s what confidence actually looks like.

Think about the last time you did something before you felt ready for it. Maybe it was a new job, a hard conversation, a move of your own. Chances are you didn’t feel prepared going in. You figured it out by doing it. That’s the same thing Emma is doing right now. Readiness isn’t something you wait to feel. It’s something you build by moving.

Emma’s version of that is a career change and a move across an ocean. Yours might look completely different. The principle stays the same.

The Confidence to Change Course

When I look back at who Emma was a few years ago, I see someone who was unsure of what she wanted and afraid of the future. When I look at her today, I see a woman who’s figuring it out as she goes, one bold decision at a time. She’s willing to take risks because that’s where the biggest growth happens.

We never know exactly where our decisions will take us. But if we sit still and never try, nothing happens at all.

What strikes me most is that Emma didn’t wait for permission or certainty before she moved. She didn’t need every detail figured out. She trusted that the next step would become clear once she took the current one, and that trust is what real confidence actually looks like in practice. It rarely looks like fearlessness. It looks like moving forward anyway.

The Takeaway

So if you’re standing at the edge of a decision right now, wondering if you should take the risk: the answer is yes. You never know where it’s going to take you until you try.

If stories like this one resonate with you, you can hear more conversations about building real confidence on Her Unshakeable Confidence, the podcast I co-host with my daughter Olivia.

The post You Don’t Have to Feel Ready to Take the Risk appeared first on Simone Knego.

So we were flying from Miami to London. Originally booked as a direct flight. Then the airline decided to make it a connection through New York instead. When we asked to fix it, they told us that it would cost extra. A change we didn’t even ask for, and we’d have to pay to undo it. Never made sense to me, but oh well.

Then Miami hit us with a four-hour delay. Bad weather, the kind that had flights landing at random airports all over the place. Which of course meant we missed our connection in New York.

At the gate, they told us there was only one seat left on the next flight. So we waited, and the gate agent kept working the problem for us the whole time.

She thanked us. Three separate times. For being nice.

I’m not kidding. Three times she looked up from the screen and said some version of “thank you so much for being so patient with me.” In an airport, mid weather event, surrounded by people losing it, apparently just being decent had become memorable enough to comment on. Three times.

While we waited, I also called the airline directly myself. Guess what? They found a second seat within minutes. Same airline, same flight, totally different answer, just because I stayed on the phone, stayed nice, and stayed persistent.

The real lesson wasn’t about travel at all

It would be easy to turn this into a “be nice to airline staff” post. That’s true too, but it’s not really the point I keep coming back to. The point is what made it possible for us to stay calm through all of it in the first place.

Here’s the thing though. We didn’t predict any of it. Not the reroute, not the storm, not standing at a gate for four hours. Nobody sees that coming.

Staying calm through it wasn’t a decision we made that day. It’s more that patience is a muscle, and it’s one we’ve been building for years, one delayed flight and one frustrating phone call at a time. By the time we got to that gate, staying steady wasn’t something we had to think about. It’s just what we do at this point.

Confidence under pressure isn’t about predicting what’s going to go wrong. It’s a muscle you build, the same way you’d build any other one, through reps.

A few things I’d tell you to do differently

Here’s what I mean, practically speaking, whether you’re stuck at a gate or dealing with a mess at work:

Don’t count on a cushion, because you don’t always get one. We didn’t have extra time built into that schedule. We didn’t have a choice about any of it, the reroute, the storm, the four hours at the gate. None of it was something we planned around. Which is kind of the point. You can’t buffer your way out of everything, so the muscle you actually need is the one that handles it when there’s no buffer left.

Treat every annoying moment as a rep. Staying calm didn’t show up out of nowhere at that gate. It showed up because we’ve practiced it, plenty of times, in plenty of situations way less pleasant than a delayed flight. The more you practice it, the less it feels like effort in the moment.

Stay persistent, and stay kind while you do it. “There’s only one seat” wasn’t the end of it for me. I got on the phone and just kept being nice and kept being persistent, and a seat showed up in minutes. Staying calm doesn’t mean you sit there and accept the first answer. It means you can keep advocating for yourself without losing that calm while you do it.

