Ways to boost your confidence August 13, 2007
The words you use might be wimp, spineless, shy or fearful. Other people always seem to be able to tell that you are lacking in confidence and walk all over you, take advantage or just ignore you. And it feels like, after each individual event they build together to make a huge barrier to your success.
This vicious cycle goes on. You try something, forcing yourself past the wall of past failures, but fail and get humiliated, so it makes it harder to try again. Because you don’t try next time, the wall becomes higher and thicker and more difficult to overcome.
Some helpful people might just tell you to “Stop being a wimp and get over it”. As if it’s easy to entirely change who you are. That’s what it feels like; that you’d have to change everything about yourself in order to feel like tackling the world’s challenges.
Confidence, like everything else in life, is a skill that needs to be practiced. When you lose confidence it can genuinely feel awful, and for many people might feel like there is nothing you can do to change it. It’s a common statement, “I just don’t have the confidence to do that.” As though we can walk into a shop and buy a kilo of confidence.
Everyone has times when we feel we can do anything, conquer any fear, take on any project, deal with any problem. The skill of confidence comes in when the situation start to become difficult. Thats when our confidence can start to be eroded.
Confidence may take a while to build, and it can be undermined or lost in a second. All it takes is for something to remind us of that wall and we feel wrong-footed, embarrassed or demoralized. It might be something that reminds us of a past failure or previous time we lost confidence. Think back in your own history, is there a certain situation that you always lack confidence in? It often only takes one episode where you feel humiliated or weren’t sure what to do next, and suddenly your confidence is shattered in that event and possibly future ones as well.
Evaluate what trips you up and what doesn’t
There will be some situations that undermine your confidence and some that boost your confidence. Take a piece of paper and divide the page in two. On the right side make a list of the times and places where you know you feel more confident. You might want to start with listing things you do well. If you know you’re a good listener, for example, you probably feel relatively confident when you take on the listening role.
On the other side of the paper make a list of the times and places where you don’t feel confident. Meeting new people, confrontations, giving a presentation, making decisions, etc.
Now we combine the two sides to create a whole. Pick one or two parts on the right hand side of the paper that you could use to improve your confidence in situations on the left hand side. Let’s say you don’t feel very confident meeting new people, but you do feel confident as a good listener. Get a new page and write these two things on the same line. The left side is again “I’m not confident meeting new people.” and the right is “I’m a confident listener.” In between these two statements combine them into one sentence using the word ‘but’. Now read that whole new sentence aloud. Writing it like this and then reading it changes your experience and understanding. Many people have said this alone is enough to fill them with confidence.
Given that above example, people love to talk about themselves, so you only need to get them started (and every good listener knows how to ask good questions) and they’ll be off. Then you can listen to your heart’s content because you know you’re good at it. This then in turn increases your confidence of situations that previously sapped your confidence.
There will be many other possible times and places where you can borrow one skill to help you overcome a deficit in another. Even combining two or three to become a whole lot more confident much more quickly than you think possible.
Repetition is the mother of skill
If you put yourself into those times and places where you naturally have confidence more often, you will increase your experience and bolster your confidence, not just in these situations but also into the rest of your life. If you’re good at riding a bike, go on more bike rides.
Confidence is just like a muscle. You have to use it to develop it. Unlike a muscle however, you don’t have to spend any extra time lifting weights or going to the gym. You can build it throughout your daily activities by consciously focusing on improving your existing confidence.
If you do have a bad day, and your confidence has been undermined, focus your attention on the parts of your day where you did have confidence. Dwelling on the bad does not help. If you get stuck, use the above evaluation sheet to help focus on the good.
And there’s nothing wrong with every once in a while deliberately avoiding situations that do stop you. There’s nothing so confidence-undermining as consistently forcing yourself in situations where you know you’re vulnerable.
The Confidence Cycle
Losing confidence can be a vicious cycle. You lose a little bit of confidence, and then because of that you do something wrong which chips away another bit of confidence. This in turn causes another error and we are suddenly plummeting towards jagged rocks.
