Confidence:
The feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something.
In the workplace there are two aspects to confidence:
- to have self-confidence; and
- to inspire confidence in others.
An employer will want to know that their clients and customers will have confidence in you and they (as your employer) need to be confident about you too.
The first step in inspiring confidence in others is to be self-confident first (without being arrogant).
The second step is to be good at what you do.
How do you show that you are self-confident?
First, consider how you appear to others. Consider how you appear in a variety of situations that you find yourself in where confidence is important such as at interviews, at meetings, at networking events etc. Provided that you can at a minimum show a confident exterior and give an impression of being confident (even when you are trembling like a leaf inside) you are making good progress.
Your level of confidence can be revealed by your behaviour, your body language, how you speak and what you say. Keep it in check.
Action Point: Look at someone you admire or consider very confident and watch what they do.
Skill Development Plan – Confidence
Unfortunately, there is not a quick fix for building self-confidence (or for inspiring confidence in others). However, a lot of things that you do day-to-day (particularly if you are working on your skill development generally) can help improve your confidence.
Examples include:
- working on skills that you need to develop
- setting goals and keeping track of your achievements
- keeping a list of achievements in your career journal
- harnessing the power of positive thinking
- improving your technical skills
- practising situations where confidence is required.
Action point: add some confidence-building goals to your list and jump in the deep end.
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