So many of the executive women that I work with are looking to increase their self-confidence. They want to show up with greater presence and authority, and they want to be able to influence and impact at a greater degree. Over the last couple of months, I have seen this need dramatically increase, and maybe you’re experiencing the same.
Maybe you really were looking for a raise or a promotion but during the past year, during the pandemic, the timing didn’t feel right – but the timing does now. Or maybe you really enjoy being able to work from home, but your company is going back to the office, and you want to broach the subject of either a permanent work from home situation or a hybrid, some sort of flexibility. Whatever it is, you may be in search of increasing that self-confidence to have those conversations.
Unfortunately, one of the big mistakes I see is when people are in search of the self-confidence, they miss the foundational piece – the piece that supports the self-confidence.
Because self-confidence is simply a component of self-awareness. Self-awareness is one of the four key pillars of emotional intelligence, and 90% of successful people are high in emotional intelligence. The number one, foundational key for emotional intelligence, is self-awareness. So I offer to you, if you are not high in your self-awareness, your self-confidence is only going to reach a certain threshold.
So before you think about, how do you really build upon a greater confidence level, I want you to take a step back and say, How self-aware am I? How high is my self-awareness ability? How well are you knowing of your emotions, of your skills, of your strengths? Once you really tap into and tune into your own self-awareness, then you can really increase your self-confidence.
There are so many resources out there to help build your self-awareness and look, even if you think you have high self-awareness, it’s a never-ending journey. It’s not a start and finish and you’ve reached it, the degree in self-awareness, and you’re done. No, you can always build upon that muscle, that strength. So if you are looking to go in and negotiate, you want to go in and influence, you want to ask for something, I’m encouraging you that you need to check your self-awareness. Spend some time really building that skill before you go in and start negotiating.
When you can be aware of your emotions, if you are highly attuned with your skills, your strengths, and your emotions, then when you go in to have the conversation, you don’t even have to think about your confidence because it’s just going to inherently happen. It’ll become innate in you.
You’ll show up because you’re already aware of where you stand. When you get into the conversation of a negotiation, you are already aware of your emotions, so you’re going to know how to play that, how to control for that, and how to have that dialogue that’s productive with another person. So self-awareness, that is where I want you to focus on, in order to strengthen your self-confidence. The simplest, quickest way that you can start building on your self-awareness or getting to know yourself better is through reflection.
After you’ve been in a conversation with someone, whether it was really positive or negative, take a few minutes and journal, or just reflect through the situation: where were you, who were you with, what was the conversation? And see if you can start to pick up on a pattern, and then make some adjustments from there. And then as I mentioned, you can Google self-awareness, emotional intelligence, there’s a ton of resources out there. But that’s where I want you to start, before you jump ahead to the self-confidence. Take a look at yourself, build that awareness muscle, and the self-confidence will happen.