Of course, I’m being a little extreme here, it’s not always like that. In fact you can reverse this cycle so that anything that happens can make you even more confident. Everyone has some areas of their life where they’re really confident, or at least confident enough. This is when those lists of qualities and skills come in when we look at the Confidence Cycle.
This is how it works: when you are confident, you try new things, and the more you try the better you get. Like public speaking, for instance. Any good presenter will tell you that the more they get out there in front of an audience, the more confident they feel about handling whatever happens. NOT that they feel less nervous (some people, no matter how practised they are, never learn how to be calm on stage), just that they know what to expect and also feel able to deal with the unexpected. If they get unbalanced they have enough experience to get themselves upright again.
But without confidence you won’t try new things. Where do you begin?
The one and only place you can begin is to practise. Practice for success. That means to practice just above your current level so that even if you make mistakes you are successful overall. This might mean you practice where no one will necessarily notice or where you are not in the spotlight.
For example, if you feel you have zero confidence speaking in front of a group, don’t start practising in front of a group. All you are doing in practicing zero confidence. Practice in front of the mirror first. Then practice in front of a trusted friend. Do this until you can do it with confidence. It might feel false and embarrassing, but practising with an audience of one friend is very different than going into the lion’s den of an audience of strangers.
Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance
Alongside practise goes preparation. Whatever the situation is you can prepare for all manner of eventualities. For example, one of the training drills I give to everyone that I train in public speaking is to give a 5 minute talk. During that 5 minute talk they are to make at least 3 obvious ‘errors’. These errors might be dropping a whiteboard marker, tripping, forgetting a major point of their talk, or anything else. This gives them the ability and experience of dealing with something going wrong. Before something like that would undermine their confidence and set them up for more errors. Now it builds their confidence because they have direct experience of dealing effectively with these errors.
Whatever you choose, remember to practice for success. Doing something correctly once is much better than doing something one hundred times wrong.
If you found this article useful you might also like to read how to build self-confidence.
Technorati Tags: Business, Change, Learning, Motivation, Psychology, Self-Confidence, Stress
Business and leadership is about removing limits July 20, 2007
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage, to move in the opposite direction.”
~ Albert Einstein
These limits might be your own, limits of those around you, limits of the industry or even limits of humanity.
A good example of this is the Medicine industry. Working towards removing the limits of illness, sickness and accidents (genetic deformities etc). Think of Cochlear implants as a specific example – removing the limits placed on individuals thanks to genetics or accidents.
It is not the development of some new gizmo that makes one company profit, it’s removing limitations. A superb example for this is the blog you are reading right now. The boom in blogs over the last few years has been because it is so easy – anyone can, within 5 minutes, have a running blog. Five years ago, you needed knowledge and experience to achieve the same result.
Henry Ford made the car. But that’s not what made him wealthy and the car such a common item. It was the Ford company consistently focusing on removing the production limitations. Little by little making it easier and cheaper to produce.
You can hold this idea for yourself every day. Focus on removing limits in what you do and how you do it. Maybe something as simple as having to open a drawer each time you need a pen. Removing that physical limitation can help your day. Maybe it’s something bigger like using a filing cabinet for your documents, or using GTD (Getting Things Done) method of time management or getting into work early to miss the traffic. When you remove or avoid a limit, your productivity increases. Removing these limits for yourself means not only being more effective with work, but also reducing your stress.
Businesses grow and improve through removing limits. Some common examples are automatic printing of invoices, just in time production runs to remove warehousing limits, and mobile phones removing the need to be near a land line. Fedex’s whole premise is to remove the time limits for delivering packages.
And I think the number one job of a leader is to remove limits of the business and their team. That’s not to say the leaders will be able to achieve zero limits, there will be contextual limits, budget limits and more. The limits leadership remove are the limits that constrain the workers within the business and also external situations that limit the business itself. These limits might be cash flow problems, team cohesion, client retention etc. Removing those limits might be a strategy change, responding to customers, or sliming the operations.
What are the limits that are placed on you (or you place on yourself) that can easily be removed? What things limit the people around you that you can remove?
