Boost Employee Confidence with These Powerful Strategies
Imagine walking into a room full of people and feeling a surge of self-assurance, ready to tackle any challenge that comes your way.
Now, picture that same confidence radiating through your team at work.
How much more could you and your colleagues achieve with high levels of confidence?
In my journey delivering employee workshops, I discovered that boosting employee confidence doesn’t just transform individual performance—it can transform entire workplaces.
In this blog, I’ll share the strategies that have helped numerous employees put together a strategy to help build their confidence.
Contents
Video on Boosting Employee Confidence
The Importance of Employee Confidence
Strategies to Boost Employee Confidence
Additional Tips When Building Employee Confidence
What is Employee Confidence?
Employee confidence is the belief and assurance employees have in their own abilities to perform their tasks effectively, contributing to the organisations goals.
It encompasses a sense of self-worth, competence, and trust in an individuals skills and decisions.
When employees are confident, they are more likely to take initiative, embrace challenges, and collaborate effectively with colleagues.
This confidence not only enhances individual performance but also helps to contribute to a positive and productive work environment.
Video on Boosting Employee Confidence
The Importance of Employee Confidence
Employee confidence is important because it helps both the employees and the company they work for in many ways.
When workers feel confident in their job roles, they take charge, make good decisions, and try new ideas.
This makes the company more productive and forward thinking.
Confidence also creates a positive work environment where people talk openly, work well together, and trust each other.
This makes employees happier and less likely to leave their jobs.
Confident employees can handle daily challenges better and adapt to changes, keeping their performance high even when things get tough.
In the end, building employee confidence makes the whole team stronger and more motivated.
This is crucial for the company’s success in the long run.
Strategies to Boost Employee Confidence
As an employee workshop facilitator, I’m going to share two successful strategies to help build employee confidence and how to implement them.
Transferring Confidence
Whether we believe it or not, we’re all confident at something.
We’ve also all built confidence over time at something.
It could be something as simple as tying your shoe lace (you probably weren’t confident with this as a child).
Or it could be something else like riding a bike, making toast, or other daily tasks that individuals do without concern.
Confidence isn’t an overall thing.
We build confidence in specific things.
In this section, I’m going to share how some of the most confidently appearing individuals use this strategy to help them be more confident in other areas of their lives.
To understand this, we’re going to talk about Muhammed Ali.
Muhammed Ali is mostly known for his skills in the boxing ring but he appeared to be confident in everything he did.
He was so good at boxing that he was able to use this confidence and transfer it to other areas of his life.
He used to say “I am the greatest” because his boxing skills helped him transfer his confidence from inside the ring to outside the ring.
So how can employees take advantage of this?
First, help colleagues to identify the things that they are good at.
Help them to understand how they got good at those things.
It could be a marketeer who is really confident at design, but doesn’t feel confident to speak up in meetings.
Help them to understand that they’ve successfully built confidence in one area of their life, which means they can use it to help others.
However, to truly be able to transfer confidence to other areas of employee lives, you need to understand the exposure hierarchy, which I’ll come on to next.
The Exposure Hierarchy
This is a method that we can implement to any area of our lives to build confidence.
With this method, employees can work towards feeling more confident in whatever it is they want to build confidence in.
Let’s use the example of the marketeer not feeling confident to speak up in meetings.
Here’s how it works!
At each meeting, the marketeer should be encouraged to contribute something small.
It must start with something very small.
This should be discussed with them.
It could be reading a short sentence, or saying one word that contributes to the meeting.
The aim is, the marketeer says something one week, achieves success, and realises that everything went okay.
Then the following week, they can build on it.
They achieve success again and continue to contribute gradually each meeting.
The key point is to make this process gradual enough that the employee feels comfortable to do so.
As a workshop facilitator, let me explain how I’ve used this exact method to build confidence delivering workshops.
So much so, that I now deliver an employee workshop called “Build Unstoppable Confidence”
Here’s how I’ve successfully used the exposure hierarchy to build confidence.
When I first started delivering workshops in 2017, I was extremely nervous.
I lacked confidence because I simply hadn’t exposed myself enough times delivering them.
So I created a gradual process to help me build my confidence.
The first step was to practice these workshops in front of the mirror on my own.
I’d do this continuously until I felt comfortable enough with what I was delivering.
Then, I’d practice in front of one willing participant.
This allowed me to get feedback and build confidence.
I did this, achieved success and it slowly allowed me to grow in confidence.
Fast forward 7 + years and I’m now super confident in what I do because I’ve gradually exposed myself to situations that have allowed me to build confidence.
The truth is, that building confidence can take time.
It’s not going to happen overnight.
So below are some additional methods that can help support building employee confidence.
Additional Tips When Building Employee Confidence
While helping employees build their confidence there are additional methods that you can use to help ensure success!
Be Empathetic
Not everyone moves at the same speed.
Some will move slower than others and may take longer to build confidence in certain areas.
Show empathy and understanding when working with these employees.
Encourage and support them to build their confidence as gradually as necessary.
If they’re rushed, this can negatively impact their confidence building, resulting in more fear and anxiety.
Show these employees that you’re there to help them and not hinder them.
Provide Relevant Training
Whatever you want employees to build confidence in, provide training on it.
If you want to help them build their communication skills, arrange relevant training.
At Loving Life, we have a Build Unstoppable Confidence Workshop that can help employees create a plan to boost their confidence.
Accountability
Help employees stay on track by keeping them accountable.
Communicate clear and easy to understand processes.
Help them to set targets that you support and hold them accountable with.
Ensure these targets are agreed by them and they feel that they are fair.
Offer Constructive Feedback
As employees are building their confidence provide them with constructive feedback.
Ensure your feedback comes across as constructive and not criticism.
Share the things that they are doing well and the things that they can improve on.
If there are areas for improvement, provide feedback that gives them a clear understanding of how to improve.
Feedback should be progressive and easy to understand.
Celebrate Success
When employees build their confidence in particular areas, celebrate it.
This will help to continue boosting their confidence.
Celebrating their success could be in a range of different ways.
This blog shares methods on how to celebrate workplace milestones.
Overall, building employee confidence involves many elements.
Employers need to help support them in as many ways as possible.
If you’d like help supporting your employees.
Get in touch to support your most valuable asset, your people!
But good luck and I wish you the best in helping your colleagues to thrive!
Author –
Tyler Lowe – Health & Wellbeing Speaker
BSc Sport & Exercise Rehabilitation
