Most managers and leaders have personally experienced the difference between a good employee and a bad one. While hiring processes are designed to weed out those who aren’t qualified for the position, there are often important things that are overlooked and even some things that you might not have been able to spot until working with the person. One thing that is commonly overlooked when hiring managers focus too much on the resume is confidence. And since confident people make better employees, it’s important to learn how to boost employee confidence.
Let’s get a base understanding of confidence
If you felt yourself getting a little upset, angry, or argumentative from reading the title, let me explain a few things. These are going to be important as you continue reading.
- Confident does not equal arrogant. Many people have this idea that if someone is confident it means they’re arrogant. That is not true at all. In fact, I personally believe that most of the arrogant people that we come across have a lack of confidence. They’re putting on an act so no one will know. The majority of people who have healthy self confidence are not arrogant.
- Anyone can grow their confidence. Some people have this belief that confidence is a trait some have and others don’t. That’s not true. You can learn how to grow your confidence and doing so improves life in many ways.
- Confidence doesn’t have to come from your natural abilities. One of the things that SPEARity teaches is that we can develop process confidence. Even if we’re not feeling confident in our own abilities, we can trust proven processes and have confidence in their ability to produce results. And even though you feel confident because of the process, it still helps you start to feel more confident overall.
Why confident people make better employees
Here are a few reasons why confident employees make great employees:
- They speak up. When employees are confident in the work they do, they’re more willing to speak up and share ideas. You don’t just want peopel that show up to work for a paycheck. You want a company culture where employees feel comfortable sharing ways the company can improve. If someone isn’t confident, they’re not likely going to share ideas because they’re going to be afraid upper managment might not like it.
- They are more decisive. Indecision in the workplace costs time and money. You want employees that are confident in their ability to make a decision when they need to. You don’t want employees that are constantly running to you for approval when they should be able to make the decision on their own.
- They’re better at handling pressure. Let’s face it, work can be stressful. If you have an employee that needs to be able to pivot when needed and not crack under pressure, confidence goes a long way. f
- They encourage others. Those that have true confidence tend to bring others up even if they’re not trying to be leaders.
- They are more positive. If you’ve ever worked with a negative employee, you know just how important this is. One negative employee can spread like disease throughout an organization.
These are just a few of the reasons why you want to have confident employees. But what happens if you have good employees that lack confidence? They’re doing good work but you see there is an opportunity for growth. Maybe you notice that they have a hard time overcoming failure. You see their potential, but they don’t fully see it.
If this is the case, as the leader, you can help them grow their confidence.
How to help employees grow confidence
1. Set them up for success
If you constantly assign employees tasks that are beyond their skills and abilities, you’re setting them up to fail. It doesn’t take long for this type of behavior to destroy an employee’s confidence. Instead, work on giving them projects and tasks you know they can succeed at. As they see their success, it helps them grow their confidence. Then, you can continue to assign them greater, or more difficult, projects along the way.
2. Provide them the training they need
In a perfect world, we’d be able to just hire the right person for a position and they would have all the skills they needed to be successful at it. But this isn’t a perfect world and this isn’t typically how the hiring process works. Instead, you hire the best fit for the position from the applicants even though there are usually some gaps in what you’re looking for. And even if they check every box, there is usually still a learning curve for new hires as they adjust to your organization.
If you have an employee that could use a confidence boost, work on identifying their inefficiencies and then provide the training to address those areas. Not only will this help your employee to have more confidence in their ability and skills but it can build trust between the employee and the business as they see that you want them to be successful.
3. Help them recognize their successes
Learning to acknowledge and celebrate success is a simple but effective way to build confidence. That’s why we built the concept into the SPEARity app. It’s as simple as getting employees to track three successes that they have each day. It only takes a few minutes but it can have a big impact on employees that need a boost of confidence.
You can also take this a step further by recognizing individual employee and team successes in front of the entire organization.
4. Change how they view failure
I think we have a society full of people who struggle with feeling like they are failures or “not good enough” every time they fail at accomplishing something. This is detrimental to building confidence.
We have to change the way that our employees view failures. This is also built into the SPEARity app. When you “fail” at accomplishing something, you have two choices. You can feel bad about it or you can learn where to go from there. The SPEAR process teaches you to acknowledge your failures and identify what steps you need to take to turn them into successes.
This process helps start to remove some of those negative feelings that we naturally feel when we fail at doing something. And more importantly, it helps us overcome the obstacle and keep moving the needle forward.
5. Tap into their area of expertise
You may have a fantastic employee in the wrong position. If you want to see where the natural confidence is in your employees, tap into the area of their natural ability and area of interest. This is where they’ll be more excited to share ideas. You’ll see their creativity start working. They may seem like a different person completely.
You want employees operating in their “zone of genius”. This is where you’re going to see their best work and it will be easier for them to build confidence.
Get the support you need
You have a lot that you’re already focusing on to keep your business running smoothly. So why not partner with a company that has the experience in training, coaching, and leadership development, as well as the tech option needed to support your growing team. Schedule a demo today to see how the SPEARity app can help your business and team.
