Why leaders need to look at confidence as systemic

This week, I’m finishing off the series of emails about confidence that I began before my summer break. In this final email, I’m examining confidence as a system.

We often think of confidence as something that individuals possess. But, in reality, confidence is more often systemic. We see this around us every day. One of the most obvious is money. ?How much of the money that you spend do you ever see or touch? What is the actual value of that physical note or coin you receive? When banks lend money for a major purchase, does that money even exist? Money is ultimately a system of confidence.

Driving is another system of confidence – confidence in other people’s ability to drive in a safe way, their confidence in your ability to drive safely, confidence in the vehicles we’re travelling in. Yesterday, as I drove into my local city, I thought about this as a pedestrian crossed the road at pedestrian lights. The individual started to walk when the ‘Walk’ symbol appeared, confident that the big powerful machines hurtling towards him would indeed obey the instruction from the traffic lights and stop to allow him to do so safely.

Much of daily life depends on a system of confidence – it isn’t just our own confidence that counts – it’s confidence in many other people and things all coming together to work together effectively.

Confidence within business is systemic too and is something that leaders must actively develop and protect. The thing is, that system of confidence does begin with an individual – and that individual is you, the leader.

The good news is that building this system doesn’t require magic. It simply requires good leadership behaviours – setting clear and fair deliverables; honest, respectful conversations; transparency and willingness to share information...You can create this system.

But, as with anything that’s worth creating, there are challenges. The three main challenges that leaders describe to me are:

1. It isn’t always easy to set clear and fair deliverables – we work in complex environments where required deliverables change more often than we might want. In setting deliverables that work for one part of a business, another part may be hurt. Sometimes (whisper it), leaders don’t actually know exactly what deliverables are required – they just know they aren’t getting what they want right now. This constant change and lack of clarity can quickly undermine confidence within the system.

1. Your own leader may not create a system of confidence for you and your peers – in this case, you’re likely to find it’s harder to put that umbrella of confidence over the part of the business you lead. If you work in a system of low confidence, you can quickly find your personal confidence is undermined and you can easily find that you begin to behave in a way that, in turn, undermines confidence amongst the people you lead. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do so. It just means it might be a lonelier journey.

1. The challenge in being consistent in displaying the positive leadership behaviours that create a system of confidence – you are human and you will have bad days as well as good days. There’ll be days when you’re worried about progress, about budgets, about your own career. And on these days, you might want to shout, blame, hide... And you must resist falling into this trap!! Inconsistency in your behaviours will quickly destroy the system of confidence you are trying to create. In fact, research shows that, when we work for a leader who is sometimes open and constructive, and at others blaming and controlling, we will prepare for the latter behaviours all the time. And we certainly won’t trust the good behaviours when they do appear.

You might sometimes feel that managing these three meaty challenges makes it too difficult to create a system of confidence. But that isn’t the case. ?The returns you enjoy for your investment in creating this system will repay you many times over. You will enjoy respect and engagement from your team because they value you so much as a leader; you will free up time because others will feel empowered and motivated; you will resolve problems more easily because people will be open and transparent with you just as you are with them; you will see productivity and performance build rapidly. And that’s just for starters. Your investment in creating a system of confidence will repay itself today, and leave a legacy where your impact as a leader is remembered positively forever!

So, be confident in your potential to create a system of confidence and in the returns you will get for doing so.

Have a great week and, as always, observe yourself and others with interest and learning, not with criticism and judgement.

Heather

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