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How are your confidence levels right now?
At this time of the year, with the stresses of Christmas and end-of-year deadlines, the pressure to live up to Instagrammable homemade door wreaths, and feeling a little under par (either through overindulging at the Christmas party or through winter sniffles) - I’m not surprised if it's at a low ebb.
Many of my clients come to me to increase their confidence in their leadership role. But confidence is a very subjective topic and means different things to different people. So when they mention confidence, I do some digging. What does confidence mean to them? In what situations do they need to feel more confident? When they are more confident, what will that look and feel like? What will others notice? So a coaching objective of “being more confident when presenting to senior stakeholders” becomes “presenting to senior stakeholders, using fewer filler words and hesitations, so that I can persuade the audience around to my point of view, and as a result, I look forward to these presentations rather than dreading them”.
Confidence comes from a self-assessment of how confident we feel, which can be based on inaccurate data that changes from day to day and from situation to situation. It can be impacted by who we are surrounded by or our current physical and mental health levels. It’s something we are continually chasing - as soon as we feel we are confident in one area, a new topic will appear where we need to work on being more secure. That’s a positive, though! It’s a sign that we are growing and learning new things.
One way that you may get told to increase your confidence is by keeping a “praise” or “kudos” folder of compliments you’ve received and looking at it regularly. This will provide a short-term boost but is unlikely to change underlying beliefs about who you are and what you are capable of doing. A better way to look at increasing our confidence is to manage the underlying feelings of self-doubt that are behind it. These can arise from thinking we lack skills or experience all the way through to believing that we are not good enough as a person to succeed (otherwise known as imposter syndrome).
Tackling self doubt
So, if you’re feeling that negative internal voice of self-doubt arising, here are five quick things you can do to help yourself move beyond into action:
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1. When the voice of self-doubt arises, think of it as a separate part of you; that’s just an opinion rather than the objective truth. You could even give the voice a character if you like (mine is “Moaning Myrtle” from the Harry Potter series)
2. Think about something in the past that you thought you wouldn’t be able to do and now can. Remember that this will also be true in your current situation.
3. Don't give up if self-doubt is creeping in because you are finding something difficult. Keep going at something for at least a month before you decide to keep going or stop.
4. Ask yourself, “What if I can do this?” Imagine yourself being successful and confident in this area at some point in the near future. What if someone asked you how you got to that place? In your mind, work backwards as to what you had to do to get there - this will show you a practical pathway to moving forward.
5. Reflect on your values and how they link to how you want to be in this situation. For example, it may be really important to you to be a “learner”, - so how can you learn while you step into this new role? Or if one of your values is “care”, - how will being more confident in this new area help you to have a more influential voice so you can help more people?
Once you’ve got a plan to improve your confidence and got started, you can keep returning to this list when you feel those voices of doubt come up again. At the same time, you can also work on those more deep-seated limiting beliefs that can hold you back - but that’s a subject for another blog!
If you want to explore your confidence levels further, a coaching programme with me could help. To learn more and see how I coach, visit my website or get in touch.