A common stereotype about business leaders is they are full of confidence, but you know the truth. You struggle with feeling like an imposter. You’re not always sure of what decision is the right decision. You know how to put on a confident face and say all the right things but that’s not really how you feel inside.
If you’re struggling with your confidence as a leader right now, here are 5 things you can do quickly to boost your confidence.
1. Focus on the process
Your confidence as a leader doesn’t need to come from your skills and abilities; it can come from following a trusted process that works. You can feel confident because you know the process is right and will lead to the results you want.
Here’s a simple example. Last I went skydiving. I had never been skydiving before. I didn’t know the first thing to do and absolutely would have panicked and messed it all up if I was left to my own skill, experience, and ability. Thankfully, I wasn’t. There was an experienced instructor that shared the process with me and walked me through it. As long as I did what he told me and trusted the process, I was safe.
There are areas of your business that you can apply this lesson. Look for processes that are proven to work that you and your team can implement and follow.
2. Change your self talk
It’s easy to go throughout the day without paying attention to your thoughts, but the self-talk you have going through your head impacts how you feel about yourself. If you’re constantly running through a list of what you’re doing wrong and struggling with, it’s hard to feel confident.
Spend a day paying attention to your thoughts. If you catch yourself thinking negative things about yourself, replace it with a positive thought. This will feel like a lot of work at first if your thoughts have been running rampant, but it will get easier over time.
3. Review your successes
When you focus more on your successes than your failures, it helps build confidence. SPEARity business coaches in Milwaukee encourage you to write down at least successes every day. This process is even built into the SPEARity app. Recognizing the things that you’ve accomplished throughout the day can give you a boost of confidence.
4. Realign your failures
Many people struggle to see how thinking about their failures can lead to confidence, but stick with me for a minute. If you fail at something and then try to sweep it under the rug, you’ll be left with that nagging feeling of failing. Who wants to live like that?
Instead, if you fail at something or things don’t go as planned, take time to analyze the situation and see what happened. Then, you can determine what steps to take to correct the situation or not make the same mistakes next time around. This step of realigning failures is an important part of the SPEAR process and is also built into the app to make it easy for you to do.
Creating a plan to improve the areas you’ve failed in helps you feel more confident as you move ahead that you won’t experience the same results next time.
5. Achieve a small goal
Quick wins can give you a boost of confidence. Find a small goal that you can set and achieve. Or, choose a task that you’ve been putting off that you know needs to get done and do it. These small actions can help you feel more confident to start taking action towards larger goals or completing big tasks on your list.
If you’re feeling stuck on a project, it might be that you haven’t broken it down into small enough steps to easily be actionable. If that’s the case, look at your project and see how you can split it down further into tasks you can start taking action on today. Having a clear plan in place can also help you feel more confident as you move forward.
Focus on the long game
It’s always helpful to have some quick things you can do to boost your confidence, but it’s also important to develop your leadership skills and confidence for the long haul. Working with a business coach can help you identify what obstacles are holding you back as a leader. Then, you can start making real, lasting progress in growing confidence as a leader. Contact SPEARity today to get started.
