Last week, when a team member asked me how she can be more confident, I thought to myself “How do I respond to a question like that? I can tell if someone sounds confident or not but can I really answer why someone lacks confidence. Isn’t confidence a personal trait that we have to analyze and nurture for ourselves?”. I was searching for answers.
I pulled my thoughts together and responsed as constructively as I could. I wanted to encourage her to do some self analysis. So I replied,
“Just ask yourself why you were not confident. Is it uncertainty or fear of the customer finding issues? Is it lack of knowledge? Point being there is no general mantra. Everyone lacks confidence for a different reason.”
I don’t know if it helped but all this made me wonder, why do people lack confidence? I think I am a confident person, at least most of the time, the evidence of which reflects in everything I do and say. Are some people just wired that way?
I needed to consult on this. You know, pick another brain. So I asked a good friend this, ”Are you a confident person? How confident? How do you rate your confidence level? How do you help your team members build confidence?”
My friend who loves to talk; who loves to be “brain-picked” said,
“Confidence is a little funny to me. In any personal situation I would consider my confidence level to be a 10 on a 1-10 scale. At work or in professional situations my confidence varies based on my knowledge or preparedness of the subject at hand. I am a strong believer that knowledge is power. When I say power I mean a couple things like…
The power to speak up
The power to provide valuable input
The power to be respected as a valued source
The power to drive change
Knowing that I have knowledge to be a valuable member to any situation or project makes me confident. I think that knowledge/preparedness provides confidence and confidence provides power.”
I agree 100%. Knowledge is power. I recall being less confident in meetings when I know less, when I am not prepared.
Now we know one reason why someone would lack confidence – their lack of knowledge or preparedness. Another reason could be our comfort with failure. If we can all think of failure as a good thing, an opportunity to learn and improve, we will take the fear out of the equation. We are more confident when we are not afraid of failure.
But how easy is it for someone to be comfortable with failure. Is it possible for everyone to switch into that mode? Is there a side-effect to being not afraid of failing? Will it make us over confident and uncaring?
If you are a manager or a leader, ask yourself “How do I build a confident team or enable a confident environment?” Don’t wait till your team member asks you to search for answers.
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Being more confident and acting more confident are 2 different things. I think people are asking that questions and looking for an answer to specific behaviors they can exhibit.
Dr. WRight
The WRight Place TV show
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I agree. I hate attending Client Meetings I am not prepared for, or meetings where I dont know what the heck is going on. Though I also think it is slightly cultural as well. Indians tend to be slightly tentative in handling new cultures, than some other cultures who can bash their way through without caring much about the trail of faux-pas along the way. The biggest reason though, in my opinion, is the way you have been brought up. Some of us have been brought up with people encouraging you to speak up and question things. You might be surprised at how many of us have been considered good as kids if we kept shut, stayed out the way and did not question elders
Insecurities can be driven by fear. If you want to find out why you are not confident, first find out what your fear is. Is your fear that you will look ignorant? Is your fear that you will look unprepared? Is your fear that people will think negatively about you? If you can correct and avoid falling victim to your fear possibly you can avoid lacking confidence.
Love the article!
Thank you for your post – I like your blog!
Rosabeth Moss Kanter wrote a great book on Confidence – how teams get it, how leaders encourage it and how they lose it. Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin & End. She makes it seems a little less amorphous by saying that you can build confidence by
1) Taking personal accountability – where is the gap – identify steps to close the gap
2) Reach out to others – helping others makes you feel more confident
3) Take personal initiative – small steps and build on those steps. I’ve heard someone call them – Small Achievable Goals (SAGs in contrast to BHAGs – Big Hairy Audacious Goals)
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I can relate to this articles on so many levels, it’s unbelievable.
I remember my confidence level did a 180 degrees turn about 6 years ago when I joiend Toastmasters. I used to mumble my answers in a weekly status report meetings as a developer. I knew my stuff, I knew what to say. I just could not find the courage to speak it in a confident way. Heard of Toastmasters, joined and within a few months, I got so much encouragement that I stopped being afraid of speaking up what I had to say. If you are in the same boat, or see someone like that, suggest a local toastmasters club. http://www.toastmasters.org
I think helping others certainly gets your own confidence level up. I don’t think confidence comes from knowledge alone. You can have all the knowledge in the world, it still doesn’t make you confident. Confidence is a state of mind. I have felt confident in situations even when I didn’t know what was being talked about. You can “feel” more confident if you clarify in your head what you know about a subject and what you don’t know about it. You don’t have to tell that to the world, it is for you to know and others to guess. Until you speak (using words or body language), you are deemed confident. If you are willing to openly own up to what you don’t know, that is still considered confident. Knowing what you don’t know is the key.
The last word of advise is to provide encouragement. When a team member is not feeling confident, give him/her a task that is doable, and get out of the way. Encourage the person to try without the fear of failure. Be there to support if he/she needs it, but leave him/her alone with the challenges of the task and be sure to recognize the achievement. There is no better way to build team members’ confidence than to let them Just Do It and give them the credit for the achievement. Praise publicly. There is a part of one’s confidence that comes from outside, that’s what public praise does.
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