I do alot of speaking, all over the country. I speak to small groups, big groups, and every size in-between. And one thing is always true no matter who I am speaking to: I get nervous. It’s true. I have been a speaker for a very long time and talked to literally tens of thousands of people, and I am the kind of guy who can’t wait to get up and talk. Yet I always get a tad nervous right before I get up to speak. But after the first 10 seconds, my secret antidote to nervousness kicks in… confidence.
Confidence can solve many problems. It can help you overcome fear. It can sometimes mask your inadequacies. It can also provide you with an appearance of importance, even if you aren’t really that important. I work with lots of new folks in my profession, and one of the hardest things to do is instill in them a sense of confidence. I think the vast majority of people focus too much on their faults, their problems, and their inadequacies, so much so that they almost feel guilty acting confident. And yet confidence is so incredibly important to just about everything you do.
I talk to lots of business owners about leadership issues and people issues that they face. And one key problem I hear about all the time are employees who don’t have enough confidence to be successful. I see this alot in sales. Sometimes you have to ‘fake it till you make it’, as they say, because something strange happens when you display confidence in what you do: people end up having more confidence in you. Say what? It’s true. Confidence breeds confidence.
So if you are a business owner and you want to have employees who are better at what they do, and employees who are confident in what they do, then you need to foster an environment in your business that builds their confidence. And I am not talking about building a culture where you just care about their ‘self esteem’ and making them feel better about themselves. I am talking about building what I call a ‘culture of confidence’. Provide them more training, more support, and more encouragement. Help them get better at what they do so that they don’t doubt their knowledge and abilities. Help them move beyond their failures, get back up, dust themselves off, and hold their head up.
If you build a culture inside your organization where employees display confidence in your products, your services, and the value that you provide, it will show and your customers will see it. And they’ll be more confident in you and the choice that they made to do business with you.
