Excuse me, I think you dropped your confidence.

A few years ago I saw Jerry Seinfeld do standup live and he did a bit on people who say "it is what it is" and how it's one of the most useless statements you can make.

"I'd rather someone blew clear air into my face than say it is what it is".

I think of this anytime I hear someone say "just be confident" to someone who is lacking in confidence. I'm confident that in 99.9% of cases, that person lacking in confidence would have tried the strategy of just being confident.

Unfortunately I've spoken to more people who have lost their confidence in their jobs with the primary reason being they were laid off from their jobs. Or (possibly worse), suedo-laid off which is when a company uses performance as a reason to terminate when the truth is they wanted to let someone go without paying for a redundancy.

Other instances have been from one manager, one company or one CEO. That one experience has sapped the confidence they had going into the role and going into their next role, they are a shell of their former selves.

If you have felt your confidence drop or know someone that's lost theirs due to this, here's a couple of things to note:

Layoffs don't mean low performance

I did a reference check for someone who had been made laid off and I was speaking to their direct manager and the conversation went like this:

"Was there a reason they were laid off and others in the team weren't?"

"None, they were our best performer. I wasn't even consulted on who should stay or go in my team and to be honest, I'm still p*ssed about it".

(I then proceeded to try and head hunt their reference check, ALWAYS BE RECRUITING AM I RIGHT?)

Often when layoffs are done, it's a spreadsheet with job titles and salaries with the people making the decisions unaware of performance of individuals. Sometimes teams are disbanded, sometimes it's last one in, first one out.

Do not assume you or anyone that has been made redundant was a low performer, it's not always the case.

Sometimes it's just a bad fit

In most instances, performance is opinion and subjective. There is almost always context beyond KPIs that a Manager can chose to ignore or highlight so where you've been made to feel that you're not good at your job can often actually be from poor management, personality conflicts, poor hiring processes or simply someone doesn't like you.

No one is liked by 100% of people, no one. If Mother Teresa was on LinkedIn she'd still get some haters. Think about the ex that you hate the most but someone else still likes or even loves them.

Get specific about why you or they should be confident

If you're speaking to a friend or colleague that's lacking confidence, instead of telling them to be confident try remind them of the specific reasons they should be confident; That process was a mess until you got here. You still have the biggest sale in history. No one in that team has lasted more than 9 months under that manager.

You can remind yourself of these things too and it doesn't have to be someone else reminding you of your achievements.

That little voice in your head, is an idiot

It's most likely that little voice inside your head affecting your confidence, right?

Like George, my little man is also an idiot and I've learnt to ignore him as much as possible and listen to feedback others have given me and focus on facts, not feelings. When I was in agency recruitment and feeling the confidence go, I'd look at my sales figures and take the ifs and buts out of it.

Facts, not feelings.

Be proactive in your praise

Don't wait for someone to bring up in conversation that their confidence is low. As an example, during my most recent job hunt I was having one of those days where there weren't many opportunities around and those negative thoughts started to creep in.

An old boss messaged me to see how I was going and this sentence changed my day and stuck with me for much longer:

If I had a role for you, I'd hire you on the spot

It's also an under rated career strategy for yourself to stay in touch with ex colleagues and send them reminders of how good they were to work with.

Top up their confidence so that even when it dips, there's still plenty left in the tank.