What is Self-Confidence?

In today’s competitive business world, there’s no doubt that those who stand out in the workplace achieve their goals and get ahead in their industry.

Standing out and making an impact in the workplace can help advance your career as supervisors and managers notice your commitment and dedication. If your goals relate to advancement in the workplace – whether through promotion or building a professional network – standing out can help you achieve these goals.

There are other benefits from standing out in the workplace:

• Performance – your job performance likely improves as you work hard to exceed expectations;

• Job satisfaction – if you dedicate yourself to improving your work, you might feel a higher sense of satisfaction and accomplishment as you make progress;

• Job security – if your employers notice your hard work and dedication to your position, you’ll have a higher rate of job security since they’ll want to keep you on their team.

A key element in standing out in the workplace and achieving goals is self-confidence.

One of the dimensions to building and maintaining your Resilience is Confidence and when I support clients to engage with their Resilience Wheel we have many fascinating Coaching conversations around this. I am not a fan of the term “Imposter Syndrome”, I believe it is inappropriate to attach this label to anyone. I believe it is more appropriate to have quality conversations about what enables an individual’s self-confidence; which is your balance of helpful and unhelpful thoughts and what influences this balance.

Acclaimed Polish-French physicist and chemist Marie Curie once famously said: “Life isn’t easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we’re gifted for something, and that this thing must be attained.”

So, what exactly is self-confidence?

The Cambridge Dictionary defines self-confidence as: ‘the belief that you can do things well and that other people respect you.’

Quite simply, it means you accept and trust yourself and have a sense of control in your life.

You know your strengths and weakness well and have a positive view of yourself.

When you look in the mirror, what to do you see? Photo Taylor Smith Unsplash

You set realistic expectations and goals, communicate assertively, and can handle criticism.

There are 3 types of self-confidence:

• Task-specific: confidence in your ability to perform a specific task or skill;

• General: overall confidence in yourself and your abilities;

• Situational: confidence that varies depending on the situation or context, such as public speaking or social situations.

Look out for further blogs in this series – “How to build self-confidence,” “Why is self-confidence important?” and “What are the benefits of self-confidence?”

If you need further information about this approach, or any other resilience topic, please contact: russell@theresiliencecoach.co.uk