Core Confidence in the digital era
Angela Mellak MCIM
Entrepreneur, Marketing and Business Strategist, Speaker and Board Advisor
I first had the pleasure in meeting Kate Boorer over a year ago and from the get go have been blown away by her passion of supporting women in the workforce and focus to train and empower the leaders of tomorrow. I'm also blessed to and honoured to call Kate a friend, I'm delighted to share with you my sit down with her.
First a bit about Kate Boorer
Kate is one of Australia’s leading experts on career, confidence and personal brand. She is a sought-after speaker mentor and facilitator who helps CEO’s, leaders and professional women achieve commercial, professional and personal success. Her strong corporate experience and financial acumen combined with years of working as a consultant, facilitator and coach provide a unique blend of skills and experience that guarantees practical and commercial outcomes for her clients.
Kate’s an active thought leader and advocates for gender equality and founder of Young Professional Women Australia – an organisation with a collective voice of more than 4,000 members committed to supporting the progression of professional women in their early-mid career. For over 5 years the organization has provided free advice, education and networking events as well as professional development programs that empower and inspire women to challenge the rules, ultimately becoming role models and change makers in their organisations.
- Kate, how do you spot a confident versus less confident person? What are your tips for someone to appear more confident just by adjusting a few simple things?
I believe this is very much a perception piece as when we do workshops we often have people tell us, ‘everyone thinks that I’m confident but inside I’m not confident at all’.
In the book we talk about, taking action, making a decision and moving forward, backing yourself, being able to navigate failure - so resilience, being honest regardless of how hard it might be, showing up and being yourself. Demonstrating you have that self awareness and also being curious, someone who can open up to a different opinion and not take offence or take it personally really shows that they’re not threatened by others. The 8 elements of core confidence that we talk about in the book are really what can make someone appear more confident.
- Do you think that the digital era has helped or hindered confidence?
If you talk and listen to a lot of commentators on this topic around the impact on teens they would say it's significantly hampering confidence and one of the orientations in the book is that Comparison Corrodes Confidence.
I think the digital era brings us closer to our perceived version of what we want others to see us to be and so often there’s a challenge there around authenticity. You have ability to craft your personal brand which can be great but if it's not authentic that can be pulled down.
If we think about things like Facebook we only publish all the highs, we don't publish the lows, and so it's challenging because there’s this level of expectation of what life looks like and it's made it very easy and almost unavoidable for us as humans to compare ourselves to peers and friends. It's a natural human behaviour to compare ourselves, ultimately it's a survival mechanism of wanting to belong to our tribe.
This piece of comparing ourselves to something that is not necessarily real is what I believe to be most challenging in the digital era. That combined with the expectations and the rate of information exchange has increased pressure, pressure to be perfect, the pressure to do more quicker, faster, easier.
- How can confidence make or break a career?
Some recent clients come to mind who needed to ask for pay rises. I’m talking significant $30,000 pay rises. It would have been very easy for these particular clients to have just been quiet or taken what was given to them. I had one client who had been in an organisation for two years and well and truly earned her stripes. She had been underpaid for at least 12 months as she’d been employed to do a role and was fundamentally doing that role and 50% of another role. With coaching and preparation she had the confidence to speak to her employer about career progression and the need for something new, she was quite transparent in the fact that she would need to move on if that couldn't happen. So they offered her a role and then was told that remuneration would be discussed at the six month mark after she had met all of her milestones. So you know you really have to back yourself particularly when being given an opportunity that is valuable to you and it would increase your professional assets.
And it’s interesting because yes she got what she wanted but it didn't feel good because it felt like she was in trouble. Often standing up and being confident will sometimes mean you won't always be liked and one of the direct challenges around confidence is that sometimes standing up for ourselves and being confident may be perceived as aggressive, it may be perceived as challenging the status quo and we have to be ok with the discomfort of that and potentially the impacts of that.
- There are many stats and research that suggests that men are inherently more confident than women. Do you find this and if so, why do you think this is?
Yes, there are many stats that suggest that men are inherently more confident than women.
We’ve done recent work with some senior male colleagues of ours and without a doubt men and women both have challenges with confidence, my experience is it is more inherent in females and my sense is it is very much around the need to be liked. When you read the research it goes back to how we’re raised as kids, little girls are often sitting and talking at recess wanting to be part of the tribe and often boys are outside playing, falling down and failing. So it is a different dynamic influencing each gender at a young age. Incredibly complicated though and that is really just the surface. This is why we have written the book so that each individual can take control and influence themselves based on their own life experience.
- What drove you to write your new book Core Confidence?
We were running one of our first cohorts and the subject of confidence came up and I asked the question, ‘What is confidence anyway?’ and no one had any way to describe what confidence was in a clear and articulate manner, except it was a feeling.
So I asked myself, how do we achieve a goal if we can’t even articulate what it is? That was the beginning of 18 months of research. Reading books, researching data and working with one client on her specific experience of confidence. After that, my colleague Fiona and I started doing confidence workshops and that took the work deeper. The workshops were centred around the concept that we've all got core confidence we don’t need to find it, or go and build it, it's that we need to stay connected with it. We have confidence but we have strategies and self sabotage where we give our confidence away.
Totally agree and behalf of us all thank you for putting this book together and sharing your invaluable insights! To purchase the book head to https://coreconfidence.com.au/
Join us 3rd October to meet Kate help you with your own personal brand in this Digital Era. We will also look at happiness, in the workplace and how global organisations are working to ensure we they are focussed on the crossroads between psychology and work.
- 3rd October 2018
- 6-8:30pm
- Nibbles on arrival
- Pommery Door Prize
- Book signing https://coreconfidence.com.au/
- The George on Collins- 162 Collins Street, Melbourne 3000
- https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/confidence-happiness-in-the-digital-era-tickets-49808408290?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
What an incredible night we have planned with these two superstars, Kate Boorer & Rachel Service. Kate Boorer will take us on a journey looking deeper into what makes us confident, highlighting all the research she has uncovered and provide practical examples of what it takes to grow your own core confidence. She will outline how can this help you with your own personal brand in this Digital Era.
Rachel Service will take us on a journey to look at Happiness, Rachel exclusively speaks of opportunities for businesses to retain, develop and grow their people. Whilst providing key tools to help people ace in life and career, she will outline hacks to find happiness in the digital era for both companies and individuals.
Many thanks,
Angela Mellak MCIM
Judge for Anthills 2018 Top 100 Innovative Companies
Ranking Top10 LinkedIn influencer 2017
Director and Strategist - Digital White Space
Co-founder - Digital Women's Network
Georges on Collins
Level 3, 162 Collins street, Melbourne 3000
M: +61(0)466 619 631
https://digitalwhitespace.com.au
https://www.digitalwomensnetwork.com
https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/angelamellak/
“Your smile is your logo, your personality is your business card and how you leave people feeling after they dealt with you becomes your trademark".. Angela Mellak
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