Where Does Confidence Come From?

Lessons in Leadership with Mr. Bow

Today’s discussion;

Where Does Confidence Come From?

            I was not a confident Kid growing up. In fact if I were to try and describe yourself I would call myself a pretty nerdy kid that had a hard time with people. I had friends, maybe one or two at a time, but I struggled with groups of people. I am and always have been an introvert. (There is an important aside about Introverts and Extroverts that I will write sometime but that is for another day.)

            School was hard for me, big group of hormonal teenagers of course it was, especially 6^th through 8^th grade. I remember always feeling like I was at the edge of “the group,” and that wasn’t even the popular group that was the nerd group. I had a hard time when people would draw attention to me. I remember that I would mumble a lot, and not really say what I wanted. Needless to say, I was not a confident kid.

            Interestingly I was not a dumb kid nor did I lack skills. I had been playing cello since I was 5, I was, for my age, an excellent musician. Also I was particularly good at math and science. I had plenty of things to be proud of, yet I still did not feel confident. Why was that, what is different now?

            Today I am, in one sense, a professional leader. I am a teacher, a choir director. Being in front of large groups of middle school and high school students is what I do every day. Confidence is absolutely key to what I do. I would even go so far to say that Confidence is key to good teaching, whatever kind of teaching or wherever that teaching takes place. If fact I think we can all think of a teacher that we have had that wasn’t confident and how class turned out because of it. So, How did I go from hating school to loving it and choosing it as a profession?

Confidence is something that is frequently thrown at young people as a fix all solution.

“I’m not a good test taker.”

“Be more confident.”

“I am not good at sports.”

“Be more confident.”

“I am not good at singing.”

“Be more confident.”

You catch my meaning, but how can you “be more confident?” Where does real confidence come from? Pay attention because it is not what you think.

Confidence doesn’t come from being good at something, it doesn’t come from a belief in oneself that you are the best, most awesome, most powerful, and that nobody can stop you. In fact it is the opposite. True confidence comes from Humility and not from Pride. Bottom Line, Confidence comes from humility, pride breeds insecurity.

Now lets define some terms.

Humility is having a modest or low view of one’s own importance and a recognition of the importance of others. That doesn’t mean that you have to think of yourself as the scum of the earth. Mostly it is the realization that even without you the world will keep turning, the organization will move forward, and people will learn what they need to. It is appreciating what how important others are in your own development and how much we need other people.

  Pride is a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction from one’s own achievement. I describe it as the “I did it or I’m the best feeling.” Note that is not the “I CAN do it or I have the COULD be the best,” which is different. It is important to note that pride focuses on past achievement not future.

Finally, Confident is feeling or showing confidence in oneself. This is the “I CAN do it” feeling.  (These are not my definitions BTW I am getting these right off of Google.)

Now the way that Humility builds confidence is a process.  If you have humility you will listen to others. If you listen to others you will learn much faster. Learning is the process of building on what you do know or can do, therefore you are confident in the things you can do and do know. That is real confidence.

On the Other hand if you have pride you think you can already do it, don’t need to work on it, or have already achieved an acceptable level of competence. You are no longer learning. The lines of what you know and what you think you know become blurry. Some things you use to be able to do but have not practiced in while, some things you were working on but never mastered or came to know for sure. The Blurriness clouds your vision as to what you can or can’t do and makes you feel uncomfortable when faced with a challenge. That uncomfortable feeling is insecurity.

When it comes to leadership Confidence can manifest itself in many ways. Earlier I mentioned my experience as a teacher and how I believe that confidence is key to good teaching. I frequently tell my classes that the teacher is really just the lead learner. I don’t believe in an all-knowing teacher who imparts information to his naive and unlearned students. Rather it is someone who is further along the path of knowledge. Therefore confidence is a teacher who is still learning.

Confidence is also the ability to listen to others, if we are humble we recognize how much we need others. And how much we can learn from others. With confidence we know that the best direction for the next step might come from someone other than ourselves and so we listen to all the options before making a decision and then we can make a more informed decision. Confidence is a leader who listens.

