Meeting Challenge with Confidence

The business world is a demanding one, filled with daily challenges. The business professional must be able to: understand and develop people; extract the right information; comprehend numbers; facilitate, negotiate and manage change; make key business decisions; and, seek and leverage opportunities. All of this while maintaining sanity. In order to achieve business success, the professional must meet challenge with confidence.

There are no quick fixes for acquiring confidence, but there are manageable steps that can help build confidence. Here are some jumpstart ideas:

• Get the facts, Jack! Ask questions, get feedback and the information needed, analyze it, and draw business conclusions. Present information that supports the business point of view.
• Leverage what you know and believe in what you are recommending. Trust that you have what you need and move forward with it. If you believe it, so will others. Just be clear.
• Be patient! Stop tapping your foot at every meeting while you are watching other people process information. Things happen in other people’s time, not in your time. Believe that it is not if but when it will happen. Focus your confidence energy on the overall goals and outcomes required.
• Recognize that there will be times when confidence drops – in you, the people around you and in the work which you are involved in. This is normal in business. Regain your focus through stepping back, sitting down with your people and discussing confidence and self-confidence. Find breakthrough thinking and opportunities. Imagine a call for confidence (COC) and confidence will start growing.
• Acknowledge what you don’t know. There is nothing worse than talking to someone who clearly does not know the answer to a question or problem but will not admit it. Don’t be that person. Look straight into your audience’s eyes and say “I don’t know but I will find out”. You don’t have to know everything, but you do need to facilitate answers.
• Learn it! Yes, confidence can be learned. Set a plan to build your confidence. Become aware of your body language, the way you speak, what you say and how you say it. Practice your presentations in front of a mirror. See how you interact in the environment you are in. Are you the stick in the mud or are you the can do person? Build your journey; develop your own SWOT (strengths weaknesses, opportunities and threats). Set your goals, build the knowledge and experiences and, as your confidence grows, find ways to accelerate your development.

Once you demonstrate confidence, you will inspire confidence in others – be it in employees, bosses, neighbours, or in the audience you must address. Do not be afraid to embrace the importance of confidence in your leadership and professional life; it is the bridging force between you, the people you work with and the business in which you are engaged.

 

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Richard A. Lannon partners with business and technology organizations to help clarify their goals and objectives and train their leadership and professionals on how to achieve them. He provides the blueprint for you and your organization to be SET (structured, engaged and trained). That is why his clients call him the SETability Expert. Voice: 403-476-8853 Email: [email protected] Web: www.braveworld.ca 02/09