Confidence is key in leadership

In today's world personal development and growth have become everyone's biggest focus and the reasons are justified.

Your confidence is what enables you to showcase your strengths, it is what makes you stand out in a sea of people sharing the same passion.

Especially when it comes to leadership and management, confidence certainly goes hand in hand with success.?

Anyone who wants to be a great leader should start working on their confidence levels — in the end, it's the fuel that drives our determination.

Why confidence is a MUST for leaders?

When you're a leader, people look up to you. They want to believe you, they want to be sure that you've got a plan.?

And people can't trust you and have confidence in you unless you develop confidence in yourself first.

If COVID taught us one thing, it is that life is uncertain. And sometimes all you're left with is faith and hope. For employees that faith comes from believing in the abilities of their leadership.?

If they're sure that their leadership is strong enough to get the company out of a crisis, they can be hopeful enough to work through that crisis with you.

That diving faith starts from the confidence you have in yourself.

Undesired Feeling/Beliefs & Impact of Believing It

According to an online survey of nearly 1,700 CEOs, senior executives, and non-executive board directors in 46 countries, all the hustle and fatigue of managing through the pandemic, years of disruption, and a challenging geopolitical and macroeconomic environment is taking a toll on executives .

The pandemic has left leaders all over the world feeling low. CEOs all over the world feel their leadership teams' ability to tackle issues like digital technology, climate change, and diversity has become rusty.

Operations can be affected in several ways if a CEO lacks confidence. As a result, middle management can be affected badly.?

Lack of confidence in leadership hampers the mindset of the entire workforce . The middle management pays the price for this, as they're the ones who have to connect motivated workers with the disillusioned, though demanding, C-suite.

The company's growth mindset is blocked by a lack of confidence. If CEOs see fewer possibilities, so do middle managers. Without a growth mindset, the brain is less stable, and people feel less productive. Even when the employees feel secure, there are high chances that strategies can't be executed. In the end, grit needs a growth mindset to be effective.

Corrective feedback isn't always taken positively when the workforce lacks this growth mindset. If people are on the wrong path, they might either ignore feedback altogether or take it the wrong way. As a result, employees feel lost out of control, and less mindful.?

Confidence boosts motivation and activates mechanisms in the brain that make you feel in control. Executives might not know that they are expecting the worst because the brain introduces this bias under conditions of uncertainty. From the CEO, the whole company can become a victim of this bias.

In nutshell, low confidence:

• Hampers growth mindset.
• Increases uncertainty.
• Decreases motivation.
• Induces insecurity.
• Decreases control.
• And alters responses to feedback.?

Workers will not be internally driven or responsive. And this is what causes problems with middle managers as they try to answer to the expectations of the C-suite and manage employees.

Desired Feeling/Beliefs & Positives of Shifting To This Pattern

Being a confident leader gives you a lot of benefits.

Research studies by Galinsky have confirmed that people with greater confidence are more highly regarded.

The reason for this is that our brain uses a shortcut to quickly form an impression of a person. The bias here is called the confidence heuristic .

This bias automatically makes us give greater respect to people with confidence. This makes us think that if someone believes in what they are saying, they are probably right.

When it comes to skill-based tasks like giving a speech or learning to play piano, a person with stronger self-confidence will more readily take on the challenge, and persist until they reach their goal. Their belief in themselves gives them a knack of faith and stubbornness that helps take them to their goals.

If you really believe you will succeed at something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t believe, you’ll find an excuse.

__ Jim Rohan.

On the other hand, people lacking self-confidence tend to make excuses and talk themselves out of trying (it's probably not gonna work, so why even try?), they also face self doubt and give up quickly even if they start.

As noted by Dr. Scott Kaufman, Scientific Director of The Imagination Institute at the University of Pennsylvania :

“A bulk of research shows that when people are put in situations where they are expected to fail, their performance does plummet. They turn into different people. Their head literally shuts down, and they end up confirming the expectations. When they’re expected to win, their performance shoots back up. Same person, different expectations.”

Confidence enables people to take challenges and grow. It helps them look the fear in the eye and move past it.

Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.

— George Addai.

According to research by psychologists Yerkes and Dodson, for people to operate at their highest capacity (where they feel fully alive), they need to experience ‘optimal’ anxiety. I.e. their stress levels are slightly higher than normal.

Confidence enables people to handle the state of optimal anxiety better than people who lack confidence .

You can become a more confident CEO by following these steps:

Confidence isn't something that stays stable over the years. Sometimes events shake us and our confidence. But you can regain your confidence by making some conscious effort:

1) Challenge your thoughts.

Just because you're used to getting things around your business get done in a certain way or the business has an ingrained attitude, things don't have to stay the same way forever.

The world is ever changing, and you have to keep up. Be prepared to challenge your established norms when tackling issues that have social and business relevance,

2) Accept that learning is a lifelong process.?

Accept that as a person you need to learn and evolve constantly, learn from setbacks instead of letting them push you down.?

Also incorporate this learning culture into your company.

Stop worrying about the jobs AI will replace. Instead, think about the new opportunities it'll give way to – the skills gap it is creating and what you need to do to fill that gap.

Build stronger links to educational establishments and help shift to more holistic educational programs, which may help to promote soft skills and a problem-solving mindset.?

3) Develop realistic self-awareness.?

You need to know where you're good at and you need to accept where you're not. Self awareness enables a leader to realistically analyse the situation and find a solution.

To do that, you need to know your own, your company's and your team's strengths and weaknesses.?

Self awareness will help you make firm and legit decisions and help you stay confident.