“If you don’t have confidence, you will always find a way not to win.”
– Carl Lewis
I often speak with friends, clients and colleagues about the importance of executive confidence in business. In my view, confidence means expecting a positive outcome that is both a cause and a result from winning.
Confidence teaches us how to react intuitively to circumstances that we can not control, giving us a belief in ourselves, our teammates, our organisations, our systems, our processes, and our network that becomes self fulfilling.
Most of us immediately know when we come across a confident person. To start with, the most attractive attribute in a person is confidence. They are the people who ask more questions than they talk about themselves. They effortlessly make and keep eye contact. They have a firm grip when shaking hands. They speak loudly and clearly, and make sense in what they say. They smile often and make good use of wit.
There may be a fine line between confidence and arrogance, and really successful people are those who knows how to navigate this thin line. The good news is that confidence does not come by birth but can be learned through life.
Confidences gives people the determination to work toward difficult goals, the spirit to bounce back from adversity and the composure to confront their circumstances honestly, especially during bad times. These expectations allows us to maintain our advantage, when things are going well.
To be successful in life as in business, it is important for us to know how to tap into our inner sources of confidence and move forward and act without hesitation.
For an interesting parallel, recently I came across the enclosed Ted talk where David Kelley of IDEO talks about creative confidence. Enjoy!