hexascope

10 Strategies for Building Confidence in Others

Insecure people who won’t try are frustrating. Insecurity stagnates. Confidence explodes outward, fear implodes. There’s little success or progress apart from personal confidence.

The problem of confidence:

You cannot make others feel confident.

Security and insecurity are functions of the self. Successful leaders, however, help others find confidence, assuming they want to find it.

The power of confidence:

Confident people dare, learn, stretch, and take on new challenges. Confidence takes you further than insecurity.

The process of confidence:

Joel Garfinkle responded with the calm voice of experience when I asked how leaders can build confidence in others. “Ask them how they overcame an obstacle or succeeded in the past. Everyone has achieved something.”

Joel’s been running behind his daughter’s bicycle teaching her to ride. Even a small children can ride faster and longer than dads can run. On the other end of the phone I smiled and bobbed my head as if Joel could see. Been there done that.

Learning to ride a bike is one of life’s great accomplishments. Joel’s daughter, like many of us, has a confidence-building experience in her past – something to build on. The more I remembered mine the better I felt.

The platform of confidence:

“Ask how they succeeded in the past,” Joel continued, “What did they do? How did they feel?”

Confidence is a function of successful risk-taking. Take them back to times when they didn’t take the easy out.

9 more principles for building confidence in others:

1. Allow employees to be accountable for their actions.
2. Provide decision-making opportunities.
3. Delegate important projects.
4. Acknowledge risk-taking behaviors.
5. Target high potentials.
6. Find potential on the fringe. Look beyond high profile individuals.
7. Assign stretch assignments.
8. Know what motives them.
9. Ask for answers to important problems.