Action builds confidence - #BeBoldForChange

Mark.Freed / 09 Mar 2017

Building your confidence can have a positive impact at work, and your career. Women do hold themselves back if they can’t fulfil all the requirements on a job spec, expect their work and results to position them for progression and promotion, and often don’t ‘take a seat at the table’ and prefer to sit around the periphery.

Delegates on this weeks’ E2W Career Conversation shared their own observations. ‘In meetings, men may sound more confident, but when you listen to ‘what’ they are saying, you realise your contributions are better’. Men often talk more loudly at meetings, interrupt and take our good ideas for their own. Women need to support each other, promote each other’s ideas, and ensure we get ‘airspace’ at meetings. Even the senior women in Obama’s committee introduced ‘amplification’ as a way to get their voices heard at male dominated meetings.

Confidence is partly influenced by genetics, or who you are, but it’s not fixed. You can make changes to your thinking patterns, the way you approach things and nurturing ‘positive thoughts’. You can choose to be more confident by taking a conscious decision to do things differently.
Building Confidence is about taking action.

To build on your own confidence, commit to taking a few of the actions below to improve your own confidence levels.

Push yourself out of your comfort zone. When in doubt – act. ‘Nothing builds confidence like taking action. Try doing something you wouldn’t normally for fear of failure or embarrassment; ask someone not to interrupt during a meeting, ask for a pay rise
Be prepared to fail, or ‘fail fast’. This may seem counter intuitive to many women, but not getting some things right, can enable us to try more things, learn, and move on.
Just do it, don’t procrastinated until it’s 100% perfect. Striving for perfection holds us back.
Stand in the spotlight and be proud. Women tend not to like being in the spotlight and downplay successes, making excuses for success, qualifying it at ‘luck’ or right place, right time’. We need to get better at acknowledging praise for our achievements, promote and not excuse them. This will boost confidence and promote yourself positively.

Research shows taking action not only reflects confidence, it builds it. Start your confidence journey today.

Rhian Bowler, E2W Career Coach
E2W Personal Coaching Packages are available on this link

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Action builds confidence - #BeBoldForChange