Surprising ways to Instill — and Erode — Confidence.

Recently I have been thinking about the subtleties of confidence: what can instill it and what can erode it, as we encounter each other in business. There’s often a counter effect, too, whereby things that might inspire confidence, don’t, and things that should rattle it, actually soothe. 

I remembered two past instances related to my perspective on confidence. One: pretty early on in my career, I was on vacation with a group of friends at various stages of their own careers in media and publishing. One man in the crew remarked that he was extremely proud to always have worked for the same company and was now concerned that he might be in trouble and in the cross-hairs for being fired. My friend Mariel, a very accomplished, seasoned and respected magazine executive, practically slammed her retort: “Please. I have been fired five times. God willing, you will be, too. It’s important.” I remember being taken aback at the time. Ah, youth.

While Mariel’s statement might have been aggressive on the surface, there was truth to it. Savvy and chops aren’t always earned on calm waters. Many years and personal experiences on all sides of this issue later, I know this to be true. We tend to trust people more who’ve had experience with the hard stuff: both on the handling and the receiving end of it. The inherent negativity of this topic might make one nervous — but weathering the experience can, in fact, bring strength.

On a lighter note regarding confidence, a few years after the first incident, it was my first day on a job where I’d been hired to smooth the evolution of a media & creative shop environment to something approximating a marketing services organization. We had a major new-business meeting that day, and the potential client would be visiting our offices for the pitch. As the meeting started, literally every single member of the management team, creative studio and potential account team came in and took a seat in the room to face the client. There were 10 people from the agency, and two people from the client side. The agency crew was swaggeringly proud of this show of force. The client was freaked out.

The strategy backfired; the client couldn’t be convinced that we really knew how to staff an account and run a piece of business. Their confidence in us was shot. Luckily we were able to use this experience later to create a training spoof called “The World’s Worst Client Meeting” to illustrate best practices to instill client confidence. And, we could laugh at ourselves.

Here are some other examples of the array of things that can affect confidence in unexpected ways, boosting it or whacking it up or down:

The guy who without fail uses “Cheers!” as his salutation on every email, no matter how cheery or brutal the content is. It’s likely I take nothing I receive from this person at face value.

People on conference circuits, supposed thought leaders, who don’t make themselves available for panel preparation calls and bring the same material every time.

The agency managing partner who shrilly proclaims, “I know what I’m doing” whenever presenting her own decisions. I would trust this person about as much as I would trust the guy who tells me to “trust him.”

The executive who indiscriminately makes almost all meetings with his or her direct reports “closed door” meetings.

People who coin their own nicknames and force indoctrination  of those names within the company culture.

Entrepreneurial founders who believe they are the ones who establish and foster company and office culture — that this is something they can engineer from the helm.

And, we’ve covered this one before, but anyone — and I mean anyone — who calls him or herself a guru.

Confidence is tricky. So, we’d do well to reflect on the subtleties. That which one views as a pronounced strength may, at certain degrees of intensity, be a weakness that will deteriorate confidence. What is leveraged as a show of force may cancel out good intent. What may look like a career peacefully lived, may actually render one bland and without experience to draw confidently from when in strife.

By Kendall Allen
Kendall Allen runs most of her media and marketing pursuits through a company she established, Influence Collective, LLC, based in New York City. She also serves as General Manager for Digital Ventures at Carolyn & Co. Media and teaches digital marketing and media to executives for Laredo Group.
Courtesy of http://www.www.mediapost.com