Developing Confidence at Work
Confidence is a valuable ally, and it is perhaps nowhere quite so useful as in the workplace. Having confidence is important for our motivation and wellbeing, as well as contributing to our efficacy, productivity and ongoing development at work.
So why then is it often so difficult to actually feel confident at work?
Assumptions about others
All companies are made up of people, all with different roles, responsibilities and personalities. In almost all cases there is a defined company hierarchy, outlined in an organisational chart. These hierarchies are a well-established concept, a hangover from the first and second industrial revolutions. Some organisations are now moving away from this practice, but in all likelihood, your organisation will have a similar structure in place.
The “pyramid scheme”
Chances are that you are making assumptions all the time, based on your position within the company relative to other people. In doing so you are making the assumption that you are in some way less qualified or less capable than other people, based on nothing other than lines drawn between names on an org chart. Thinking in this way undermines your confidence; furthermore, your assumptions are often completely unfounded.
It is important to remember, that despite lofty titles, people are people. We are all flawed and fallible, and we all have gaps within our knowledge and limits on our ability to solve problems. You are every bit as capable of having a revolutionary idea as your CEO. The major difference is that people are far more likely to entertain the CEO’s ideas, and are far less likely to analyse, criticise or question them.
Have you ever raised an idea, only to have it shot down or dismissed by your manager? Maybe this made you feel as if you weren’t smart enough, or capable enough. Even if your idea was perfectly credible, it may have been judged based on your position within the company, rather than on its own merits.
The Power of Communication
No matter what our role is, we need to be able to communicate our ideas clearly to other people. Otherwise, we will struggle to see these ideas gain traction and become realised.
We have all seen managers, leaders, conference speakers, coaches and salesmen delivering their heady rhetoric with seemingly effortless ease. We admire their ability to stand up and deliver their messages with such belief, such as steadiness and sure-footedness.
We may imagine ourselves standing in their shoes, but instead, we see a nervous, shaking, softly-spoken voice, barely able to finish a sentence without pausing, littering our speech with “errs” and “umms”….
Sound familiar?
You are making the assumption that the people you hear speaking every day are actually calm and confident as they are speaking. This is not always the case, and more people than you think will experience some anxiety when speaking in front of others.
Feedback & Failure
The Feedback Loop
Feedback is a crucial part of our development as human beings. From our earliest days as children, through school, university and finally work. At every stage, it is almost impossible to learn, develop, improve and progress without some form of feedback. After all, we judge the nature of our actions by their perceived results. If we attempt to draw a picture of a cat and our teacher recognises it as a cat and compliments our drawing, then we gain confidence in our ability. We know we are on the right track.
Taking this further, we typically receive detailed critiques of our essays and theses through school and university. Discussion within academic groups, seminars and classrooms allow us to test our ideas and hear other people’s opinions. By their vary nature, assessments and examinations are forms of quantitative feedback regarding our performance within specific areas of knowledge or skill.
Without constant feedback at every stage of our lives, we would have a hard time gaining any confidence in ourselves at all.
Feedback is particularly valuable for people who are in the earlier stages of their career and will typically reduce with seniority. This makes sense given that confidence also tends to increase as you progress in your career. This does not mean you should stop developing and improving, but it might mean that you start to judge your progress using a discussion with peers, or using your own internal criteria.
As we will discuss later, receiving and acting upon feedback is an important way to develop and improve ourselves.
Fear of Failure
Failure is perhaps one of the most misunderstood and feared concepts within the workplace. Closely related to our developmental feedback loop mentioned above, we have been brought up to believe that failure is the worst possible outcome for anything we endeavour to achieve.
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
― Robert F. Kennedy
Fear of failure essentially amounts to a fear of trying anything new. There is a widely-held view within the business world that risk is an inherently bad thing. As such we develop strict rules, plans and protocols, we even (absurdly) pretend that we can predict the future. And yet, what is really at stake? The risk of losing (or not making) a little money?
The most valuable commodity we have here on earth is human life. And yet, the medical profession refers to what they do as “practicing” medicine — this is not accidental. A great deal of the processes of diagnosing and treating medical conditions is made up of trial and error. If we can accept that trial and error is acceptable and effective when human life is at stake, then there is no reason not to consider the same approach for our businesses.
