Training Confidence

It must be assumed that the entire purpose for training and education is to enhance the confidence of the human, with skills to enable action through knowledge and understanding of a particular field of activity. This confidence, should it be self-generated, or should it be adopted as others are seen as having it? Which could be more valuable? I would propose that any inherent confidence is massively more accessible than one that is adopted. How can someone be trained in the experience of confidence without helping them, first, dig through the depths of their own self to reach in there and pull out what it theirs? Maybe the skillset can be trained, maybe the knowledge can be taught, but the confidence, where does that begin and end. Having the knowledge and insight into a subject does not always give you the confidence to relate it in the way that you feel it. Believing in yourself is actually very hard to do. It requires all kinds of thinking to be managed and maintained.

I can, at times, feel very frail to the idea of sharing something that is bigger than myself. My lack of confidence in myself can distort the honesty and integrity of what I am trying to accomplish. The result is, not the translation of what I want to share but rather what I fear, and this provides the fertile ground for more of that seed to grow and become everything that it was not supposed to. Surely the point of being involved in training is, first to help the human to find their own strength and conviction about what they are doing and why they are doing it? It seems only reasonable that every business wants to have trained, skilled employees fighting for the cause that the business beats its drums too. What can business do to help?

Every environment is, in most cases, the social platform that we gather in, to having our waking hours be met with new experiences wherein we record memories and share experiences. Those experiences, through-out the day, charge us with a kaleidoscope of emotion that enhance the future recall of the memory charged with recording the experience. If the experience is great but the environment in which we had the experience is dull, then the emotional memory, attached to the experience has no reason to be recalled easily. There was nothing great about the experience. Now add to this dull experience the skillset that you wish the employee to learn. It would seem that the employee has no internal need to learn the new skillset as the environment has blunted the emotional fuel to energise the foundation from which the learning must take place. The environment, being discussed, is not the building, but, rather, those that are in the building. Business does not teach the organic environmental needs that we, as humans, need to thrive and populate emotional strength in. When an environment is under-developed, what would you expect from your employee? When the environment is without order and leadership, would you expect them to, over time, not be affected by that?

We, as humans, have been around long enough to have realised that the environment matters. Then why do we entrust this platform of emotional panic to be managed by someone who has no knowledge of its existence, no skillset in which to gain perspective and no confidence to engage it. Why is the ‘HR budget’ for training not being spent on the very best solution to company continuity and sustainability but rather on plugging the holes that leak out the ooze of daily issues and stale management ideals that have long been proven to be less effective.

The future of business lies, first, in the hands of the confident, not the skilled or knowledgeable. When you have the courage to push through the old concepts of what is good for your company and start being responsible with how you came up with the way in which you inherited your concept of management, you will instantly recognise that your priorities must change. The confidence of all the people within your organisation is the true difference between you and your competitors. When you example and teach confidence to your people, and you create that, as the cornerstone of their environment, you give them the courage to weather the emotional kaleidoscope of the everyday business experience. Those memories are heightened, and the skill memory recall is more powerful, and the business is better for it. Find your confidence and teach it from within, don’t use ‘bumper stickers’. Find who you are and why you are doing this, and you will dig out your fears. Face your fears with courage and you will find your confidence.