VIDEO Interview: How to Build Workplace Confidence

Have you ever felt rock bottom with your confidence?

I distinctly remember being in one of those weekly meetings in my early days, working in advertising, and feeling very unconfident indeed.

I felt out of my depth, like I didn’t have any value to add and scared to speak up.

What if my colleagues laughed at me?

Or judged me?

What if they challenged me and made me feel stupid?

I remember feeling that really icky stodgy sickness, churning in my stomach. And it came every time I attended this meeting. Sometimes even before I had even entered the room!

It was embarrassing and I came to loathe attending that meeting, the problem (and my confidence) getting worse every single time.

 

 

I was starting to tell myself that I ‘had a confidence problem’.

But then, I had this epiphany. Literally!

It was like a heavenly choir emerged from the clouds and started singing a wild, grateful ‘Hallelujah!’

Here’s how it happened…

There was this particular meeting when I looked around the room and I realised that my rock bottom confidence wasn’t because I didn’t know my subject matter, nor was my confidence being broken by the (majority of) the people in the room…

It was one particular colleague, who had this horrible habit of talking over people, shouting their ideas down and making them feel like… well, dirt.

I realised I didn’t have a confidence ‘problem’… but this person’s obnoxious behaviour was making me feel unconfident in this particular situation.

And that was all!

That’s all it was!

You can imagine the sense of relief I felt!

This was suddenly a fixable problem… I just needed to work out how to share what I knew and to add value to this meeting in a way that broke this corrosive pattern I was in.

 

 

So the first thing I did was outline what content I wanted to share at the next meeting and…

Knowing that this man was going to interrupt me, I prepared a response to assume my own authority and to make myself heard.

It was amazing!

At the next week’s meeting, I was already walking into that room with a renewed confidence in my step and a twinkle in my eye knowing that this time, the conversation was going to be on my terms! 🙂

When it was that moment to speak, I just did it.

And unsurprisingly, he interrupted so I just said, “Hey (name who shall remain anon), I need to finish my point – I’m not quite done so I’ll do that and then let’s discuss it.”

It was so liberating!

 

 

And the most amazing bit was, it became easier and easier to do this again and again and then, his behaviour changed towards me too.

He stopped interrupting and starting listening…

I know you can appreciate what a game changer that was for me!

And of course I still had to remind him every so often, to ensure he and I didn’t fall back into that old pattern…

And I had to remind myself too that my opinion mattered and that what I had to say was valuable (that little critical voice still creeps in doesn’t it… even when you’re making such progress)?!

But hey… it was fine because I was on a renewed path and it felt incredible!

I met up with El Kwang recently from BEAM Media and we talked some more about workplace confidence.

Rebecca x