Grow with Indeed Flex: Confidence

Definition: Confidence

“The quality of being certain of your abilities or of having trust in people, plans, or the future: She has the confidence to walk into a room of strangers and immediately start a conversation. He’s completely lacking in confidence.”

“Skill and confidence are an unconquered army” – George Herbert

Ask any professional coach and they’ll tell you that skill and talent alone is not enough to succeed. Confidence and belief in your abilities, make the average exceptional. They’ll also tell you the hardest thing to develop in anyone, isn’t skill or talent, it’s confidence.

Confidence is having belief in yourself. It’s the ability to be able to recognize your successes, trust your abilities, and be resilient enough to bounce back from bumps in the road. It can manifest in various forms such as self-esteem, self-assurance, self-reliance, and self-possession.

Why confidence matters in your career

Opportunities. Confident people are more likely to take on new challenges and pursue opportunities that can lead to career advancement and growth. Research shows that how confident people think you are, also indicates to them how competent they think you are. Workplaces look at who they think is the most competent when deciding to offer opportunity. Inspiring belief in others encourages them to offer opportunity to you.

Decision making. Grow with Indeed Flex aims to help you build your self awareness, but that’s only one part of a successful career. You need to convert your ideas into action for them to have any impact on your life. Taking action requires you to be brave and make a lot of decisions. Developing confidence can help you to make better decisions because you trust your abilities, judgement, and experience more.

Resilience. A squiggly career is all about change. The world of work is evolving more rapidly than any other time in human history. Your ability to cope with change, or ‘bounce back’ enables you to work with challenges, and learn from failures. Confidence helps you to handle pressure in any workplace and bounce back from any career setbacks.

Confidence myths

Career experts Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis describe barriers to confidence as your ‘confidence gremlins’. These are the things that make us get in our own way at work and stop us reaching our potential. An example of a confidence gremlin may be a fear of public speaking, which could stop you being offered a promotion opportunity as the role would require speaking publicly.

Before embarking on a plan to ‘cage your gremlins’, Helen & Sarah say it’s important you don’t let some commonly held beliefs about confidence hold you back.

Myth 1. Extroverts are confident, introverts are shy

Extroversion is often coupled with confidence and introverts are often assumed to be shy. In basic terms, extroversion and introversion is about where you draw energy from. Extroverts draw energy from spending time with others, introverts draw energy from spending time alone. Being an extrovert or introvert bares no impact on your confidence or how confident you can become.

Myth 2. Confident people are arrogant

There is a difference between confidence and arrogance. Arrogance is about having an exaggerated idea of your abilities. People who display arrogance often lack self-awareness and fail to understand the impact they have on others. Confidence is about certainty in reality with a high sense of self awareness. Developing confidence will not make you arrogant.

Myth 3. Confidence is something you are born with

Confidence is a skill, it can be learned, practiced, and improved. Some people may have more of a natural talent for confidence, but this doesn’t mean they don’t have moments of doubt. Everybody finds themselves in situations where they lack confidence, those who are successful continuously work to develop their confidence as a skill.

By exploring the materials below, and completing the short guided exercises coming next week, this module will help you to understand your confidence gremlins and develop strategies for caging them. As well as how to recognize your successes and evaluate and build your support system, allowing you to go on building your confidence to succeed at work.

Recommended Watch: 6 Behaviors To Increase Your Confidence (10 mins)

Recommended Listen: Building Up Your Self Belief (17 mins)