E29 How New CEOs Build Confidence
August 2025
16 minutes
E29 How New CEOs Build Confidence
August 2025
16 minutes
Stream on:
In this episode of the 3Peak Master Leadership Experience, co-founders Mino Vlachos and Dr. Mazen Harb dive into one of the most critical challenges for new CEOs: building confidence in the face of uncertainty. Drawing from years of experience coaching executive leaders, they explore why even talented leaders can second-guess themselves, struggle with imposter syndrome, or feel unprepared for the demands of the role.
Mino and Mazen break down practical strategies for cultivating confidence, including:
Whether you’re a new CEO, an aspiring executive, or a leader navigating high-stakes challenges, this conversation offers insights on how to grow confidence through self-awareness, deliberate practice, and consistent action.
0:00 - 0:29 Introduction 0:29 - 5:29 Building Confidence As A CEO 5:29 - 10:13 The Important of Self-Awareness 10:13 - 15:10 Mindset and Confidence 15:10 - 16:05 Managing Uncertainty and Anxiety
3Peak Coaching & Solutions is a leadership consultancy dedicated to Elevating Executive Mastery. We specialize in transforming businesses through leadership and team development during transitions and times of crisis.
We focus on the 3 critical areas where chaos and conflict are most likely to appear:
By addressing these flashpoints, we assist you in navigating change to build unity, create certainty, and establish clear direction.
Mino Vlachos: Hello and welcome to the 3Peak Master Leadership Experience. My name is Mino Vlachos and I'm the co founder of 3Peak Coaching & Solutions. 3Peak Coaching & Solutions is a leadership consultancy dedicated to elevating executive mastery. We specialize in transforming businesses through leadership and team development. During transitions and times of crisis. We focus on three critical areas where chaos and conflict are most likely to appear. Board, CEO and C suite misalignment. Transitions into executive leadership Conflict between functional departments. By addressing these flashpoints, we assist you in navigating change to build unity, create certainty and establish clear direction. Our approach empowers leaders to master complex challenges and transform their companies to thrive now and in the future. Today I am joined by Dr. Mazen Harb, who is also one of my fellow co founders of three peak coaching and solutions. Today's topic is about how CEOs can build confidence. And so we work with a lot of CEOs and so Mazen and I are going to share a little bit about what it's like to kind of get into one of those roles, what it means to maybe not feel so confident, and maybe a little bit of advice of how to start building that confidence. So I'll start Mazen, when we work with leaders, especially new CEOs, I've observed that oftentimes they might not always have the confidence in what they're doing. They're second guessing themselves, they're doubting, asking many questions, all very natural. What have you observed? What do you think is one of the things that leads to CEOs especially maybe new CEOs not having as much confidence as they might want?
Dr. Mazen Harb: First thing that comes to mind, probably not doing the diligent work about themselves. So not knowing, not knowing what they're not good at. So the opposite. So really just be sure what you're not good at. The more you get to know what you're not good at, the more you get to know the unknown. You let go of that fear of that nagging voice within the self, within the ego. Oh my God, what's happening? Like from all am I, am I imposter syndrome? Is it this? Is it that? So because the unknown, it's something we don't know, so we cannot quantify it. So what happens is most of the time there is this constant nagging, constant fear. You do not know how much things are there, but the more you start to get a little bit glimpse, you will get confident by knowing. I see, I'm not good at that. Then you either, you delegate, you have support or just the sheer knowledge, conscious awareness that, oh, I see what I'm not good at, and I see what I'm good at that will help someone to come to the table of their own confidence, self confidence.
