Creating Confident Leaders - Believe in Yourself

Confidence is an essential ingredient for leaders, as important as fuel is to an engine. Without confidence, leaders become indecisive, risk averse, lacking in judgement, anxious for constant reassurance, lacking perspective, isolated or overly reliant on others, victims of stress, guilt ridden, unable to deliver, unsure of results and lacking in any kind of vision and direction. 

Not the way anyone wants to lead OR be led!

So many times when I am coaching leaders, this issue of confidence comes up and to my mind developing a healthy level of self confidence and self belief is crucial for everyone in leadership no matter what level.  It’s a huge part of my work to help leaders build that self belief and this blog will focus on a variety of helpful strategies and tools to help you build your leadership confidence and become the best leader you can be.

Here are 3 of my best tips to get you started:-

• Focus on success and your own talents

I often hear people saying they want to be “given” confidence.   Confidence comes from within not from without.   Feedback and encouragement help develop our confidence of course, however, they do not create or build it.   We have to do that ourselves.   One of the things I often ask my leadership coachees to do is consciously focus on the successes they have had (big or small).   Too often we focus on our failures and this depletes our confidence – start a discipline of focusing on your successes and talents.

• Be clear about your purpose

When we feel clear about our purpose our confidence levels rise.  Lack of purpose gives us the feeling of not really knowing what we are doing and what the right things are to do now.  What are you really here to do?  Get crystal clear on your primary purpose so you know where to focus. (Next weeks blog digs deeper into purpose…….)

• Be clear about your level of responsibility (lose the guilt……)

Leaders who take responsibility for everything everyone does and feels in their teams, very quickly lose confidence and become ineffective.   There are many things leaders are responsible for, however, trying to take everyones’ burdens onto your shoulders is a sure way to develop a guilt ridden and guilt driven mindset.   Leaders need to be clear about exactly what they can influence and what they are responsible for and what is the responsibility of others.  Guilt kills leadership – please lose yours!

We will dive more deeply into these topics and discuss many more ways to build your leadership confidence in coming weeks, so sign up to get my best tips and thinking every week.