| Volume 2: Issue 9 | September
2009
|
|
|
In This Issue:
| 
| |
|
This quality is confidence. You know it when you see it, don't you? A confident person walks into a room and doesn't have to say a thing. They wear their faith in themselves and their abilities like comfortable clothing. They do not need to be arrogant or assuming. They are at ease in their own bodies. What exactly is confidence, and where does it come from? That is the subject of this month's leadership briefing. "The Evolution of Confidence". I hope you enjoy it! Please feel free to forward this article to anyone else who might like to read it.
|
| |
|
The Evolution of Confidence Article # 18, Synchronistically Speaking series, September 2009 A lot has been spoken and written on the subject of confidence lately - confidence in the market, confidence in our world leaders, confidence in the workplace. I heard a published author recently asserting his belief that confidence is the number one attribute of a leader. It got me thinking... What exactly is confidence? And how do you get it?
As with anything that is of true value, I believe confidence is something that must come from the inside out. What do I mean by that? Every day we face challenges and opportunities that allow us to exercise confidence. We can do things today that we were unable to do last year, or maybe even last week. When we get to a point where we no longer question our abilities and simply execute the task at hand in a manner that is fitting to the situation, one could say we are acting with confidence. Exercising confidence does not require that anyone else believe we know what we are doing, or even that they witness us doing anything at all. It requires us to do what must be done at any given time, utilizing the resources at our disposal and calling on our own strengths, ingenuity, and discernment to do it. It is easy, however, to fall into the trap of trying to gain confidence from the outside in - undertaking our tasks with an eye on the perceptions of others and allowing their reactions to determine our confidence level. A positive response increases our confidence, and a negative one decreases it. When we repeatedly engage in behavior like this, we will subjugate our ability to perform and stunt our inherent talent by interrupting its natural flow.
This phenomenon becomes more complex when we assign degrees of value to the perceptions of others. The opinion of someone we highly regard may weigh more heavily than someone we don’t. And strangely, getting validation from someone who doesn’t seem to think well of us can have more significance than hearing praise from people who are our biggest fans. Why? I think we tend to focus our attention on that which mirrors our own thinking. Criticism stings the most when it amplifies our own self doubt. And when we find ourselves craving acknowledgement from others, it is likely because we are withholding it from ourselves. As we go about trying to win approval, we allow others to define our sense of self and grow ever more unaware of the treasure that sits in our own back yards. We leave our true fortunes to seek things that glitter and fade. The harder we try to win the confidence and validation of others, the further we will get from achieving it and the more deeply buried our inherent riches become. Rather than acknowledging evidence that is all around us which confirms that we are competent, creative, talented, worthy and capable of achieving great things, we waste our energy focusing on what we believe is lacking. As a result, we pay attention to data that validates our feelings of inadequacy, which leads us to act in ways that sub optimize our potential. This further erodes our confidence and we risk locking ourselves in vicious cycles of deteriorating performance and eroding self assurance. Confidence is an inside job because we cannot expect others to believe in us if we do not believe in ourselves.
When we truly go within to discover and unearth our own value, a funny thing happens. Over time, we will come to be surrounded by people who mirror our own positive assessment of ourselves. Criticism may still come, but it will no longer have the sting it once did. Void of the emotional charge, we can take feedback for what it is – data that helps us to see something we may have missed, so that we can make a course correction if necessary. No longer basing our value of ourselves on what others think of us, we can refocus the energy we spent seeking validation into helping others recognize their own value. In modeling this behavior, our increased confidence in ourselves engenders confidence both in and from others, and we can truly lead.
©
2008 Diane Bolden. Synchronistics Coaching & Consulting. All
rights reserved. WOULD YOU LIKE
TO REPRINT THIS ARTICLE? Diane Bolden is passionate about working with leaders to unleash human potential. An executive coach and organization development professional with over 17 years of experience in leadership development, coaching and consulting, Diane has worked with managers, directors and vice presidents/officers in Fortune 500 companies and non profit organizations to achieve higher levels of performance and success by helping them to bring out the best in themselves and everyone around them. To receive her free special report on Ten Traps Leaders Set for Themselves ~ and How to Avoid Them, visit www.UnleashTheExtraordinary.com.
Looking For A Better Way To Influence Lasting Change and Increased Performance In Your Team, Organization or Community? Join us for the Transformations in Leadership Workshop, November 5-6 in Phoenix, AZ
Along the way, you'll learn to utilize a process for identifying and addressing underlying assumptions that have kept you from doing your best work. You'll recognize and harness the power of your thoughts and intentions to create lasting change and apply this knowledge to addressing real business and personal challenges you currently face. You will leave the workshop with a new perspective on yourself, your challenges, and your opportunities-one that will allow you to truly lead in any position or role. To maximize individualized attention and fully personalize your experience, enrollment is limited to five people. Published monthly. You are receiving this ezine because at some point in the last few years, you have opted to stay connected to Diane Bolden and/or Synchronistics Coaching & Consulting or have registered for one of our offerings. To change your subscription, see the link at the end of this email. To ensure that you continue to receive emails from us, add Diane@DianeBolden.com to your address book today.
| ||
Every
day offers us a new challenge and an opportunity to see what we
are made of - some days more than others. Think of all the resources
you have at your disposal to rise up to these challenges. You have
your intellect, style, wit, humor, strength, resilience, patience.
You have friends and colleagues, family members, and other special
people in your life. You have your possessions, your resources,
your health, your savings, your home. When you get down to the bottom
of things, one of your most valuable resources - which allows you
to enrich every other aspect of your life, is the way in which you
view yourself and what you believe you are capable of. This one
thing plays monumental role in determining your fate, because it
drives your actions and resonses to everything that happens to you.
Some would
say confidence is being able to show others that you know what
you are doing, that you have what it takes to succeed, that you
are in control. Others speak of confidence from the standpoint
of having courage to do things that require a high degree of skill,
knowledge, strength, coordination, or that may entail some degree
of risk. Still others would say confidence is the ability to inspire
trust in others. Merriam Webster defines confidence as "a
feeling or consciousness of one's powers or of reliance on ones
circumstances" and "faith or belief that one will act
in a right, proper or effective way."
Imagine
yourself standing in a room trying to balance on one foot while
holding the other in your hand and looking up at the ceiling.
Now add about fifteen to twenty people to the room who are trying
to do the same thing. If you worry about whether you look good
and imagine that everyone is staring at you, you will lose your
balance (and your confidence). If, however, you center yourself
and focus on the task at hand, you will find your core strength
and a sense of calm, and you will achieve your goal. It may take
awhile, but you will get there.
To
be truly free, we must become independent of the favorable or
unfavorable opinion of others. This does not mean we stop seeking
feedback or valuing input and suggestions.
It simply requires that we learn to become unattached to others’
approval and instead draw upon our own inner reserves. When we
stop seeking validation, we find our centers again and learn from
our own experiences and inner wisdom. Practice and simple adjustments
allow us to find our zone, listen to our intuition and slowly
perfect our game. Becoming quietly confident, we lose the need
to prove that we are right, defend our honor or value, and impress
others. We simply do what is ours to do in any given moment and
judge our success on the merits of the work itself.
When
we have confidence in ourselves, we regain a sense of power and
faith in the world around us, in all its uncertainty. No matter
what happens, we know we have what it takes to rise above our
challenges and turn them into opportunities. We act in ways that
show others they too have the ability to shape the world around
them by starting with themselves.
