Four Ways to Build Leadership Confidence

One of the categories that often comes up for rising leaders – sometimes I refer to them as emerging leaders – is building confidence.  It’s an area of leadership that doesn’t get talked about but is one we have all needed early in our journey.

Let’s be honest, we all need a boost now and again even if we’ve been in leadership for some time.

I think that it’s a myth that there is a point in a leader’s journey that confidence is magically rock solid and the reality is that just isn’t the case.

Now, I do believe that we get a baseline level of confidence that can continue to grow over a period of time especially if we’ve had a number of situations that have given opportunities to gain it.

In the Emerging Leader Inner Circle, I teach lessons on our comfort zone and one of the things that I share is that we all have to get beyond doing the things that we feel comfortable doing.

Sounds simple, right?

The problem is, we often won’t seek out those opportunities on our own.

I remember the first time that I sat in a board room getting ready to deliver a presentation to a group of C-Level executives.  I was way out of my comfort zone and I had all kinds of energy in motion within my body.

What I realized though is that the story I told myself helped me to appear confident and calm on the outside.  There were things that I kept repeating in my mind that made it easier to make the presentation.

So, there are two lessons that I learned as I grew my leadership capability and confidence.  The first is that I needed to expose myself to situations where my comfort zone would be breached and I could get practice being the leader I needed to be despite the flood of emotions I felt.

Repeated exposure to things that take you out of your comfort zone will provide the opportunity to build confidence.  Even if the situation you get into, doesn’t go ‘as planned’, by taking time to reflect on what you learned from it will be another layer to your confidence.

As a matter of fact, it’s in those not-going-as-planned moments and how you respond to them that give you the ability to grow and build your confidence.

Secondly, and this is as important as getting exposure to things that take you out of your comfort zone, you need to be prepared.

When I was in that board room in front of those executives, it wasn’t the first time I had delivered the presentation.  I had dozens of “at bats” before I got there.  I knew my material and I knew that I knew more than they did about the subject.  

And that’s one of the things I told myself.  I would often say in my head “look, David, you know more about this than anyone in the room and that’s why you’re at the front of the room”.  I told myself, “you’ve done this hundreds of times so just share the information.”

Preparation is critical for building confidence.  I remember one of my first virtual webinars back when they were not common and I hadn’t prepared as well as I should have.  The person on the other end was really knowledgeable and I stumbled through not only the presentation by the question and answer section at the end.  It was not a confident presentation.

When I evaluated my performance, I knew that I would do a better job preparing next time so that I could be more fluent in the subject matter and feel as though I had appropriate answers and could flow much better when I made presentations.

Part of my preparation, too, was that I had been part of a Toastmasters group in the years prior to this situation where I got much better at standing in front of a group of people and delivering a talk.  I loved the Table Topics section of the meeting where we had to make up a short one to two minute speech on the spot.  

Best preparation I could have ever had.

That brings me to the third way to gain confidence and that is to stay away from comparing yourself to someone else more seasoned and who has had more opportunities for growth.  It’s not a fair comparison to look at someone who had thirty years’ experience in a subject matter and thinking that you suck when you’re just getting started.  

Be aware of the human mind’s propensity to compare ourselves to others and compare yourself with your prior version of yourself.

Compare your personal ‘before’ and ‘after’ rather than ‘yours’ to ‘theirs’.

It’s important to note too that no one is perfect.  Especially, the first time you do something that you’ve never done before.

One of the things that we do for both exposure and experience in our emerging leader groups is to teach the art of extemporaneous speaking.  If you think you get nervous in a group of people when you have to give a talk, put yourself in a group where you can’t prepare but need to give a cohesive talk “off the cuff”.  

It’s a beautiful skill to have and many of our emerging leaders absolutely hate it at the time but we remind them that it’s a safe environment and everyone is going to do it.

Outside of comfort zone – check.

Constant exposure – check.

Opportunity to compare yourself with yourself – check.

The fourth way to gain confidence is to be sure that you are aware of body language and practice strong, confident language.

That means being aware of your posture and your gestures.  Where are your hands? What is your face doing? 

Becoming aware of these things and practicing your presence will build your confidence subconsciously.

There’s a great book called Presence by Amy Cuddy, PhD that gives some great research on the mind-body connection.  When you smile, things happen in your body that generate feelings of confidence.  When you stand up straight, you have more confidence.

In the age we live in, it is so easy to video record yourself and watch it back. I recommend any leader to video record themselves if they are giving any kind of presentation.

I do this all the time so I can get constant feedback.  I’m amazed at my own verbal pauses and quirks that I continue to work on getting rid of and improving my own presentation, speaking and facilitation skills.

So, to recap, here are my four ways to build your confidence:

1. Expose yourself to things that make you uncomfortable.  Be willing to do new things and keep getting repeated exposure.
2. Be prepared as best you can for when you do get out of your comfort zone.  Ask yourself “what can I do that will help me in new and uncomfortable situations?”
3. Compare yourself with yourself. There will always be someone who has more skill in something that you are beginning to learn.  Never compare to that person.  Measure your personal gain rather than the gap between you and someone else’s skills.
4. Be aware of body language and use body positioning to send signals to the body that you are confident.  Check out Amy Cuddy’s TED talk and book called Presence for great tips on this.

More than anything else, keep becoming more self-aware so that you can learn and grow.  Notice the stories that you tell yourself and keep getting outside your normal and comfortable range of behaviors.

Once you do, you will notice your confidence level growing and you will actually want to be in those situations more.