Showing the world you mean business: How to be confident at work

January 31st 2018 | Posted by phil scott

Showing the world you mean business:  How to be confident at work

Having confidence at work means trusting in your own skills and capabilities and having the ability to demonstrate these skills to those around you.

Confidence in the work place is important at every level, whether you’re a CEO, or Senior Manager, or a junior member of staff that’s new to a team.  Being confident is what helps you to work successfully with others, whether that’s leading and inspiring those around you or supporting and contributing to a team.

None of these roles can be achieved without a level of self-belief and self-confidence pushing you forward.

Every job at every level has its challenges and it might not always be easy to feel confident on the inside, especially when there’s a big challenge to overcome or a conflict or difficult situation to resolve.  But it is always important to try and be confident on the outside – even if that means sometimes acting more confident than you might feel!  Demonstrating belief in yourself helps you do your job to the best of your ability and helps improve your relationships with the people you work with.

Simple changes can go a long way

Making some small changes to your outlook and behaviour can make a big impact to your confidence at work.

Prepare yourself:

When faced with a new or complex issue at work, advance preparation can help increase your confidence for when you’re in the middle of the actual situation.  Sit down and think about what needs to be done, the best way to deliver this and how you will need to behave.  When the scenario happens, you’ll be able to demonstrate a natural confidence because you’ll be comfortable dealing with the circumstances head on.

Believe in yourself:

Self-belief is at the heart of being confident.  You can improve your self-belief by taking the time to focus on you and understand what it is that makes you successful. Make a list of what you excel at in your job, think about your unique abilities and why you have been hired (above others!) to do your particular role.

This is an invaluable exercise in being able to determine what makes you special in your job and also helps fine-tune how to showcase this to your colleagues.

Build knowledge and experience:

One way to feel even more confident at work is to gain experience in areas in which you might feel lacking.  Take opportunities to build your knowledge and get involved in projects that may be out of your comfort zone initially.  Exposure to new work, new knowledge and new skills will broaden your capabilities and the knock-on effect is more confidence in what you can deliver.

Be insightful:

It’s worth remembering that, at some point in their career, almost everybody has doubted themselves.  Remember this insight and use it when you need to.  Understand that you’re no different from the next person and that it’s ok to put work into improving confidence.  Even the most confident person can always benefit.  There are always new situations at work, new challenges, promotions and opportunities where working on confidence is vital.

Be who you need to be:

Sometimes it might feel like the person you are in the office is different to who you are ‘on the inside’.  This is normal at work and there’s an element of ‘presentation’ to how everybody behaves.  Confident people at work are presenting the best of themselves and they may adopt a ‘work’ persona to achieve this.  Be who you need to be at work to do your job well, push your confidence to the front and use this to be successful.