Confidence is something that can drastically affect your mood and how you react in situations and especially how you perform at work. I think it is so underrated as to how important it is.
If you are a naturally high performing individual at work and you are low in confidence it will cause you not to fulfil your potential.
I am an introverted individual and never considered myself to be a 'naturally confident' individual. I am not sure if you can be born with confidence but I do believe you can help yourself become more confident.
Let me also just say that in no way am I a super confident individual in every situation and I still struggle with my confidence in certain situations.
However I have identified things that can influence my confidence levels and therefore I can actively do things to help boost my confidence.
How Can I Work Out What Drives My Confidence Level?
The technique is simple but getting the answer may not be really straightforward. Do the below exercise and it may help to talk it through with someone as sometimes it is easier to pull out insight when talking things through.
Part 1
First of all, take some time to do this exercise and put some concentration in to it. All you have to do is to give yourself 5 minutes to think about times in your life when you have been your most confidence self. What was the situation? Describe the situation Describe how it felt and don't forget to mention anyone that was integral to you feeling like that.
Part 2
Do the exact same thing but now give yourself 5 minutes to ask yourself to describe situations when you have been at a real confidence low. Again, us all of the same prompt above to explore the situations fully.
For both questions write down as many situations as you can think of and write down in those 5 minutes.
Part 3
Now look back over those situations from part 1. Is there any reoccurring themes from the situations that you have written down? It might similar situations or it might involve similar people or you might be carrying out similar tasks.
Do the same thing for the situations in part 3 and see if there are any more themes to pull out. It might be that they are the total opposite to Part 1.
What I found
When I did this exercise I realised that I am at my most confident when I have a supportive line manager/mentor/coach. And surprise surprise I was at my lowest confidence levels when I had a line manager that was really poor when it came to personal development and supporting me in my role.
So I have decided to ensure whenever I take a job going forward, I would ensure that the line manager that I will be working for is the kind of person that is going to support me in my role and will help me focus on my personal development.
Sometimes this may be hard to do as you might not have the opportunity to get to know your line manager properly or your line manager may change part way through your role and you have no way to change that. Therefore in that situation I will try and seek out a mentor or coach that will help me instead.
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Thanks for reading,
Gav
