How To Boost Your Self Confidence At Work
Having self-confidence at work, being sure that you are adding a lot of value to your team, that your opinions, ideas and solutions are being listed to and most importantly, you are happy and unafraid to share them – is huge. Having self-confidence makes working life a lot more enjoyable and rewarding.
Learn short term tips and the best guaranteed way I know for how to boost your self-confidence at work.
How To Boost Your Self Confidence At Work
- 5 short term tips and techniques to boost your confidence at work
- How to get to success to boost your confidence at work is a process
Self-confidence has to be built. No-one is born being really confident. So don’t worry if you feel you are less confident than a lot of people around. At school and university, I felt like one of the least socially confident people out of my friends. I hated speaking in front of groups, even really small ones. All those people that appear more confident than you have been exactly where you are now at some point in their lives. You can become very confident, as confident as the most confident person you know. You just have to work at it as hard as they have.
A lot of the short term tips are mental changes of perspective or mental exercises which you can put into practice immediately and start to feel more confident within days. Others are longer term. All will take at least some work.
Watch on YouTube
Listen on Podcast
5 short term tips and techniques to boost your confidence at work
Firstly, be really clear on what you have control over and what you don’t have control over and judge your progress on what you can control. For example, you absolutely have control over how you hold yourself. Stand up straight and tall to look confident. You mostly have control over speaking up in meetings. You don’t have much control over what tasks you are assigned by your boss.
Always focus on measuring your improving self-confidence in the areas you can control and do your best not to judge yourself in areas you can’t control.
2- Focus on the Positives
Focus on the positives to boost your self-confidence at work. Our brains are designed to be brilliant filters. We have some much stimulus from our environment that the brain has to filter out most of it so our brain can actually function properly. You can control what it filters. Research has proven that if you look for the good things, the positives, your brain will filter out more of the negatives and vice versa. It is easy to get trapped in a doom loop if you focus on the negatives. Keep asking yourself positive questions like – What did I do well? What went well? What was successful? Keep yourself focused on the positives and you will find more positives. A great way to build self-confidence.
3 – Visualise Success
Mentally picture your success to boost your self-confidence. Picture yourself speaking to a small group with a clear confident voice. Picture them laughing at your joke, of them nodding and being attentive throughout, hanging off your words. Imagine your emotions and physical feelings in your body. Your nerves are there but they are no big deal. Don’t imagine this once. Do it over and over again. When you are actually speaking to a small group, it is just one more visualisation exercise – no big deal. Athletes, speakers and all those who need to perform under pressure use this technique a lot. It works brilliantly.
4 – Compare Yourself To A Month Ago
Don’t keep comparing yourself to those around you that appear more confident. Instead compare yourself to where you were a week or a month ago. Look for the improvements, small and large. Congratulate yourself on your progress. Remain determined to continue doing what is working to gain even better progress. This mental approach a real confidence booster – use it often.
5 – Dress Well
To boost your self-confidence at work, dress well. Take care of how you present yourself and aim to look similar to those at least a level above you. For instance, dress and present yourself like the well-dressed manager level above you. Feeling good about how you look helps boost your self-confidence. You can also work on how you hold yourself – i.e. stand tall. You can work on how you use your voice – clear, confident, with good pace, pitch and volume. The more confident you appear, the more confident people around you will be in you. Do use the Fake it until you make it approach.
Most of these actions and mental exercises you can put into practice straight away. It does take some work to keep doing these exercises. Don’t give up. Keep at it and you will build your self-confidence!
The best way to become more confident at work
How to achieve success to boost your confidence at work is a process.
Being successful is one of best ways to build self-confidence that I know. Becoming successful does take work, the right mindset, perseverance and determination. Start small with what you want to become successful in.
You can start anywhere. For example setting yourself the goal to contribute one idea or suggestion in each team meeting. You could then ask your boss about the agenda for the next meeting. You could think about a problem that you or a colleague has. Come up with a practical idea to make that problem smaller or remove it. Then share the problem and solution in the team meeting. The praise and appreciation you get will be a great confidence boost. Then keep doing these same steps and soon you will be sharing more than one idea or suggestion across many different meetings.
1 – Cultivate a Growth Mindset
Start with cultivating a growth mindset or learning mindset. A growth mindset is a way of thinking, a mental discipline, a habit and reflex to recognize and find opportunities for learning from every situation, from success and from failure. People with a learning mindset believe – at the core of their being – that when they work to learn and improve, they will keep getting better. Research has shown that people who cultivate a growth mindset are more successful. With more success you will boost your self-confidence.
2 – Accept Setbacks as Necessary
When you start learning anything, you will experience failures and setbacks. This is totally normal and part of the learning process. To get good at anything, you have to pick yourself up and try again. Do this again and again and providing you are learning throughout; you will get good. Success creates self-confidence. Those that stop when they fail, don’t become as successful or as confident. Learn to respond to failures and setbacks by trying again.
3 – Set Yourself Goals to Achieve
Set yourself goals and work towards specific achievements. Don’t set your goals too far ahead. It is much better to regularly reach goals and then reset them, rather than having a big goal that takes ages to reach. It is much more motivational to regularly reach goals or milestones. I am much more motivated looking back on all the goals I have achieved rather than constantly thinking about a big goal that I haven’t reached yet. I am sure you will be too.
4 – Turn Thoughts into Action
Fourth, the most important part of being successful and building your confidence – turn thoughts into action. Without taking action, you won’t get further along towards being more successful and building your self-confidence. Take action.
5 – List Out Your Achievements
Finally, do make the time to list out all the things you have achieved at work – small to large. Literally write them down in a notebook and make the time to look back over them each week or month. Doing this is really inspirational and certainly gives me a lot of self-confidence. Writing down your achievements is also super useful when it comes to preparing for annual assessments or for writing your CV too.
I hope you put these tips into action and boost your self-confidence at work. Being self-confident is brilliant for reaching more of your potential. Do put in the work to become self-confident at work. You will never regret the time spent!
in summary
Boosting your self-confidence at work will help increase your contribution to your team plus help make you happier at work and as a result you will be more successful. Being more successful will help further boost your self-confidence at work. Keep working at becoming more self-confident.
As a reminder, here are 5 short term actions for how to boost your self-confidence at work:
- Focus on what you have control over, not what you don’t have control over
- Look for and focus on the positives
- Mentally picture yourself being successful again and again
- Focus on your progress and don’t compare yourself to others
- Dress well and hold yourself tall and confident. Fake it until you make it.
And here are 5 steps to become successful in most activities which is a brilliant way to improve your confidence at work:
- Cultivate a growth mindset
- Respond to failures and setbacks by trying again
- Set yourself goals that you can achieve soon
- Turn thoughts into action
- Write down your successes and achievements and review then each week or month.
Above all, keep working at being more successful in the areas that matter to you.
[For further reading on building self-confidence click here]
Being confident in yourself is huge (without being overly confident). When you are confident in yourself, others are a lot more confident in you. When they are confident in you, you get a lot more done in shorter timeframe – because they will help you more quickly, push back less, ask less questions etc.
The best confidence builder is being more successful at what you are doing. There is no substitute. Put in the time and effort to keep trying to get better. Accept that you will have disappointments and start off with skills much lower than where you want to get to.
Take a look at all our management skills hub – to help you (or your team members) build management expertise a lot quicker.