Mino Vlachos: And in a similar way, I would say this is a big role and there's so many skills that do need to be learned. And unless you have done it before, you won't have those skills because there's nowhere else you can really develop it. For instance, we know that it takes about two years for a CEO to start to intuitively feel the organization as an extension of their own body, Right? So at some point it does kind of click in this intuition of something doesn't feel quite right, something's not going the way I want it to. But that takes time to develop. Takes time to develop that kind of big picture. Thinking of like, I can actually understand how all the little pieces of this organization come together and create something that is the whole organization to understand how the inner world and the outer world of the organization play with each other. There are skills to being able to do vision and strategy and be in front of a board. So there are so many new skills when you are CEO, funny enough, what we see is when CEOs repeat the job so they go to a second company, a third company, they actually tend to become worse in their performance. So even though you might feel a confidence gap and a skill gap, one of the things that first time CEOs have that statistically makes them better CEOs than second, third, fourth time CEOs is they don't have a rigid model. They come in and they're basically like, I don't know what I'm doing, I got to figure it out. I have to adapt. There's no playbook. And that actually makes them very adaptive to the moment they go to the next company and the next company and they say, actually, I know how to do this, they tend to actually not do as well. And so a key thing I, I'll kind of share is maybe not having confidence in some way could be a marker of like, actually you're ready to be in the uncertainty and you're ready to adapt.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense. I don't know. So in a way, actually what comes out actually first not knowing yourself and knowing what you're not good at. And then here again, like what you really focus on emphasized since you're a new CEO, learning the new skills. So we know it from ourselves. When we created our company, we were not in all those Positions and roles. And for the best gifts we got is we had to change roles and positions. And then we needed to play them out. And it was a beautiful experience. With time, we start to figure out where we're good at, you know, and like head of sales, head of marketing, like the few things we're good at, like research and development, like finance, like, the certain things were very clear who's better in that. But the idea is really this constant learning. The constant, like not come as a CEO, say, oh, I need, I'm a CEO and not to be led by the ego of the title. SEO is someone who's constantly learning SEO, someone who's like, oh, I have to lead. I had to be an example. That's not by knowing everything, but actually by seeing every challenge and learning from it and constantly learning skills. And now, thanks to the revolution of AI, it flattened everyone's way of moving forward. So where before, like two, three years ago, there was this hierarchy. I'm better in opening this, I'm better in doing this, I'm better opening that. I think we were at the end of the last era where every. We had this very clear, crystal clear hierarchy of who's good in that, who's not. And then the revolution of I come and then flattened everything. So in a way to reminder everyone, you are here to learn, start learning your position. So if you come to a CEO position and saying, I did it all my life, or I whatever, or I, I just did it, but I'm just starting it, I'm very good in one thing, you won't survive. Learning doesn't have an age. We can always learn. And it's not true what they say, ah, when you age, you cannot learn anymore. The brain is adaptable even in old age.
Mino Vlachos: Yeah, what you're sharing, I. And I think we probably might have maybe two different angles on this, but the question I have is, is confidence an inside job or an outside job? So in my book, and this is where we probably have different angles on it is I have, I, you know, I grew up with a lot of confidence issues. I had very low self esteem. There was a lot of times I was so afraid. And I kept trying to do a lot of the inner work, therapy and all those things helped in many other ways. But when it came specifically to confidence, the one thing that supported me was to go and have experience, to try things, try things, try things, Fail, fail, fail, succeed sometimes. And I have to say for me, like something about knowing I've done something, help me feel confidence. But how do you see it, Manzan? How do you start to see kind of the task of building up some confidence in something.
Dr. Mazen Harb: In general, it's our approach, it's a, it's a big question. But, but really we will focus today on more the specificity that helps people in behavior, right? Or new position, new roles, or even just to understand the psychology behind it. Confidence, it's the mindset or losing confidence, it's the mindset of how we speak to ourselves. So it's very simple as that. The amount of mind chatter we have like the ego nagging within us. The ego, when I use the word ego, is representative of the ID of the identity of us. So its role, it's to protect us, is to present us, but it creates a very rigid identity. So I would say the more we have the chatter within us, oh, I don't look good. Oh, I am this, oh, look at me, look at my body weight, look at my hair. Look how people will see me being worried about the outside being worried of, oh, I'm not able to perform. Look, the good scientific example is you see an animal, they're just learning how to walk. You don't understand what confidence is. Do you see them? They're not as confident, but once they're doing it, they're 100% confident. So you're like, I don't understand. So confident isn't. There's an innate part of it because they're not thinking. When we are fully embraced, oh, you become a CEO and then you're like, you know what? I need to do my job, I need to be here. So bringing presence, staying with the body, staying with the task. So recommendation, a suggestion for anyone who's in a position of leading confidence, take the best out of you. Or like lack of confidence takes the best out of you. When you allow your mind, your worry, your fear, your doubts, once they take in, you'll be possessed by your own ego projection. And then fear will take over and you'll question every single move. And that will take so much energy of you and so much time. But if you stay in the present, found ways of grounding, connect to this body. And second, do your task, that is today, do your agenda as much as you can. If not, you move it to the next day. If people connect and just do diligently what they're asked to do, there's no question to be asked about so much confidence. Of course there's still, oh, I have to meet someone. We train it to meet fundings, like to meet the board Again. But once we learn it in our own, we go, I have to meet the board. I'm stressed and I'm like, but if you stay later on you will gain experience, stick to the body, stick to the task, not overthinking, not worry as much. And then we go there, you're able to perform. So the number one killer of all performance, good performance, is the mind. Shatter, worry, doubt and fear.
