Why Smart, Capable Leaders Still Second-Guess Themselves
Second-guessing at the VP level isn't a confidence gap or an information problem. It's an identity lag, and the isolation of the VP seat makes it worse. Here's what's actually driving it.
Why do accomplished, capable VPs second-guess decisions they are fully qualified to make? The answer, according to executive leadership coach Laurie Fenske, is rarely about information or intelligence. It's about identity. Leaders who were promoted for what they personally executed haven't yet fully stepped into a leadership identity where their value lives in judgment and direction. Until that shift happens, every decision feels uncertain, not because the leader is wrong, but because they're measuring themselves against the wrong standard. And because the VP seat is one of the loneliest in an organization, that internal uncertainty has nowhere to go. It compounds quietly, in the gap between the decision made and the confidence to stand behind it.
The Measuring Stick That No Longer Fits
The leaders who reach VP level in professional services typically got there by being excellent at something specific. They delivered. They solved problems others couldn't. They were the person the organization counted on to execute at a high level.
That track record is real. It earned them the promotion. And it became the measuring stick they still use to evaluate their own worth.
The problem is that the VP role doesn't reward execution the same way. At this level, the leader's job is to set direction, make calls with incomplete information, and trust others to carry the work forward. The output isn't a deliverable with their fingerprints on it. It's a team that functions, a strategy that holds, a set of decisions that prove right over time.
When a leader is still measuring their value by what they personally produce, every decision that doesn't feel certain, every meeting where they don't have the answer immediately, every moment where they have to choose between two reasonable paths, reads as a signal that something is wrong with them. That they're not good enough for the role. That they got here on a streak that's about to end.
Fenske calls this the identity lag: the gap between the title the leader holds and the leadership identity they've actually built. The title changed. The identity didn't keep pace. And second-guessing is what the gap sounds like from the inside.
Why the VP Seat Makes It Worse
In many organizations, the VP level is where peer-level honesty becomes genuinely rare. Below VP, there's often a cohort, a peer group with shared challenges, enough proximity to compare notes, enough safety to say "I don't know how to handle this." Above the VP, the C-suite has its own dynamics and its own distance.
The VP sits in the middle. Visible enough to be watched. Senior enough that admitting uncertainty feels risky. The people they manage are not peers; vulnerability with direct reports has consequences. The C-suite they report to is evaluating them. The peers at their level are, in some real sense, competition.
So the second-guessing that would be natural to talk through with a trusted colleague instead gets processed internally. It circulates. It attaches to the next decision, and the one after that. A VP who second-guessed one strategic call starts second-guessing how they handled a performance conversation, then how they ran a meeting, then whether their team is actually performing or whether they're missing something they should be seeing.
This isn't a character flaw. It's what happens when a high-functioning mind has no safe place to put its uncertainty. The identity lag creates doubt. The isolation amplifies it.
What the Pattern Looks Like in Practice
Fenske's clients at the VP level describe second-guessing in consistent terms. They don't frame it as lack of confidence; they frame it as thoroughness, diligence, wanting to get it right. The behavior Fenske observes looks like: reviewing work already approved, rehashing decisions after the meeting ends, hesitating on calls they know how to make, and asking for more data when the data available is sufficient.
What it costs them is harder to see from the inside. Their team learns to wait. If the VP is going to revisit the decision anyway, why move fast? If approval can be reversed, why fully commit? The team's behavior isn't a performance problem; it's a rational response to a leader whose internal uncertainty has become externally visible.
The VP, watching the team hesitate, often reads this as confirmation that their concern was right. The team isn't executing. They must stay closer to the work. And the loop tightens.
The shift Laurie works toward isn't "more confidence." Confidence is an output, not an input. The actual shift is in the measuring stick: helping the VP recognize that their value at this level is in the quality of their judgment, the clarity of their direction, and the standard they hold, not in what they personally produce. When the measuring stick changes, the experience of a hard decision changes with it.
The Role of a Thinking Partner
One of the specific levers Fenske uses with VP-level clients is restoring access to honest, high-quality thinking partnership, something the VP seat systematically removes.
The value isn't advice. A capable VP doesn't need to be told what to do. The value is a structured space to think out loud with someone who has no stake in the outcome, isn't evaluating them, and can reflect what they're not seeing.
The pattern Fenske observes: when a VP articulates a decision out loud to a trusted thinking partner, the second-guessing often dissolves on its own. Not because the partner solved it, but because the act of saying it clearly, without the internal noise, reveals that the VP already knew what to do. The uncertainty wasn't about the decision. It was about the identity doing the deciding.
This is why the isolation matters as much as the identity lag. The identity shift is hard to make alone. It requires external reflection. A leader who can't be honest about their uncertainty with anyone around them is left to manage it internally, which is exactly the condition that makes it compound.
Comparison: Second-Guessing as Identity Lag vs. Genuine Information Gap
Not all second-guessing signals the same thing. Understanding which version is present changes the response.
Signal | Identity Lag | Genuine Information Gap |
|---|---|---|
The data is sufficient | Yes — the leader has what they need | No — key inputs are missing |
The hesitation recurs across decisions | Yes — it follows the leader, not the problem | No — it's specific to this situation |
Talking it through resolves it | Yes — articulating it reveals the answer | No — more analysis is actually needed |
The team is waiting on the leader | Yes — they've learned the VP will revisit | No — they're waiting on an external input |
The response that helps | Identity work, trusted thinking partner | Better data, clearer decision framework |
When the hesitation follows the leader rather than the problem when it appears across decisions, regardless of topic or stakes, it's a signal worth examining at the identity level, not just the information level.
FAQ
Isn't second-guessing just good judgment, making sure you've thought it through?
Careful thinking is good judgment. Second-guessing is something different: returning to decisions already made, not to incorporate new information, but because the decision doesn't feel settled. The distinction is whether the hesitation serves the decision or serves the discomfort of being uncertain. Fenske's work with VP-level clients helps them tell the difference, and what clients have experienced is that naming the distinction alone shifts how they relate to it.
Why does this tend to get worse after a promotion, not better?
Because the promotion changes the standard before the leader's identity catches up. A Director who second-guessed occasionally could offset it with execution, deliver the work, and the doubt resolves. A VP can't do that. The output is less visible, the feedback loop is longer, and the stakes are higher. Without a deliberate identity shift, the pattern intensifies.
What does a coaching engagement actually address here?
Laurie's coaching style is designed to identify the specific leadership identity gap, create space for one concrete shift, and build clarity on what the longer journey looks like. What clients have experienced through the coaching experience is the first piece of real evidence that a different leadership identity is available, which changes how they approach decisions that follow.
What if the second-guessing is justified? What if the VP really is in over their head?
This is a real question, and Fenske takes it seriously. The answer isn't reassurance, it's clarity. The coaching experiences Laurie offers are designed to distinguish between an identity lag and a genuine skill gap. Both are addressable. Neither is a reason to stay stuck.
Does this pattern show up differently for women VPs than for men?
The identity lag appears across the VP population regardless of gender. The specific texture varies. Women VPs in professional services can face an additional layer: environments where expressing uncertainty is read differently than it would be for a male peer, making the isolation dynamic more acute. Fenske's work addresses the underlying pattern; the coaching relationship itself provides the thinking partnership that the VP seat removes.
VPs who second-guess themselves aren't weak, underprepared, or wrong for the role. They're leaders whose identity hasn't yet caught up with their title, and who are navigating that gap without a safe place to do it. If that pattern is familiar, Laurie Fenske works with VPs in professional services at exactly this inflection point.