Separate what happened from how you react to it. The storm wasn’t ours to control. Neither was the airline’s decision to reroute us through New York in the first place. Our attitude toward the person trying to help us? That part was entirely up to us.

Why this matters way past the airport

Delays and detours and blown up plans aren’t just a travel thing. They show up in launches that slip, meetings that fall apart, plans that unravel with zero warning. The people who stay grounded through that aren’t just naturally patient. A lot of them have just had more reps at it, in more situations, over more years.

That gate agent didn’t need us to fix the weather for her. She just needed us to not make her day harder than it already was. Staying steady cost us nothing, and based on how surprised she seemed, that’s apparently rare.

The takeaway

You can’t predict every delay or curveball life is going to throw at you. But patience isn’t just something some people have and others don’t. It’s something you build, the same way you’d build any other muscle, one annoying moment at a time. It’s the difference between feeling rattled and feeling ready, and it gets easier the more you practice it.

So next time your flight gets delayed, or your Monday falls apart before 9am, treat it as a rep. That’s really all it is.

The post Flight Delayed? Here’s How to Stay Calm appeared first on Simone Knego.

More than ten years ago I stood at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro. This experience showed me the connection between Potential and Performance in unexpected ways. I was a stay-at-home mom of six. I’d never hiked anything harder than a neighborhood trail. Nobody who knew me would have picked me to summit a 19,000 foot mountain. Including me.

I trained for months to get up that mountain, and the training mattered. But plenty of people train and still talk themselves out of the summit push when it gets hard. What got me to the top wasn’t just the conditioning. It was that somewhere on that climb I stopped caring what people thought I was capable of and started trusting what I actually was.

That gap, between what a person can do and what they let themselves do, is the same gap I see in almost every organization I walk into. And the data backs me up.

The Numbers Behind the Gap

Global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, the lowest it’s been since 2020. Gallup says that costs the world economy about $10 trillion in lost productivity. Read that again. Four out of five employees are clocking in every day and never bringing their full self to the work.

Nearly one in four employees is now sitting on what researchers call unused capacity. Burnout’s easing up in a lot of places, but something quieter is taking its spot: people who are present, capable, and completely checked out from their own potential. The average worker is only productive for about six hours of an eight hour day.

I don’t call that a productivity problem. I call it a confidence problem wearing a productivity costume.

What’s Actually Holding People Back

Ask people why they hold back a good idea, stay quiet in a meeting, or turn down a stretch assignment, and it almost always traces back to self-doubt. 43% of U.S. workers say they feel like impostors at work, like their success is undeserved and they’re one slip away from being found out. Two-thirds say they feel pressure to look more confident than they actually feel. There’s a name for that now: confidence theater. And here’s what keeps it running. Nearly two-thirds of workers say their leaders rarely or never talk openly about their own doubts or mistakes. When nobody at the top admits they’re figuring it out too, everyone below them learns that uncertainty is something to hide, not something to say out loud.

58% of workers say self-doubt has straight up hurt their career growth. Globally, an estimated 62% of employees deal with impostor syndrome. And it hits emerging leaders hardest. Leaders between 24 and 44 report frequent impostor thoughts nearly twice as often as leaders between 55 and 74. So the people you’re counting on to run things in ten years are often the ones most convinced they don’t belong in the room right now.

Managers aren’t off the hook either. Manager engagement dropped from 30% to 27% in a single year, and that uncertainty trickles down to everyone who reports to them. A team almost never outperforms the confidence of the person leading it.

I say this to every HR and L&D leader I talk to. You can train skills all day long, and you should. But skill without belief doesn’t turn into output. Someone convinced they’re one mistake from being exposed will underperform every single time. Not because they can’t do the work. Because they’re too busy managing the fear to actually do it.

