Believe in Yourself by Balancing the Ledger!

Believe in Yourself by Balancing the Ledger!

Time for a leadership confessional. Whether we want to admit it or not, even the most gifted and talented professionals struggle with confidence and belief in themselves from time to time. This happens when we are in a new role, tasked with an unfamiliar project, or experience some sort of unexpected life change. This impacts us. It starts to create doubt and erode confidence. Modern management and leadership literature often refers to this as the “imposter syndrome” where we do not feel able and/or worthy of our leadership roles.

With that in mind, I have been thinking out loud about confidence and its origins for quite some time. Adult Development theorist Arthur Chickering states that confidence is critical in life success, but I would argue the construct of confidence is a little understood component of human potential. I have become more and more convinced, confidence is the impact multiplier since confidence bridges the gap between what one can do (potential) and what one will do (performance). With that in mind, here is my formula for confidence:

Progressive Accomplishment + Belief in Self + Worthiness = Confidence

I outlined this in one of my earlier posts. Progressive Accomplishment is the intellectual, physical, and emotional progress we make each day. We start with small wins and successes that we build upon to create larger wins and successes. The talent development industry calls that “successive approximation”. But we have to track this!

Belief in Self is foundational and I have often written about this. Confident people have a healthy self-appreciation for what they can do and what they have the potential to do. But we have to practice this!

Worthiness (vs deservedness) reinforces to a leader they are worthy of where they are and what they are doing. It is the belief that you are just as worthy as anyone else to have that position or role. But we have to believe this!

So how do we DO this? How can we better track, practice, and believe in our leadership abilities? I would suggest we Balance the Ledger of what we perceive to be our leadership debits with accurate credits! If you are like me, we are our own worse critics. In this world of social media trolling, advertisers that create unrealistic images and lifestyles, and increased social isolation from each other, it is no wonder why we feel we are just a bunch of imposters walking around the planet! 

Now listen to me, I am not suggesting an unrealistic, everyone gets a trophy at Camp Self-Esteem kind of approach. What I am suggesting is that yes, there are leadership qualities and skills we need to develop BUT that is only half the ledger! If we only focus on the loss side of things we are not getting an accurate accounting of who we really are and what we are capable of. We need to identify the credits.

I would like you to try a little experiment. Create a list of your leadership debits and credits. I know you know your liabilities all too well since you probably remind yourself of them on a daily basis! However, I want you to also identify your assets. Furthermore, since it is just solid business practice to have more profit than loss for YouInc., for every ONE liability you list, I want you to identify TWO assets! That’s just good business.

• For every area to develop list two strengths
• For every defeat list two victories
• For every step back you made list two steps forward you accomplished
• For every deadline you missed list two where you exceeded expectations
• For every personal loss list two instances where you added value to others
• For every past regret list two aspirations for the future

I will be the first to admit I am a rampant serial encourager! I just want to help people overcome self-doubt. You see when you doubt yourself, you are committing a crime against yourself because self-doubt robs you of your passion, progress, and potential! Life is challenging enough as it is, no sense in you being your own under the bus thrower! Balance the ledger and make sure what you are telling yourself is not just half the narrative but the complete story!

As always if I can help you and the people you associate with Get Better, Be Ready and LEAD OUT LOUD, I invite you to contact me.

Yours in leadership,

Bill Faulkner

Independent Coach, Speaker, and Trainer with the John Maxwell Team ^TM

Email = bill@outloudinc.com

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