Confidence has been cited as a top trait for everyone, from leaders and sales professionals, to coaches and athletes.

The greatest recession of the past several years has been one of confidence.  We lack confidence in the economy, in our politicians, in our business leaders, in our education system, and in our ability to bring about a change in this environment.

As John Mayer has sung, “We’re waiting on the world to change.”  And how often is that the case — that we expect to regain confidence from changes that come about around us?  We wait for our circumstances to change so we can say, “Oh, okay, now I can be confident.”

Do you know how those circumstances will get changed to rebuild confidence among the masses?

Confident leaders; that is, leaders who place their confidence in themselves to start taking the steps necessary to achieve progress, who take that progress and channel it into bigger steps, who focus those steps towards a bigger goal and purpose.  These leaders don’t wait for the world to change; they go out and change it.  They don’t try to tackle the biggest issues simply through the biggest steps.  Instead, they look for the small steps that can be taken to start achieving progress – to get the snowball rolling.  They then look for leverage points to combine those small steps into an avalanche.

Most people look outside of themselves for evidence, for verification, for validation so that they can check off their list of factors and say, “Okay, that adds up; I can now be more confident, than less.”  Yet, confidence is intrinsic; it comes from within, so how can external factors have such extraordinary influence on our confidence?

Often, we get caught up in the “results only” mindset.  We believe that it’s only the results that give us permission to be confident in ourselves.  Did we achieve exactly what we set out to do?  No; okay, time to start dropping your confidence.

Instead, confident leaders place their confidence in how they show up – they know who they are, what they can contribute, and how they can be flexible enough to adapt and keep moving forward.  These leaders focus on the process they’ll undertake and let the results fall where they will, because they know that sometimes things will work out as planned and sometimes they won’t.  But if they continue to focus on the process and be confident in how they show up in that process, than more often than not, they’ll come out ahead of the game.

Lack of confidence means you play the game by other peoples’ rules – there’s difficulty in understanding yourself and where others are coming from.

Managed confidence (meaning you need to consistently reinforce your confidence) means you likely play the game by your rules – you’re more self aware and know how to interact with others to get ahead, even if you don’t fully understand or appreciate where other people are coming from.

True confidence means you can play the game by anyone’s rules, knowing you can adapt and evolve, see more angles, understand yourself and others, and construct plans that advance everyone’s goals.

Live on Fire!

D. Luke Iorio, CPC, PCC, ELI-MP
President & CEO
Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC)