Most people, at one time or another, have experienced low confidence at work. This can have a negative impact on decision-making, and how you feel about your job.
So, whether you're feeling this burden yourself, or managing someone who does, it's good to know how you can turn this around. Let's look at ways you can boost your confidence at work, and reap the rewards.
The Importance of Confidence
Lots of things can cause low confidence at work, some of which are perfectionism, bad experiences, fears of failure, and stress. The thing that unites all of these is the feeling of not being good enough, and it can have a devastating effect on your performance.
Research has shown that when someone is self-assured and optimistic about their work, they perform better than those who perceive failure, regardless of their skill level. Essentially, being confident is just as important as productivity and experience, if not more so.
Also, self-belief in your work is linked to higher levels of wellbeing and resilience, which further improves your chances of job-related success and satisfaction. So, it makes sense to work on your confidence, if it's suffering.
Let's look at how you can put this into action.
1. Challenge Negativity Bias With Feedback Boards
One aspect of low confidence is negativity bias. This is a psychological phenomenon that causes you to pay more attention to negative experiences and information than positive ones. It can also make you ruminate on that negativity, for a long time after the event.
This can play out at work when you receive feedback from your boss or colleagues. For example, you might get a lot of praise for your work, but if you hear one criticism, that's the thing you focus on.
An excellent way to combat negativity bias, is to challenge it head-on by creating a feedback board. In essence, this is a toolkit of praise and positive comments you receive, so that when your work is criticized, or you're feeling unsure of yourself, you can look at it as a reminder of your competence.
You can use pretty much any medium to make a feedback board, but a great choice is an application called Padlet. It is incredibly user-friendly and is available on all devices, so you have access to it at all times. You can even personalize it further by adding images and examples of your work that you're most proud of.
2. Expand Your Knowledge
When you start a new job, you probably know a lot less than your colleagues, and you naturally feel less confident. This is normal, but as you gain experience and understanding, this confidence grows.
Having a good level of knowledge about your work means that you feel more equipped to make decisions and better able to execute tasks. Learning is an ongoing requirement of most jobs, and if you're feeling unconfident, it might be time to upskill.
You can find out what courses and learning opportunities your workplace has to offer, for a more direct approach. If they don't have what you need, here are some great online learning platforms:
- LinkedIn Learning for courses created by professionals.
- Headway app for bite-sized book summaries on educational topics.
- YouTube for video-based tutorials.
- Future Learn for industry-specific courses.
- And plenty of self-study apps for learning new skills.
When you have a better grounding in the areas that you're most unsure about, you will remove any second-guessing that comes with it. Just like you wouldn't do a presentation without knowing all the facts, pinpoint where improvements are needed, and do something about it.
3. Discover Your Career Goals
With low confidence, it's tempting to compare yourself to others, and to try and emulate their routes. However, there's a reason why it's so hard to keep up when taking this approach, and it's because everyone has different starting points and motivations that got them here.
An important step to improving your self-belief is to discover your goals and facilitate your own achievements. By setting and achieving your own work goals, you can take control of your current situation, and carve out your own unique path.
There are a plethora of goal-tracking applications that allow you to identify your next steps, and achieve them. Keeping a log of your goals will improve your focus and give you a confidence boost when you see your progress.
To get started, some questions you may ask yourself are:
- Is this job where I want to be, right now?
- Are all my skills being utilized?
- What are my aspirations?
- What do I enjoy doing most?
4. Highlight Your Strengths
As humans, we're notoriously bad at recognizing our strengths and acknowledging our potential. This is often magnified during job interviews, where you have to demonstrate your value above your competitors.
However, just as knowing your assets is necessary for interview success, it's needed in the workplace, too. Think about it—when was the last time you told yourself you were amazing at something? Everyone has something they're good at, and being aware of yours will boost your confidence.
You can do this by creating a private skills' portfolio, that only you can view, and adding to it regularly. Google Docs and Microsoft Word have some excellent templates to get you started with this.
Alternatively, you can use your feedback board that we explored earlier, to draw out areas that you regularly excel in, and store them on a separate board. Remind yourself of these strengths on a daily basis, and over time your self-belief will grow.
You Deserve to Feel Confident
Using the suggestions discussed in this article, you will be on your way to boosting your confidence at work. Find ways to maximize your self-belief during your everyday routine, and challenge any negative thinking that harms your progress.
Work makes a large chunk of your life, so spending that time racked with self-doubt and low self-confidence is unfair to you. Increasing your job confidence will clear up head-space for you to enjoy your work, and could result in better performance all around.