Technorati Tags: Business, CEO, Change, Leadership, Motivation, Productivity, Stress
The risks of Leadership July 3, 2007
When I was taught abseiling, the teachers drilled safety over and over again. Ensure you are always anchored, and to check all the major parts of your gear before jumping off. Go through the ABC’s. Anchor – Is your rope secured properly? Belt – Is your harness on correctly, buckle tight? Carabeena – are you tied in correctly?
The day I was learning, one person in the group, James, was learning how to train others.
During the middle of the day, after the beginners had just finished an intermittent level overhang, I watched Gary, our lead instructor, take the rope everyone had just finished using and intentionally tie a large knot about half way down. He then instructed James to tie off and begin abseiling down. James was naturally a little apprehensive. Gary had to spend several minutes convincing James that this was part of his testing.
Gary followed James down on a parallel rope. All the while James was very concerned about the knot, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to complete the jump.
As James approached the knot, he stopped about a meter above it, secured himself then began to untie the knot. Gary quickly stopped him. “That’s not the test. What happens if you can’t untie the knot, or there is some other obstruction?”
“I want you to continue all the way down, until the knot is hard against your figure 8″ (A figure 8 is the part that connects the rope to your harness).
“No,” said James. “I can’t get out from there if I do that.”
Again Gary was insistent. “Go down the rope until the knot is hard into your figure 8.”
James was beginning to get scared. He started stating that he’d never do that, stopping before an obstruction. Every excuse he came up with, Gary came up with another explanation and again told James to comply. All the while both of them were hanging ten meters above jagged rocks.
In the end, James reluctantly complied with the insistent requests. He then used his shoelaces as a method to climb his way back up the rope, disconnect from the rope and reconnect below the knot. Each step of the way he argued, resisted and complained.
This is a superb example one of the major problems leaders experience. The leader knows what needs to be done, and (sometimes) how to do it and then passes this onto the employee. Only to have the employee avoid doing the task, or doing it poorly.
While a leader may be completely comfortable with the given task, the employee may not be. And more importantly, as in the above example, the employee is the one taking the risks. If James fell during that test, Gary would be uninjured, James would be in hospital. The risk James experienced was vastly different that the risk Gary experienced. Yet Gary continued to insist that James followed instructions that were more and more dangerous.
Remember, what you find trivial, other may find difficult, even impossible. What can you do to help people around you through their fears? Who can you contact to help you through yours?
Coaching the Uncoachable June 9, 2007
As someone who regularly coaches professionally I read with interest Seth Godin’s discussion on coaching the uncoachable. While I agree with his point, one of the main presuppositions in the post is just plain wrong.
He describes some of the symptoms of uncoachability and almost all of them imply that coaching is about the coach, when in facts it’s really about the person being coached. These symptoms also point to failures within the relationship between the coach and coachee.
* Challenging the credentials of the coach
This is a requirement. Of course, the challenge should be in regards to understanding how the coach can help your performance, not as a methods of discrediting their suggestions.
* Announcing that you’re being unfairly singled out
If a coach offers you a suggestion, you are being singled out. The coach (we hope) is professional enough to see in your behaviour things that can be improved or modified. It makes very little sense for the coach to single someone else out for your mistake.
* Pointing out, angrily, that the last few times, the coach was wrong
Yep, the coach may have been wrong in the past, and may be wrong now. It’s not about the coach, it’s about you.
* Identifying others who have succeeded without ever being coached
Yep. Those other people are not you. If your results are as good, or better than the person you identify, then we can discuss this further.
* Resisting a path merely because it was one identified by a coach
This is just ridiculous behaviour. The coach is there for your benefit, your improvement or the benefit of your team. If you want to act like a two year old child, is it any wonder that the coach begins to treat you like one. This, of course, just increases the difficulty and tension felt by both parties. Luckily, this behaviour is very easy to deal with by a competent coach.
Does this mean you roll over and do whatever the coach says? Of course not. It does mean you have to stop treating the coach like a parent and more like a peer. While this might cause different conflicts with your coach for a time, a professional coach will (should!) be able to modify their own behaviour to match.
Candor, Honesty and Truth June 8, 2007
Honesty is the best policy. This is repeated over and over again. You might have even said it yourself. Some people live up to that ideal. Most people are honest – handing in a found wallet or correcting a cashier after getting too much change for example.
