June 12

Confidence: Are You A Builder or a Destroyer

Your new employee just screwed up and it’s the kind of mistake that you would never make.  The thought of a person making such a “common sense” mistake is baffling to you.  How are you going to handle this situation?

Regardless of how long you have been leading a team, you have experienced this very scenario in your business at some point.  In this scenario, you have a couple of choices.  You can act irritated and begrudgingly fix the situation with the employee or you can fix it yourself.  The other thing that you can do is coach the person and give them the tools and support to do it better the next time.

Most managers and leaders opt for the first option and say things like:

“If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”

“No one is as capable as me when it comes to doing things around here.”

“My employees don’t care and that’s why they do things wrong.”

The list goes on and on.

What if you coached your team instead?

There are some subtleties of coaching that start with having the right mindset about coaching in general and the person being coached.  I am not going to get into that here but one of the distinctions is the thought that people have their own answers and are capable of fixing their own problems.

This brings me to the subject of confidence.  You can either build a person’s confidence or you can destroy.  It’s one of the choices that you face as a leader.

Confidence is in rare supply in this world.  You and I both would like to have more of it.  Confidence is something that we can build in ourselves and build in others if you are willing to make the commitment to it.

Here’s why building confidence for the people who work for us is so important today:

1.  More and more people are coming into the workforce having lived in a thought-free, consequence-free existence.  Younger generations of people have their every move hovered over so that they don’t fail or, if they do, the mistake is cleaned up for them quickly.  Young people are enabled more than ever.  Don’t believe me.  I talked to a fellow executive coach who was helping a company do interviews for a position.  One of the candidates walked into the interview with their parents.  Their parents.  Only young people who lack confidence would even consider this move.

2. Everyone needs a coach.  The best athletes use a coach as well as successful people in other disciplines.  You need coaching.  I need coaching.  Why do we think our employees are any different?  Your employees need someone to walk alongside them and support them on their career journey.  They need someone to believe in them when they don’t.  Someone who is willing to push them to the next level.  Someone like you.

3. As a small business owner or leader, you need to effectively use leverage.  If you want to get to the next level in your business or your career, you need other people to help you do it.  The level to which you empower people and build them up will determine the level to which you rise in your own world of work.  I work with a lot of business owners and leaders who have travelled the long road of rugged individualism.  All of them wish they had done it differently and learned how to rely on other people more.

Do you want your team to perform at the highest level that they are capable of?  Build their confidence.  As business owners and leaders, you have a choice with regards to how you handle a situation.  You can destroy someone’s confidence or you can build it up.

What will you choose?  What has been your experience with confidence building in the past?

PS….Building confidence starts with you.  If you want more confidence as a manager and/or a leader, that’s what I do.  Build your confidence as a leader so that you can have a lasting, positive impact on your team and your business or career.  If you are ready to take your own next step, contact me here. 

 

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