Building Confidence by Breathing Belief into People

“Lead­er­ship is unlock­ing people’s poten­tial to become bet­ter.” — Bill Bradley, Amer­i­can Hall of Fame bas­ket­ball play­er, Rhodes schol­ar, for­mer Demo­c­ra­t­ic Senator

Did you know that the best coach­es, advi­sors or lead­ers believe in you before, and often more than, you do?

They have an abil­i­ty to see our great­ness in two ways:

1. By see­ing and call­ing out the strengths we already have today
2. Through envi­sion­ing us per­form­ing at a much high­er level

And then they give us the chal­lenges and sup­port to get us there.

As sim­ple as it sounds, many of us aren’t amaz­ing at see­ing what’s already there. But good lead­ers not only see it – they describe it.

I’ve had hun­dreds of con­ver­sa­tions with CEOs and exec­u­tives about build­ing con­fi­dence and what has helped them to grow most in their careers — like sport­ing activ­i­ties as a kid, pro­fes­sors at school, or any jobs they had.

Again and again they said they had some­one who believed in their capa­bil­i­ties well beyond what they saw for themselves.

Because of that, they were ques­tioned, pushed, sup­port­ed and encour­aged. And they were able to do things they didn’t think they could, build­ing con­fi­dence along the way.

They saw it before I did, said one CEO. One of the great­est gifts you can give some­one is to point out their strengths.

Like ​“You have an amaz­ing abil­i­ty to…

• “Take a com­plex prob­lem, and put it in a sim­ple metaphor we can get” — or
• “Total­ly take a con­ver­sa­tion and look at it the oppo­site way” — or
• “Make some­one feel good even when you give real­ly tough feed­back” – or…

…fill in the blank!

Call out those gifts you see along the way, so they can see them — and own them.

Then treat your peo­ple con­sis­tent­ly with what they will be like, at twice their level.

Don’t assume they get it…they don’t.