Yet when we get to direct interpersonal communications, that policy starts to fracture a little. We have all told a little white lie. The specific times and places to use these lies are learned, and makes perfect sense. Telling the truth is sometimes detrimental to the immediate situation, we might have to spend an hour explaining our answer. An honest answer might also harm someone’s feelings and damage the long term relationship. Sometimes what we consider as honest other people consider offensive or insulting.
Often I hear the excuse for not telling the whole truth as a loss of face, or fear of ridicule. Either for the person being honest, or the receiver of that honesty. This is part of the reason why anonymous feedback works; You are much more able to speak your mind when there is no involvement of your identitiy. Even when that honesty is directly asked for, it’s often watered down.
Jack Welch calls this honesty candor. He believes, and is correct, that it builds a strong team, that it advances and improves relationships. Everyone being able to speak their mind and offer suggestions is critical to business success.
Just think for a moment about any TV soap you might have seen. Most of the angst and interpersonal conflict with the characters would be non-existant if they were honest. Although that doesn’t make for very good or suspense filled TV.
So to continue this blog containing useful how to skills transfer, here are a few ideas on how to be honest and building honest relationships.
1. Build the environment to be honest by being consistent with your approach. Coming right out and being completely honest, when it’s unexpected, is a shock. If you are known for your honesty, the people around you will expect it, and be ready for it.
2. Start small. When someone asks you what you want to eat, tell them. If someone asks for suggestions, give them one. It doesn’t have to be a long and involved answer, but avoiding the question, or answering “I don’t know” does not foster an honest environment.
3. Be completely open and state your fears and concerns first. Start with a statement like “I need to tell you something, and I’m not sure how you’ll take it. I’m scared that what I have to say will damage our relationship, but I feel it’s important enough, and our relationship strong enough, to tell you.”
4. Lead them into the realisation or idea you want to get across. You can do this by turning your honest statement into a question. “Have you thought about …” or “How would you deal with a situation like …”.
5. Ask for others honesty and reward them immediately when you get it. This reward might be nothing more than a warm smile and a thankyou. Every time you receive honest comments or feedback, encourage the speaker. Over time this will give them the confidence that they can be honest with you. This also fosters the relationship in such a way that you can be honest with them.
What other ways can you suggest to improve your ability to be honest?
Bad training gives information, good training gives skills May 29, 2007
I’ve been to many training sessions. In business and out. Most are glorified information transmission. The 8 hours I spent in the room would have been better spent with a book.
Then there are training for sales, negotiation, management, leadership that expect to transfer skills via this same method. The instructor stands in front of the class and lectures using powerpoint slides. Unfortunately a lecture is a very poor method to transfer skill (or anything else, for that matter). If you are lucky, you get a short, contrived exercise that gives you a false sense of the skill.
Even worse are these leadership and group bonding situations. They claim to improve group dynamics, yet all they do is have the group use exactly the same skills and behaviour in a different context. So if the group didn’t work in the office, chances are it’s not going to work outside.
Ideally, training requires a mix of theory combined with challenges and exercises. The theory is to transfer the “how” of the skill. The exercises designed to practice the theory, and the same time stretch the experience of the students and allow then to practice the “how”. The percentage of each needs to be managed with the outcomes of the course and current student skills.
The metaphor I like to use is: describe to someone how to ride a bike. You can read all the theory in the world, talk to BMX and Tour de France experts, and watch thousands of hours of video. Then, when you get on a bike you realise it’s not as easy as it looks. Learning how to ride a bike contains about 2 minutes of ‘theory’ (this is how you steer, this is how you go forward and stop). Then about 30 to 60 minutes of direct experience, trial and error. From then on, it’s practice.
So next time you attend a training seminar that claims to teach a skill ask yourself the question. “When I finish this training do I know how to ride a bike, or can I ride a bike?”
Environment drives behaviour April 27, 2007
Similar to an earlier post, here is a video interview with Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo as he talks about his Stanford Prison Experiment. This experiment is a powerful example of just how your environment can effect your behaviour.
And here is a recent interview with Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo in the lead up to his new book.
