The Power of Confidence.
Career Transitions
Author - Mat Daniel
There's more to confidence than how we feel.
It's common for people to talk about feeling confident and having self-confidence, but there is more to confidence than how we feel. Confidence is both about our actions as well as how we feel. Importantly, acting with confidence usually comes before feeling confident. This presents a conundrum to many who avoid doing certain things because they don't feel confident, or who go ahead and do things but behave unconfidently. If you wait until you feel confident, you will wait for ever: start doing, and a feeling of confidence will come.
Russ Harris in his book The Confidence Gap lists the following broad reasons for low confidence:
Lack of experience
We all know that the first time that you do something is likely to be scary. Equally, the more we do something, the more expert we become and the more confident we feel.
Lack of skill
If you lack the skills needed for a task, you won't be competent at it, nor will you feel confident.
Unrealistic high expectations
People often have sky high expectations of themselves, and sometimes these are completely out of proportion with the reality of their experience and skill. Feeling confident is supported by having realistic expectations of oneself.
Self judgement
Like high expectations, some people are very harsh judges of themselves. Far from encouraging high performance, being tough on yourself might actually adversely affect your performance and confidence. Self-compassion and being kind to yourself is key.
Overwhelming fear of failure
It's normal to be afraid when doing complex tasks, especially when one is learning. However, if the fear is overwhelming, this can actually interfere with the ability to perform a task because the whole focus is on fear more than on performance.
Lack of experience and skill are addressed through training and actual experiences, as both will lead to more confident behaviour and a feeling of confidence. Self-expectations, judgement, and fear are all part normal human behaviour, and more challenging as they relate to how we see ourselves: fundamentally, there is anxiety, insecurity and a fear that we will not achieve a standard set by ourselves and others. Chronic self doubt can also lead to the impostor syndrome. So what's the answer?
Fear is your friend.
An awareness of your limitations, a realistic appraisal of your skills, and an appreciation of potential challenges are all highly desirable and important skills. So anxiety about your performance is a good thing in many ways. High self-esteem correlates with arrogance, prejudice, and self-deception, so it is better to aim for self-acceptance and recognise that anxiety about your performance is your friend. Of course, there needs to be a sense of proportion, because getting overwhelmed by fear doesn't help either. And the more you try to push anxiety away, the more it takes over your thoughts.
So the key is acceptance of fear. Let it exist, and recognise it for what it is - a sign that you care about the task at hand, and a friend to help you do a good job. Confidence isn't absence of fear, it is allowing fear to be and harnessing its power.
Russ Harris describes the ABC approach to fear:
A - allow it
B - befriend it
C - channel it
“What would have become of Hercules, do you think, if there had been no lion, hydra, stag or boar –and no savage criminals to rid the world of? What would he have done in the absence of such challenges? Obviously he would have just rolled over in bed and gone back to sleep. So by snoring his life away in luxury and comfort he never would have developed into the mighty Hercules.”
Epictetus
Tips for confidence.
- Learn and practice what you want to be confident in. Acting confidently comes before feelings of confidence.
- Recognise that fear is normal and is your help.
- Accept and allow fear to exist, it is there to help and if you try to push it away it is more likely to take overs.
- Set realistic goals and expectations.
- Act in accordance with your values. (Even if you don't reach your goal, you will get the satisfaction that using your values brings)
Authority-Presence-Impact.
I like Peter Hawkins' model of confidence as consisting of authority, presence, and impact.
Authority is about your past: your knowledge and skills, your experiences and achievements, your past demonstrations of integrity and values-based behaviour.
Presence is about the present: your ability to relate to others and respond in the now, taking people with you.
Impact is about the future: the difference that you make to others, ability to transform agendas and mindsets.
Hawkins sees confidence as arising from these three. So to build confidence, you can focus on your own authority, presence, and impact.
Final words.
I often meet people who say they don't feel confident, and they want to feel more confident. The problem is, few of us can control how we feel to any great degree. We can control how we act much more. So I'd say focus on your actions, demonstrate what you are capable of, and learn what you need to learn to demonstrate those capabilities. Then feeling confident will come. But also be ware of feeling too confident - that's when arrogance creeps in. So a little but of checking on yourself is a good thing.