Confident is one of those words often used to describe someone who is successful, able to grasp opportunities and step into their full potential.
It’s how we all want to be in a work environment.
If we lack confidence we may feel that it’s just not part of our DNA - almost as if being confident is something that you are born with and can’t change. My experience tells me that’s not true as confidence is something I lacked for the first 20+ years of my work life. This didn’t stop me being able to succeed, but it did limit my horizons and when I learnt how to build my self confidence a whole new world of opportunity opened up to me.
Why does having confidence matter to our success?
Confidence is life's natural enabler. It helps us own and name our abilities, to brave situations outside of our comfort zone and to flourish in the moment. It’s the magic that enables us to speak up, the agent that allows us to connect authentically with those around us, and the belief in our value that enables us to thrive.
Being confident in your strengths and expertise will help you recognise and talk about what you ‘bring to the table’ in your team or business. With confidence you’re able to find the language to talk about how you can help and why you might be a great choice for a particular project, opportunity or role. This makes it easy for people to choose you, because they don’t have to work out for themselves what you’re good at, because you’ve already done the work to own and talk about your strengths.
Confidently owning your voice means you can speak up and offer your opinion, not just when directly called upon, but also when you want to add to the debate. It stops you overthinking, keeps you present in the conversation and allows you to add value in an authentic way.
Developing confidence to try - and to fail - opens up your world to endless possibilities. It helps you build a life and career of your dreams, not just because you start to see setbacks as opportunities to learn, but because when you believe your dream is possible, you will keep working towards it.
Confidence is just as essential in today’s corporate workplace as basic communication skills, without it we miss out on wonderful opportunities and our team and organisation misses out on what we have to offer. And yet it remains for many of us (at worse) elusive and (at best) something we need to continue to work on.
What does it take to build confidence?
True confidence is not an outfit you can put on for a performance, it’s more like a muscle to build over time.
It acts as a catalyst to accelerate the combination of opportunity and ability into long term, meaningful success.
So building confidence is a long game. Picture an athlete preparing for a marathon: They must build stamina, skill and technique and the only way to do this is to practice, practice, practice. Confidence is the same. It’s about repeatedly doing things outside of your comfort zone in order to prove to yourself that you can do it.
This means that sometimes you will fail and you’ll realise along the way that this is okay. Confidence is won at the ‘school of hard knocks’ where failure breeds success. This might sound counter intuitive. Surely if we fail at something we will feel less confident to try again and therefore less likely than ever to succeed? No, because as we get more comfortable ‘trying out’, our brains get wired to want to learn from the experience of failure, so next time we get closer to success.
It's really important to recognise that confidence is not ‘fixed’. So often we label ourselves (or believe the labels that others apply to us!) with things like ‘low self esteem’ and believe that label to be permanent. In fact, everyone’s confidence naturally goes up and down over time - even when we don’t pay attention to it. The great news is that when we work on it, like muscle, it builds over time.
How does a lack of self confidence show itself?
1. Overthinking
Are you constantly questioning yourself? Do you have repeated thoughts about not being good enough? Do you leap to conclusions about people judging you as incompetent or inadequate?
Overthinking clouds your brain to what is really going on and leaves you obsessing about minuita, while you fail to realise what is happening in front of you. These anxious thoughts freeze the decision making and action capacities of our brains and mean we can’t think straight or react with ease.
When this happens, take a deep breath, relax your shoulders and take note of what is happening around you. What are the things that you can do immediately to elevate some of your stress? Pinpoint exactly what is causing you to ‘spiral out’ and decide that you are not going to allow yourself to be hijacked by this emotion. Taking this action over time will rewire your brain, making it easier and easier to refocus and give yourself that boost that you need to stop overthinking.
2. Negative Internal thoughts
Negative thoughts often creep into our minds when we’re faced with stressful situations. These thoughts are often hyper-critical, overly harsh and untrue. During times of high stress these thoughts can play on an endless loop, dominating your inner monologue. There are ways to reframe your internal talk from that of a critic to that of a friend, to ensure that the information you’re feeding yourself is compassionate, positive and motivational. To do this you need to ask yourself, ‘Do I know for sure that this is the truth?’ and ‘Would I say this to a loved one?’. These questions can immediately help to start reframing the thought to a much more positive place.
Developing an awareness of your thoughts and the impact they have on your life is crucial. Managing your Inner Critic and being able to spot and counter negative internal thoughts such as Impostor Syndrome and more general feelings of inadequacy, allows you to reframe them before they overtake you.
3. Hanging onto failures
It’s true that in almost everything you do, you won’t succeed on the first try, but that’s also not the point. The point is that you try again. Hanging onto failures can lead you to ‘flying under the radar’, avoiding opportunities and allowing other people to take credit for your work, all because you don’t trust your own ability.
It can of course be disheartening to find out that you’ve failed at something that you put your best work into, but what would you say to a friend in that position? Would you tell them that there is no point in trying again? That they aren’t good enough, or that they should give up?
Definitely not - we would tell them to have some self-compassion and get back out there.
4. Not owning achievements
Internalising setbacks is one of my own enduring confidence challenges. When combined with playing down successes, you get what I call the Teflon/Velcro challenge.
Teflon is a brand of non stick-coating you find on cookware, which miraculously makes everything slide effortlessly off. Velcro is a brand of incredibly tough fabric fasteners which hook together and take a good deal of effort to dislodge. Many of us have a tendency to hang on to criticism and setbacks like Velcro and let praise and recognition slide away as if on Teflon, and this really damages confidence in the long term. The challenge is to reverse your thinking. Instead of brushing aside praise and ruminating over missteps, try applying the Velcro to the successes and Teflon to the setbacks.
Like everything else associated with building confidence, this takes time and practice but awareness is the first critical step.
5. Perfectionism
Nothing in this world is perfect and constantly striving for it is the path to overwhelm. The pursuit of perfection eats time (our most precious commodity), it also prevents us from seeing what is ‘good enough’ and leads to negative self judgement and burnout and overwhelm.
Unless you’re a brain surgeon (which demands precision) DONE is better than Perfect. If you find yourself stuck in the perfection trap then try to give yourself an achievable deadline for finishing whatever it is that you’re stuck on and then publish, launch, present… take action!
If you’re recognising some of these negative behaviours don’t despair - you are not alone and we have your back. Our free, practical guide on how to build long term self confidence also has some quick confidence boosts for those moments when you need a ‘shot’! To receive it, just email me
The good news is that confidence is a skill that can be learned and at Nkuzi Change we work with clients who are keen to develop these skills so they can bring their best selves to their careers and more broadly their lives. We have a very practical guide on how to build your own self confidence and we'd be delighted to share it with you - just reach out to us and ask.
We help organisations unlock the full potential of their people through coaching that is focused and directed, inclusive and scalable.
Learn more at www.nkuzichange.com
And connect with me and my co-Director Kate on LinkedIn: Kate Franklin and Elise Finn