Technorati Tags: Business, Change, Communication, Leadership, Persuasion, Psychology, Stress
Meetings? Just say ‘no’ April 20, 2007
Seth Godin offers some very good points about meetings. They waste time, increase stress and are usually poorly run.
If you know me at all, you know I’m not a fan of meetings. Most meetings I consider a waste of time. There is, however, a lot that can be done in meetings to get value from them. Seth offers some suggestions, and I have a few more.
My first and foremost one is to ask yourself two questions before the meeting. What is the reason for the meeting? Do I need to make a decision about this? If you don’t need to make a decision, then you can read the meeting notes. If you don’t know what the reason for the meeting is before the meeting, it’s unlikely you’ll know after.
If the reason is just to bring the team together, is it better served with an informal chat over coffee and doughnuts? If the meeting is to update a distributed team, it can be done inside 5 minutes in most cases.
I work with stressed out people often, and I can always point to meetings as a time waster and partial cause. Often meetings will start late and run long. Often no decisions will be made in the meeting and another meeting will need to be scheduled (though this also relates to poor decision making – another of my pet hates!). When I work with these people, I make sure they understand that every meeting is an investment. Not just of their time, but also a percentage of their salary. This is also true for everyone else in the room.
I have a few additional tips to augment Seth’s tips. They are harsh, but most meetings can easily be shortened by at least 5 minutes, without any loss in value.
- Make sure meetings start on time. Lock the door so no one arrives late and disrupts the meeting, or ‘fine’ those arriving late.
- Ensure the meeting finishes on time.
- Ensure every meeting has clear purpose and agenda. Hopefully sent to all attendees a day before the meeting. Also make sure the agenda is listed in order of importance, so if the meeting ends (finishing on time, remember) the important points are covered.
- Note all decisions and action points, including who’s doing what action. At the end of the meeting, review to make sure everyone knows their actions and tasks.
- Start the meeting with “This meeting will only be XX minutes long. If we don’t cover all the points, we will have to postpone them.” Setting the frame of the meeting so everyone knows what’ll happen.
- At any time, you can leave the meeting. If your only reason for being there is complete, leave. If the meeting has wandered off the agenda, either pull it back on track, or leave. If it is running long, leave.
Do you have any more tips?
Technorati Tags: Business, CEO, Communication, Goalsetting, Leadership, Management, Policy, Proactiveness, Productivity, Stress
Communication is Manipulation March 26, 2007
Most people have this strange thought that manipulation is evil, bad, and should never be done. Unfortunately we can’t escape it.
I had a discussion with a sales manager the other day about some of the standard sales closing tactics. For example, do you want the product delivered on Thursday or Friday? This sales manager didn’t like to use these methods because he calls it manipulative.
It took me a little while to explain that all of sales is manipulative. That’s how sales people do their job. They manipulate their client into purchasing the product. In the end he understood when I explained that asking a question – or any communication – is manipulation. You’re changing the listeners state, getting them to accept your idea, alter their perspective or just sending their mind down a different path. For example: On what side are the hinges on your front door?
You have to stop your current thoughts, imagine your front door and then answer the question.
Now I’m sure to get many complaints and comments that sales people don’t manipulate, or that some do, but I don’t. These comments and complaints are another form of manipulation – attempting to get me to change my idea or alter my perspective (but send them anyway). I am doing the same manipulation back at you right now.
The reason it seems most people shy away from manipulation is because they think it removes freedom of choice. What really removes freedom of choice is when someone refuses to accept the responsibility for the manipulations they engage in. They’ll happily excuse away abusive behaviour because “it’s natural and genuine” or “that’s just how I am”. You’ll often hear “Genuine people don’t manipulate”. As some counter examples, Stalin was natural and Hitler was genuine. Being natural is no excuse for bad behaviour. So not only do these people limit the choices of people around them, they remove choices from themselves as well. Being responsible for your own communication creates more choice for you and your listeners.
All communication is manipulative whether it’s purposeful or not. All great communicators know this. Because of this knowledge these great communicators know they are responsible for the results of their communication. They know that when you talk with them, and you get benefit from it, you’ll do it again.
So how are your manipulating your listeners?