Mino Vlachos: I think that might surprise someone, right? Because we're so used to the mind chatter and we're so used to all the thoughts and we really think that those thoughts might be helping us or they're, they're, they're leading us in many ways, right. Until we bring some kind of mindfulness to or awareness to the thought pattern. So I just want to reemphasize that like many times the thinking might be getting in the way of the doing. So I can share some of my own and I will in a second. But I want to ask a little bit of how do we start to quiet some of those thoughts so that we can go do something, try something, have an experience. For me, for instance, I've recently gotten a lot into cycling. I've been on the bicycle and as we're scaling our company right, we're growing and I'm, you know, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. There's a lot of doubt that can come up at times. And the last like few weeks I just, anytime that fear, that doubt, I just jump on the bicycle and I just go right for like an hour and I just pedal, pedal, pedal, pedal, pedal. And for me it helps me where I come off the bike, I'm really not thinking, I have no emotion anymore and I'm like, okay, what's next? What do I do next? So that's just like one small example that I'm learning myself. Because I'm someone that has been plagued by a lot of self doubt about what? What do you kind of share Mazen for someone that's overthinking or in their thoughts there's that chatter, that's that nagging voice that's kind of in the head.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yeah, I think you gave the best example actually. But what comes top of mind now? Because I'm trying not to go deep, right? Like not to go deep. At least not now. I would really suggest at the beginning propose just be aware that you are in your head. Be aware that the thoughts that there is a repetitive limit actually addictive thought pattern that you are on. Realize that why how it is addictive thought pattern. Notice that you will be always repeating it, repeating it, repeating it until something gives you completion. And even once gives you completion, you start repeating. I completed it. Oh, I completed it. Remember that you were not born like that. But through upbringing we start to create those addictive patterns to give us a sense of control. And then when we start to loop. So whenever you see yourself looping a task, well, I have to do this, I have to do. Actually we are in a unconscious default loop that is sucking our energy and then actually bring us in a fear. And because it's because of fear, doubt and worry. And that's what lacks bring confidence low. So in a way, just my suggestion is to really be aware of your addictive unconscious thought patterns that whenever you have something, you keep on thinking about it. But actually it never helps solve it. And that's the truth. The secret is there is no secret, because everyone have that in their mind. So when people think, oh, it's only me, no, it's not only you. That's the nature of our mind when it's fueled by worry, fear and doubt. Once you're aware of it, then we can speak what to do. So that's why I want that. That's the big step. Once you understand there is an iceberg under the water, then we see how to go around it. But if you do not know, I won't tell you how to go around it. You don't know how big and how small it is.
Mino Vlachos: So my one piece of advice for CEOs who are trying to build confidence, if I can boil it down, is there's not an infinite amount of skills and tasks that a CEO must do or learn. It's actually about five or six and we can boil it down to five or six. And if that's interesting to you, you can reach out to us, go to on our website, we can talk about the five or six key success elements of CEO performance. So there's six key five or six key responsibilities. Sit down, map those out, figure out what great looks like, and hopefully your board would be supporting you to actually learn what those five, six things are and creating clear expectations and criteria. But if the board is not doing that and you're a new CEO, figure out the core five to six things that you're responsible for, understand what great good looks like, what great might look like, set realistic expectations and understand that it might take a year, year and a half to actually be able to be high functioning on those five, six things. If you've never done this before. So create a map set expectations and then like we said, get out of your head. Do learn, do learn. Mazen, what's your one piece of advice for a new CEO that's struggling with the confidence topic?
Dr. Mazen Harb: And you see do your work. Just get some discipline. Just do your work. Do as much as you can. Everything will pays off regardless in which direction. At least if you do it fully, you will know, ah, I didn't succeed it, but I did everything needed. Just do your daily task. Nothing. Don't try to save the planet, try to save your day. Do your tasks, that's your focus. Fully and diligently and you'll see the outcome.
Mino Vlachos: And with that, we close this episode. Thank you so much for listening and we hope to see you soon.