In my career I have taken many risks; I have experienced failure many, times. In fact, it is fair to say that my principle approach to my work is to start with a wrong or incomplete answer (such as a straw-man or incomplete framework) and then fix, refine and correct it until it resembles something like the right answer. This has worked very well for me. My greatest achievements have come from taking risks, and crucially, learning from my failures.
As far as I am concerned, nothing novel, nothing progressive will ever occur without taking risks, experimenting and inevitably, failing. The key is to learn from these failures (not to hide, deny or ignore them). If I interviewed a job candidate that claimed never to have failed or made mistakes, I would not hire them — they are lying, and worse, trying to hide their mistakes.
Solutions — Developing your own confidence
So what can we actually do to overcome these obstacles and build up our self-confidence?
1. Be a lifelong learner
You may have heard the term “Growth Mindset”, which is used to contrast with a “fixed mindset”. Research by Carol Dweck explains the concept in much more detail, but let me explain In simple terms here.
A fixed mindset is one in which a person is thought to have innate and limited abilities, and that your capacity to improve your knowledge and abilities is finite and fixed. People with a fixed mindset tend to think their learning and skill set becomes ‘fixed’ either at the end of their education or once they reach a certain point in their careers. These people are unlikely to change career paths or be able to be flexible within their roles. These people will see any change as a risk and tend to be uncomfortable without rigid plans and defined processes
A growth mindset is one in which a person’s skill set and capacity for thought is unbounded. People are able to continuously learn and improve both in knowledge and abilities. Even patterns of thought, once thought to be immutable pathways in our brains, are in fact not fixed and can be changed with practice. People with this mindset do not fear change and uncertainty and are able to thrive within innovative environments. These people are able to forge new paths and challenge long-held beliefs.
That’s interesting, but how does a Growth Mindset help me to improve my confidence at work?
First and foremost, a growth mindset is based on the assumption that you have almost limitless capacity for learning and development. This fact alone should provide encouragement that you can develop yourself to whatever level you desire. Nothing is out of reach or above your ability.
With a growth mindset, you have no reason to fear change or uncertainty. In the current climate, we are reminded that we live in an environment full of VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity). If we are flexible and open to change, then VUCA becomes challenges for us to adapt to, rather than a threat to a finite and fixed skillset. Once you can see your skills as much broader than a narrow job description, you no longer need to fear your role being replaced or made redundant.
Principles of a Growth Mindset
I believe a good first step is to try and align yourself with the principles of a growth mindset. Consider how you might act at work within these principles. You should try to reach a point where you would feel comfortable with them stuck above your desk at work.
- Your abilities are not fixed, and you are much more than a narrow role title.
- Best practices change over time, when evidence moves consensus, be willing to move with it
- Read, discuss, deliberate and argue — widen the sources from which you find information
- Experiment, analyse and act based on the results — this should be a constant process of continually sensing and adapting
- Be agile — by which I mean the ability to change direction quickly based on the prevailing evidence — don’t allow yourself to become stuck to a rigid plan
- See the value in failure — many of the most important scientific discoveries came from unexpected results
2. Practice Confident Speaking
Confident verbal communication was always a major challenge for me. Thankfully in my early career, this really wasn’t necessary, with my written communication being far more relevant to my job.
However as I progressed into more senior roles, the need to communicate ideas became one of the most important factors for my success. As many of you can probably relate, the very thought of speaking to a room full of people was enough to send me into the nearest cupboard or bathroom stall. But this was not something I could hide from. It was either a case of improving my communication or finding a new career path.
Due to the immediacy of my need, my chosen approach was to use something akin to Exposure Therapy. In simple terms, find the thing that is causing you the most fear and stress, and throw yourself in at the deep end.
I started by deliberately putting myself into situations where I would have to present something to a group. To begin with, the group sizes were quite small, usually 5–15 people. I can attest that the size of the audience can have a profound effect on the level of challenge you will have presented to them. Not only do you have to project your voice further, but you will also have to deal with more questions, interruptions and other feedback.
At this point in the article, I am probably expected to share the “one secret trick” to great public speaking. There isn’t one. At least not one that will magically turn an anxious speaker into a confident one. I have heard the same thing said by professional entertainers, and even practiced TED speakers.
So here it is: The way to speak with confidence is to speak with fake confidence. If you can manage to stand up and speak with perceived confidence, even if you’re panicking inside, nobody will be able to tell the difference. After a while, fake confidence becomes real confidence.
