Creating Confidence
Mark Facciani
I help companies accelerate by building high performing sales development teams and guide SDRs to their sales breakthroughs
February was a tough month.
Maybe it was the shine of New Year wearing off. Perhaps it was the winter doldrums. At the end of the day, as much as I like figuring out the reason why, as famous football coach Bill Parcells used to say, “You are what your record says you are.” As the calendar turned to March, I was excited to put February in the rearview mirror.
I knew there were two ways to move forward in March. One was to hit the panic button: begin to question myself and the capability of my team, and project doomsday scenarios about what could be.
I chose the other option.
I rediscovered a text that I had first encountered kicking off 2022: The Confident Mind. My longtime friend and mentor Dr. Mark McLaughlin originally put it on my radar screen, and it was a home run. Authored by Dr. Nate Zinsser, the Director of Performance Psychology at West Point, I found it to be a must-read for anyone who is serious about mindset as it relates to performance.
The central theme of the book is this: if you want to win in your chosen arena, you must attain your “first victory” between the ears. If you don’t believe in the power of your mindset on your outcomes, then you can stop reading here. If you do, here are some personal takeaways that were beautiful for me to revisit over the past week:
#1 The Silver Bullet and the Sand Dune
For most of my life, I’ve had this view of confidence that it is a silver bullet. Confidence is elusive and magical, like the snitch in Harry Potter Quidditch, but once you capture it, all is well. You win and keep winning because you have permanently attained confidence.
Dr. Zinsser proposes a very different view of confidence, and one that I have since adopted. He offered the metaphor of a sand dune. Every day, waves roll in, and slowly diminish the size of the dune; therefore, regular efforts to fortify the dunes are required to provide the necessary security to guard the beachfront.
The book goes on to introduce the idea of confidence as a practice. Systematically, by doing the daily work to journal our wins and our learnings, Dr. Zinsser offers that we can incrementally build our confidence every day. Although the daily waves roll in and erode the dunes, we can still be a net positive in confidence if we execute these actions.
When big wins happen, of course there are bigger confidence “deposits.” However, if we only make these confidence deposits when we win, then we are vulnerable. The daily grind erodes our confidence without our awareness, and when the occasional big wave of adversity washes ashore, our confidence will plummet to dangerous lows. However, if we do the daily work, we will always be at a higher confidence threshold, thus minimizing the impact of the big wave. ?
#2 Keep Shooting Mentality
When most people are in a slump, they get tight. After a bad first half in basketball going 0 for 8 for the field, or a sales month where you put up a goose-egg, the tendency is to get tight, be conservative, and go small.
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Where people like the late, great Kobe Bryant thrived was in the opposite approach. After a bad shooting half, he would get excited. If he went 0 for 10 from the field, he knew that as a 45% career shooter, he was bound to start making baskets. He would hype himself up for a great second half, believing that he was set to go on a hot streak and make his first 8, 9, or 10 shots of the half!
I think this is a phenomenal approach to apply anytime you see a dip in your numbers. Instead of telling yourself some self-defeating story, know what you are capable of, and apply your confidence in past results to what happens next, channeling positivity and confidence into the next stretch!
#3 The Bus Driver
Dr. Zinsser tells a great story at the end of the book about an experience he had back when he was a Ph.D. student. He was attending a conference in New Orleans, and was on an early morning bus ride. The bus driver greeted him with a booming, “Good morning!” and continued to greet passengers in the same fashion when they entered.
After the bus was full, the bus driver once again addressed the riders. “Good morning! It’s a beautiful day in New Orleans! I hope you’re all having a good day. If you’re having a bad day, CHANGE YOUR MIND and have a good day!”
This simple anecdote was one of my favorite parts of the book. It dawned on me that on a regular basis, I am guilty of placing a negative label on something. A bad day, a bad week – and as I look at my younger days, even a self-appointed “bad year.”
There’s no wizard behind the curtain pulling the puppet strings; any of us, on any given day, can choose to change our mind and shift the narrative if we have the awareness and presence to do so. As I reflected on February, I realized in a few moments I vocalized that it was a “tough month.” In retrospect, if I had confronted that statement sooner, I could have changed my mind and carved a different path - as opposed to accepting it as a certainty that out of my control.
I’m so excited I rediscovered this book. As I forge ahead into March, I am renewed with the discipline to build my sand dunes, adopt the “keep shooting” mentality, and when applicable, change my mind!
So whether you’re already winning that first victory or this article served as a wakeup call, I will leave you with this quote from Sun Tzu that bookends this text:
“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”
Best of luck in winning that first victory as you head into battle this week!