Understanding Confidence

I recall sitting in a room full of executives and the facilitator asked something along the lines of “How many of you believe you are in the top x% of people in your profession?”.  A voice rang in my head saying “Believing you are better than everyone else is arrogant” and so I left my hand down.  Apparently I was the only one and the facilitator went on to discuss how believing you are the best is a necessary requirement of “making it” as an executive.  That was one of many times, I mentally checked out of the perceived “game” that becoming an executive seemed to require.  That being said, I’ve since found a number of tools that shed a different light on what is required and I hope they help you as well.  

Being a leader or simply showing up for ourself and our goals does require both confidence and self-confidence. 

Confidence is your belief in your abilities.  The more you do something over and over, the more you believe that the actions you take will lead to the desired result and therefore, you behave with confidence while performing those actions.  When you are just learning something new, you may lack confidence because you’re not entirely sure how something will turn out, but as time goes on, you gain confidence in your abilities to predict answers, behave the way you need, make the decisions you need to and take the appropriate actions.  

It’s in those times where you aren’t necessarily confident yet, that self-confidence really plays a role.  Self-confidence is trusting in yourself, knowing that whatever happens, you can handle it.  That you can experience any emotion (including uncertainty, doubt, defeat and shame) and still be unharmed.  The more self-confident you become, the more you are willing to take risks and fail faster in order to get to your goal.  

Now, we all know those individuals that have that magnetic sense.  They are self-assured and willing to take big risks, yet don’t come off as arrogant.  We want to spend time with them and hope it rubs off on us. For the longest time, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what the difference was.  Were they just magical?  That’s true self-confidence.  On the flip side, there are those who have the self-confidence, but tip to the side of arrogance.  What makes it different?  While self-confidence and confidence are focused on your abilities and the fact that you AND everyone can be great, arrogance takes your abilities and measures them against others.  Whether intentionally or unintentionally, arrogance comes into play when we create a false sense of self-confidence by comparing or bringing others down to build ourselves up.  Sometimes it’s very subtle and sometimes it’s blatant.

If you are getting feedback at work about needing more confidence, it’s helpful to understand which you need to look at.  Is it confidence in your abilities to perform your job duties or is it the self-confidence that you can handle any emotion as a result of doing things that maybe you don’t know how to do yet?  Understanding which it is, helps direct your efforts to where you want to focus.  

And if someone asks you whether you believe you are in the top x% of all executives, give yourself permission to believe you can perform at the top levels of your profession any given day, but you don’t have to believe you are better than anyone in order to stand in your own power.  

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