Unleash confidence in your team and you will supercharge performance. How? Because self belief is fuel for human performance. Whilst confidence does not guarantee success, it does stack the odds in our favour. How we feel about our capability to do what’s required of us makes a big difference to our ability to do it. To borrow from the writings of Roman poet Virgil, ‘we can because we think we can.’ The link between confidence and performance has long been clear.
By supporting each team member to see and own their individual brilliance, you unlock their ability to perform to their fullest potential. By catalysing a shared belief that ‘as a team, we have what it takes’ you spark a collective power that lifts the performance bar even higher.
That’s the power of confidence contagion. Let me offer six practical ways that you can create a confidence contagion in your team:
Give confidence enhancing feedback
Tell your team members (clearly and frequently) what you value about their contribution. Take the time to give specific, positive feedback, and vary the mechanic that you use – the occasional voice note, text or email is great because it’s something that they can come back to multiple times. And if something doesn’t go well? Support your team members to pull out the learnings and to avoid the trap of black and white thinking – rarely is anything either a 100% success or a 100% failure.
Build a culture of feedback within the team so that praise and development suggestions don’t only come from you. Encourage team members to support each other – spotting strengths in action, acknowledging contributions in a meeting, providing specific and constructive suggestions to strengthen their impact. This is not about introducing a formal 360 feedback process, it’s about embedding day-to-day team habits of recognition, appreciation and support for development.
Celebrate everyone’s super-strengths
Part of the Team GB hockey team’s preparation for the Rio Olympics in 2016 was for each team member to identify and share their ‘super strengths’. Each individual’s super strengths formed the foundation for their confidence, and the process of sharing brought all of that confidence together, reinforcing a shared belief that the team could succeed. Captain Kate Richardson-Walsh described the impact: “There was a steely knowledge that whatever the Olympics threw at us, we’d be able to find a way to win because of this collective strength.” The team went on to win gold.
There might not be an Olympic gold medal in sight for your team, but you can borrow Team GB’s super strengths process to build the kind of collective confidence that underpins outstanding performance.
Demonstrate grounded optimism
Confidence is infectious in a team. “If you feel confident in this thing we’re about to do together, then I feel confident too.” The simplest thing that you can do to spread this confidence bug? Convey positivity and optimism. Not wild delusion, but grounded optimism. This is particularly powerful when you’re facing a new challenge as a team. Your reports will take their cues from you, and your confidence (or lack of it) will strongly influence the level of collective belief. Tell them: “I haven’t got a clue how we’re going to do this, but I know it can be done, and I know we’ll find a way.” Then watch as confidence grows, along with the creativity, energy and commitment that will be needed to make your words a reality.
Embrace ‘grow not know’ as your leadership mantra
As a confidence-building leader, your role is not to be the expert who knows all of the answers. Your role is to be the facilitator who supports your people to grow, enabling them to see how capable they are. In practice this means asking questions rather than giving answers, coaching your people to find solutions for themselves. And it’s about offering just enough stretch, challenging team members with assignments that they see as just beyond their capability. With your support, individuals can push themselves beyond what they’ve done before. In the process, their confidence deepens as they see their capability grow.
Step back (but not too far)
Set clear outcomes and then step back. You’re not stepping back so far that individuals feel abandoned and lacking in direction. You are ensuring that the team has sufficient space to operate and to figure things out for themselves. Don’t be tempted to step in and resolve issues or disagreements. Whilst it’s likely that there will be occasions when your role as final decision-maker is required, stepping in too quickly or too often builds a reliance on you as the arbitrator and stunts the development of the team. Instead, provide support for the team to resolve difficulties between themselves. As the team builds that muscle, it will deepen their sense that they have what it takes to succeed, to tackle (together) whatever is thrown at them.
Help the team to see their own achievements
Invite the team to write a really long list of achievements over the past month – a long list of successes, big and small. Then ask them to take you through their list, lingering long enough to really encourage them to take ownership of each success and to recognise the skills and capabilities that enabled them to achieve it. You can do this individually and collectively. There’s a feeling of momentum that can come from a team session which catalogues the real impact of what’s being achieved together.
As a leader in an organisation with ambitious plans, you need to get the fullest contribution from everyone in your team. The best way to unlock that level of contribution? Support them to grow their belief in themselves and each other. Tap into the power of ‘we can because we think we can.’ Unleash a confidence contagion.
Written by Julie Smith.
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