Our confidence is based on awareness of our strengths, recognizing that we have more strengths than weaknesses. Unfortunately, most of us are less aware of our good points than we are of our weaknesses. If others value what you can do, then you must have more strengths than weaknesses. What can you do to become more aware of your good points and to celebrate your achievements and strengths?
Sometimes we are so hard on ourselves, we feel unconfident in many areas of our lives. Do you often criticize yourself? Do you see only your weak points and none of your strengths or good qualities? Do you also deflect praise, saying that whatever good thing you did was nothing?
Why So Negative?
We get told to stop doing things from an early age. As children, it feels like we get attention only for the things that people see as bad. Why is this? It’s like efficiency. Whenever things are going well, we don’t notice how well we, or others, are doing. We only notice mistakes. Our parents, friends, teachers and bosses are the same. We value efficiency and routines because they allow us to get things done without much thinking. Disruptions are annoying; they distract us, like being wakened from a good sleep. It’s not surprising, therefore, that we react angrily to mistakes or negative things done by others or by ourselves.
On the other hand, the good things we do are enjoyable and may come easy or natural to us. This leads us to think that our good actions can’t be anything special. How can they be if we find them so easy to do or so enjoyable? Our good qualities and strengths exist in a blind spot that no one notices, including ourselves, unless we do something really outstanding.
Even if we get a fair balance of compliments and criticisms from our parents or school teachers, we are more affected by the negatives than the positives. We are perversely made more fragile by criticism than we are strengthened by praise.
When people are told about one of their strengths, they react with surprise, saying: ‘Oh, that’s just my job.’ Or, they ask: ‘Doesn’t everybody do that?’ Their surprise shows how unaware they are of their good points and strengths.
Meetings are also cursed with a negativity bias. They focus on things that have gone wrong or are behind schedule. Meetings deal with problems that need to be solved. Achievements, especially small successes, are taken for granted. As with efficiency, when things are going well, nobody notices.
People hate it when their efficient routines, plans or projects are disrupted by mistakes so they react with irritation. If it is our mistake, we take it hard that someone is angry with us. This exaggerates our sense of failure, further obscuring our good points and achievements.
Stop Needing to Have the Answers or to Be Right
Most of us develop in our careers from a technical or professional role where we are paid to analyse problems and develop solutions. Coming up with a great solution is fun, like scoring a goal in sports. Suddenly you are a hero and that feels very satisfying. As you rise to management levels, offering your own solutions gets harder because of the number of functions you manage, the greater complexity of issues and the faster changing world we live in. If you stick to offering your own solutions in management roles, you are really still operating as an individual contributor, albeit one with greater authority to call the shots.
The Confidence of a Facilitator
It is much easier to base your confidence on facilitation skills than on being a solution generator. The key here is that you can ask the same facilitation questions over and over regardless of the issue to be solved and regardless of how much, or how little, you know about it. You can always ask engaging questions such as:
- What do you think?
- What are the pros and cons of your suggestion?
- What other options are there?
- How does your idea fit with our broader objectives?
See articles under the menu heading “Engage” to read more about how to use engaging questions to be more facilitative. This doesn’t mean never offering your own solutions. It’s a balance and knowing when to operate in which of these two modes.
The key point is that it’s a losing strategy to base your confidence on your ability to be the main answer giver. No one can be very confident with this strategy. It’s also too much about you. In a team orientated world, it’s valuable to be able to draw others out to co-create shared solutions. So, you kill two birds with one stone by asking engaging questions: 1. You are more confident and 2. You create shared plans and decisions.