The Confidence You Don’t Want To Hear About
Here are two things that no one really likes to hear about confidence.
Being confident doesn’t mean you are competent
If you don’t have the skills and competencies you need, focusing on confidence is a lazy shortcut.
Wanting to feel confident when you don’t believe you are able is about focussing on what others think about your and how you are seen - not the actual merits of what difference you make.
It’s an attractive proposition to think, oh if only I was more confident everything would be better.
It’s also an exceptionally lazy and useless piece of feedback to offer on performance reviews. ‘You need to be more confident’.
(Next time you get told this pause., Ask how specifically you need to be more confident. Then ask yourself, do I actually feel I confident in those situations? someone telling you how you feel is their interpretation of your actions. Doesn’t make it true. Then ask what behaviours they are seeing which are suggesting you don’t feel confident- confidence it how you feel, competence is your actual ability)
When you think about confidence, replace it with the word competence first of all and see what that reveals.
If you are starting out in your career, you’ve set up a new business, are returning to learning, in a new company, a new country - you may not have the knowledge, skills, experience, know-how you need to achieve goals, ambitions.
You might not feel comfortable in certain environments because there are things you need to learn. Not feeling confident is what is signposting you to where you need to grow.
When we have all the skills and the knowledge we need, we’ve grafted, failed, earned our expertise - there we find confidence. We don’t confident our way to competence but we do competence our way to confidence.
Overly confident incompetent people are dangerous. Don’t aspire to be one of those.
Aspire to be a person who can appropriately appraise their level of competence. That asks others for feedback and assesses the merits of it. That doesn’t want to be confident everywhere because then you aren’t growing and learning.
Recognise real confidence is hard earned. Through fails and falls. Graft and grit. Successes and wins.