Technorati Tags: Business, Communication, Leadership, Management, Motivation, Negotiation, Presenting, Psychology, Sales
The 8 keys to giving powerful feedback that gets listened to March 5, 2007
Some call it criticism, comment, praise, judgment, evaluation, and even just opinion. I prefer the word feedback. Giving feedback in the right way empowers yourself and those around you. Giving feedback in the wrong way destroys relationships and damages your credibility. As I often say I’m a glutton for feedback, unfortunately not everyone treats feedback as highly as I do. The reason I think this is the case is because many people don’t know how to give feedback in the right way so as not to offend, upset or otherwise antagonise the listener.
Many conflicts and arguments are started because feedback was offered in an inappropriate way. This might be at the wrong time or in the wrong tone of voice. Just think of your own experience when you were offered criticism you didn’t ask for. In a perfect world, we could give, and be able to receive any and all types of feedback without getting upset. Unfortunately, we all have a way to go.
There are eight steps to be aware of when you offer feedback.
1. The first is timing. When do you offer feedback? Praise (something I consider different than feedback) is best done immediately after the behaviour or event so there is a strong connection. In most cases, when offering anything more than praise it is best to wait some time before offering feedback. This time can vary, but I usually say about 24 hours is ideal. Whatever the timing, quite often the best time is when you ask “can I give you some feedback?”
2. Before you start giving feedback, ask yourself what is the intent of giving the feedback. If your answer is anything other than to help them get better, keep the feedback to yourself. Sometimes we only give feedback to lay blame, get noticed or shift responsibility. Giving feedback with ulterior motives damages your credibility, and your listener almost always knows you have an ulterior motive.
3. There is a very old method of dealing with ‘negative’ feedback (I don’t believe any feedback is negative or positive – it is all information for you to use or ignore). This old method says to ’sandwich’ the ‘negative’ with two positive statements either side. While this was good advice, almost everyone expects this format. If you have ever offered someone a single piece of ‘positive’ feedback as was met with the response “…but?” or “…yes…and?” you will know what I mean. The method I use and teach is to give the feedback that might be taken as negative first, then give the ‘positive’. This does two things, gives them the information they need to get much better, and leaves them on a high note.
4. When you do put the feedback into words, make sure it is known to be your own opinion, and not universal truth. So I might say “I think …” or “In my opinion”. While not everyone needs to know that your words are your opinion, some will assume they are, and others will assume a personal attack. (I might expand on why this is at a later time, and how you can tell who you are talking to just by looking at them).
5. At all times focus on the person’s specific behaviours and never the person. Consider the difference between “You are wrong” and “The information you provided has been proved wrong”. This is one of the most common errors in giving feedback. Most people have a very difficult time receiving feedback about their identity, so focus on their behaviours only.
6. When you focus on the behaviour, describe the behaviour as explicitly as possible. For example: “You made me very upset” tells the listener very little about their behaviour. “When you ignored my question, you made me very upset” give then listener a specific behavioural event to focus on. When you discuss the behaviour, talk in sensory based terms. In other words, if someone who didn’t see the behaviour is able to know what you saw and heard, then it is sensory based. Compare: “You looked angry” is not sensory based while “You frowned, closed your eyes to slits, furrowed your brow and spoke with a raised voice” is.
7. Your feedback can also include an action step. This is offering a possible behavioural alternative, an exercise, book or other training material that would assist in getting better results or overcoming the challenge.
8. Once you offer the feedback, let the issue go. If you continue to raise old failures you risk an antagonistic and offensive response. Think of feedback like giving a gift. Once you hand it over, feel good, and let the receiver do with it what they will.
To summarise, the steps are:
1. Find the best time to offer the feedback
2. Become aware of your own intent
3. Use a proven format.
4. State your words are your own opinion
5. Give feedback on behaviour
6. Describe the behaviour in sensory based terms
7. Give an additional action step
8. Let go of the feedback
And the goal, I hope, is that we all offer feedback as a way to improve ourselves (use these steps when giving yourself feedback!), the people around us, and our relationships.
And to help me get better – send me feedback, either via the comments, or email!
Technorati Tags: Business, Change, Communication, Leadership, Learning, Management, Psychology
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