Now don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean that you will immediately become a great speaker just because you forced yourself into it. You will be nervous, you will have uncomfortable pauses, and a few “umms” while you try to remember where you are going next. All these things will happen, and it will feel as though you’re floundering.
But if you can get through the content, even with a few stutters and pauses, you have won. It will seem like a big deal to you because this presentation is your entire world right now. For everyone else, it’s just an hour out of their already busy day. Let’s say you do have an awkward pause while you try to remember your next lines — in all likelihood, nobody else will even remember it the next day (it turns out people are pretty self-centered).
The thing to remember is this — your own perception is many, many times worse than that of your audience. Yes, they can probably see that you are nervous, but they are primarily interested in what you are saying, not how you are delivering it.
This disparity of perception is very real — the way you are feeling is not the way people are seeing you. I can say this with some confidence since during my early stages of practice, I recorded myself giving a presentation. I implore you to do this if you can. It might sound daunting, or embarrassing, but it is the most effective way (perhaps the only way) to demonstrate what I am trying to explain.
As I gave that presentation, I was almost incapacitated with anxiety. It felt as if my entire body was shaking, and I was sure that every word was being said with a soft, nervous and quivering voice. Imagine my surprise then when I watched back the video later that evening — who was this confident looking person standing up, looking composed and delivering a coherent and confident speech? Ok, it wasn’t perfect — there were a couple of short pauses and one or two “umms”, but honestly it was hard to notice as an outside observer (our brains seem to tune out these pauses when we’re watching someone else).
After that, my confidence rose quickly, and I’ve been able to give a great many presentations since. Sure I still feel nervous sometimes, but it is no longer a barrier, it’s just a symptom, and sometimes it doesn’t even happen any more.
3. Act Upon Feedback
As mentioned earlier, without receiving feedback at work, it can be challenging to gain confidence in our performance. It would be hard to correct bad habits if you don’t know about them. Without feedback, how can we improve? Or more to the point, how would even know if we had improved?
Take advantage of opportunities to find feedback regularly, and also listen out for it. There are many opportunities to receive feedback, outside of formal company processes. Be aware of the way you engage with your colleagues. There may be subtle feedback being given in discussions with colleagues. Not many people will give you blunt and direct feedback, for fear of sounding rude. However, they may drop subtle cues into your conversations or emails.
It is quite common to have ‘checkpoints’ at which feedback is given. These may include a 1-month check-in or the end of a 6-month probationary period. Use these to your advantage, and don’t be afraid to prompt for information if there are areas you are concerned about or areas you would like to improve.
Once you start receiving feedback, make sure you do something with it. Keep a bullet point list of all the items you need to work on. Review it regularly, since half the battle is knowing about your improvement points. Once they are in your consciousness you will be much more aware of them, and will probably catch yourself doing things at work that others told you about. Don’t simply ignore the feedback because it is painful or you can’t accept criticism. Nobody is perfect, and nobody can improve themselves if they don’t know where to start.
You might be thinking, “what about the positive feedback?”. Well yes, that’s always nice, but it’s not usually constructive. Positive feedback is confirmation that you’re on the right track, but it doesn’t mean you can’t still improve!
If you believe the feedback is unfair, or overly critical, get a second opinion. Find somebody you work with regularly, take them aside and ask their opinion of the feedback. If it seems personal in nature, then ask your friends or family — these are the people most likely, to be honest and open with you.
4. Fail fast, fail often, and own your failures
As often as possible, try something new. Learn by doing and do not be afraid to try something just because others won’t.
Look at the way in which you perform your work every day. What is good, what could be better? Could you design an experiment to do something in a different way for a few weeks, and see if it yields any improvement? Nothing builds confidence faster and more sustainably than implementing a successful change or seeing an idea realised.
Apply for that job you think you might not be qualified for — what’s the worst that can happen? if you don’t get it you’re no worse off, and furthermore you might learn something from the feedback given. I personally find feedback from job interviews to be really insightful, since it’s not just about your ability, but also your approach and perceived personality (this may not be your real personality), which is the way you are actually being seen within an interview environment.
If something does go wrong, own up to it, and own the outcomes. Rather than trying to hide the problem, focus all your attention on how you are going to fix it, and prevent the same thing from happening again. You will earn a lot more respect by being honest, than by trying to deny, pass blame or ignore the problem. You will also experience less stress since you have nothing to hide.