Belonging Changes the Math

A quarter of employees say they don’t feel like they truly belong in their organization, and that shows up directly as performance dips and one foot out the door. I’ve seen this up close. People who don’t feel secure in where they stand rarely take the risks great performance requires, they won’t raise the idea nobody else wants to say out loud, they’ll let a mistake sit instead of owning it early, and they’ll wait until something’s an emergency before they ask for help with it.

On that mountain, the guides who pushed me hardest weren’t the ones telling me I could do it. They were the ones who made me feel like I already belonged on that trail. That’s what belonging does. It gives people permission to stop performing and start actually producing.

Closing the Gap Is a Skill, Not a Personality Trait

I talk about this on stage more than almost anything else. Confidence isn’t something you’re handed or born without. It’s trainable, and I built my REAL Method® around that, four habits that anyone can actually learn.

Respect Yourself. People who’ve internalized self-respect stop waiting around for someone else’s stamp of approval. They bring ideas forward faster and bounce back quicker.

Embrace Your Failures. When a mistake becomes information instead of proof you don’t belong, you start taking the calculated risks that actually move things forward. This is the direct antidote to confidence theater, since the whole reason people perform certainty is that they’ve learned admitting doubt gets punished. A leader who talks openly about a mistake gives everyone else permission to stop pretending.

Ask Yourself What You Want. This is the one that breaks the confidence theater cycle. Once you can name what you actually want, you stop spending energy on appearances and start spending it on output.

Live Without Limits. This is where potential finally turns into performance. It’s testing the ceiling you assumed was there instead of just accepting it. It’s what got me up that mountain.

None of this is luck or a personality some people got and others didn’t. These are behaviors. And behaviors get built the way anything gets built: repetition, honest feedback, and a culture where it’s safe to practice them out loud.

What This Means for the People Building Your Teams

If your organization is pouring money into leadership development, succession planning, or high potential programs, the confidence gap deserves just as much attention as the skills gap. A brilliant leader who doesn’t trust their own judgment will hesitate at the exact moment it matters most. A high potential employee wrestling with impostor feelings instead of doing their best work is a flight risk long before anyone notices a dip in their numbers.

The organizations closing this gap aren’t the ones with the most talent on paper. They’re the ones who stopped assuming talent and performance were the same thing and started actually building the confidence that turns one into the other.

I didn’t come up with Turn Potential Into Performance because it sounded good on a slide. It came from that mountain, and honestly it comes from every organization I walk into where someone’s sitting on more than they’re using, just waiting for permission to trust what they already know.

Key Takeaways

• Global employee engagement dropped to 20% in 2025, its lowest point since 2020, costing the world economy an estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity.
• 43% of U.S. workers experience impostor feelings at work, and 58% say self-doubt has directly hurt their career growth.
• “Confidence theater” describes the growing gap between how confident employees feel internally and how confident they believe they must appear at work.
• The gap between potential and performance is rarely a skills problem. It’s most often a confidence problem, and confidence is trainable.
• Simone Knego’s REAL Method® (Respect Yourself, Embrace Your Failures, Ask Yourself What You Want, Live Without Limits) is a four-habit framework for closing that gap.

Sources: Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2026; ActivTrak 2026 State of the Workplace; MyPerfectResume, Confidence at Work; Asana, Turning Impostor Syndrome into Confidence; AIHR, Employee Experience Statistics; Gable.to, Employee Productivity Statistics

The post The Gap Between Potential and Performance Is Costing You More Than You Think appeared first on Simone Knego.

This Past Weekend

This past weekend, I moved my youngest daughter, Mili, into American University.

I’ve done this five times before, so I’ve got the system down. Blue packing bags, not suitcases, because they smush down to nothing once you’ve unpacked them and you’re not stuck hauling five giant bags back out to the car. I remembered basically everything this time. Except the tools. We bought furniture that needed assembling and brought zero ways to assemble it. Some things never change.

But here’s what also doesn’t change: it doesn’t get easier just because you’ve done it before. It just gets more familiar.

There’s something about dropping off your last kid specifically. It’s a chapter closing and a new one opening in the same afternoon, in the same parking lot. I was excited for her. Proud of her. And also standing in that dorm hallway trying to keep it together, because six kids in and I still haven’t figured out how to do this without getting emotional.

Full Circle

This move-in looked different than the other five. It wasn’t my husband and me this time. It was my oldest son and me.

He’s the one I moved in first, years ago, back when I had no other move-ins to compare it to and no idea what I was doing. I mostly figured that one out as I went.

And now here he was, helping me move his youngest sibling in. Hauling the same blue bags I’ve hauled five times before. Standing with me in a half-built dorm room realizing we didn’t have a single tool to assemble any of it, which meant a run to Ace Hardware before we could finish anything. It was a full circle moment I didn’t see coming: the kid I once dropped off on my own is now the one showing up to help me let go of the last one.

Every Kid Launches Differently

What gets me every single time is how differently kids handle this day.

Some are three steps ahead, unpacking their own boxes and basically waving you toward the door before the car’s even empty. They want the goodbye done. They’re ready to be the version of themselves who doesn’t need a parent in the room to feel capable.

Some want you in line with them for every last errand. The lanyard pickup, the dining hall tour, walking the dorm room from every angle. They’re not embarrassed to want you there, and honestly, neither am I.

And some make it very clear, without saying a word, that they’d prefer you not be visible at all. Because god forbid you embarrass them by existing too close to the elevator.

Six kids in, I’ve seen every version, sometimes from siblings who couldn’t be more different. And here’s what I believe: every version is right. There’s no correct way to walk into your next chapter. There’s only your way. My job was never to make them all launch the same. It was to let each one launch as themselves.

The Launching Pad

Driving away from campus, this time with my son next to me instead of a car full of siblings, that’s what kept coming to mind. Move-in day is a launching pad. It’s the moment a kid stops being a passenger in their own life and starts flying it. Whether they feel ready or not. Whether I feel ready to let them or not.

Launching pads aren’t comfortable. They’re not built for comfort, they’re built for liftoff. That’s true for the one taking off and for the one standing on the ground watching.

I remember this exact same feeling with my son, the one now sitting next to me in the car, the first time around. I figured it would fade by kid six. It didn’t. It just showed up again, right on schedule.

What This Has to Do With Confidence

Here’s why I keep coming back to this when I talk about confidence: move-in day is confidence with no polish on it.

We like to picture confident people as the ones who feel ready. Who walk into the new job or the new city without a flicker of doubt. That’s not what I’ve seen, not in my own life and not in six kids heading off to six different first days.

Confidence isn’t the absence of nerves. It’s moving forward with the nerves still riding along. Mili told me twice she didn’t feel ready. I wasn’t ready to let her go either. We did it anyway, not because the fear went away, but because we stopped waiting for it to.

Readiness was never actually the requirement. Willingness was.

Your Own Launching Pad

That’s the part I want you to sit with, whatever your launching pad looks like right now.

Maybe it’s a role you were offered and immediately started talking yourself out of. Maybe it’s a conversation you’ve rehearsed in the shower for three weeks and still haven’t had. Maybe it’s a goal you keep telling yourself you’re not quite qualified for yet.

Six move-in days have taught me this: you don’t need to feel ready. You need to be willing to take the step while your stomach’s still in knots.

One Empty Bedroom at a Time

Mili is going to be just fine at American University. Not because she wasn’t scared. Because she went anyway.

And my son, the one carrying boxes and making the Ace Hardware run with me, is proof of exactly where that willingness leads. I dropped him off alone once, unsure of everything. Now he’s steady enough to show up for his mom and his little sister on one of the harder days of my parenting life.

That’s the lesson. I’ve learned it five times before, and I’m learning it again this week, one empty bedroom at a time. The launching pad doesn’t wait for anyone to feel ready. It just asks if you’re willing to go.

If this is a season where you’re trying to move forward without feeling ready, REAL Confidence: A Simple Guide to Go from Unsure to Unshakeable walks through exactly how to do that. You can find it at realconfidencebook.com.

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