Insecurity and Pride says that we don’t need to listen to others because we know best. We can make a decision first and then if people disagree and bring up concerns we can justify our decisions or simply ignore their complaints because we know better. Though in reality their complaints and concerns put questions in our minds as to our abilities that further expand our insecurity.

            Confidence is being able to correct mistakes and make changes when necessary. When someone points how a problem it takes humility to listen and consider that what we did might need to change. Other times their criticisms lack some information and therefore was unfounded but we do consider what they say. Confidence is the ability to take a serious look at criticism and make adjustments as necessary.

            Insecurity grows cold in the face of criticism. It makes you pit yourself against your attacker. In stead of observing their idea you look at them. You think because they had an idea they think they are better than you, but your pride says you are the best therefore their idea can’t have merit because I am the best. Pride would have you counter-attack and get angry in the face of criticism.

            This list of ways that Confidence and insecurity manifest themselves in leadership can go on for pages but I think you see my point. If we are humble we will know when to listen to others and when to take action in confidence.

I want to make sure you know just because I wrote this does not mean that I think I am an expert in this practice. It is a skill that I am still developing, I hope by sharing this that you have been able to move further along your path of leadership. Before I finish I want to give some suggestions of further reading or application.

First is a book called “Mindset” by Carol Dweck. If you haven’t already heard of this book I am surprised. It has exploded in the last few years. It suggests that there are two “Mindsets” that we can be in, Growth and Fixed. Fixed is where we believe that we are born with a certain propensity toward skills and abilities therefore why work to get better at anything. Growth mindset on the other hand is where we believe that anything we work at we can improve upon. Growth mindset is not scared of Failure, Fixed is, Growth Mindset can overcome challenges, Fixed just avoids them.

What I would like to suggest is that Growth Mindset is humble and therefore confident. Where Fixed Mindset is prideful and insecure. Her book gives many examples of what growth Mindset looks like and sounds like, as you read it you will notice that Growth Mindset requires humility and confidence.

The second book I would like to recommend Is one of my all-time favorite speakers named “Simon Sinek.” He has a book called, “Leaders Eat Last” that is really great. Also if you can’t get your hands on the book he has lots of lectures on YouTube, and a couple Ted Talks as well. All fantastic.

I would like to specifically reference the part in his book where he talks about hormones. He has a brilliant explanation of some of the basic hormones (Endorphins, Dopamine, Serotonin, Oxytocin, and Cortisol) in part two of his book. I would like humble suggest one small edit.

He references Serotonin as the “Pride Hormone.” What he means is that serotonin is the hormone responsible for the feeling of pride (which it is) when others recognize us for our accomplishments. Serotonin can be very good, he suggests, for reinforcing the bond between parent and child, coach and player, or even boss and employee. There is also a negative, false way to get serotonin and that is by wearing of costly apparel. In his example you feel awesome when you wear your Gucci shoes but you didn’t actually accomplish anything or reinforce any relationship when you did.

I would like to suggest that the positive side of Serotonin is Confidence instead of pride. Your past accomplishments and the relationships developed because of those accomplishments will boost your confidence. Pride on the other hand is the false trigger for serotonin. Driving a fancy car makes you feel better than other people but doesn’t actually make you better at anything. Maybe that is just semantics, you be the judge.

            I hope this has inspired some thought and given you some new insight. I have decided, which may be weird, to leave below a set of bloopers. There are some ideas that I wrote but then when I went back and edited they didn’t fit. But they are on topic and there are some good thoughts there. I would love to hear your thoughts.

            Mr. Bowthorpe

BLOOPERS:

One of the most important things a leader can do is not get in the way of their people. If the world will go on without you and continue to progress don’t get in the way of that progress as the leader.

True leadership will help those around you grow and shine, poor leadership is threatened by the success of those around you.

That is why the guy who think that they are all that are actually the most insecure. The person who is insecure is the one who puts down those around them, who has to be right all the time, and can’t let anybody else threaten their position. You cannot lead from that position. Nobody learns from somebody doing those things. They will complete assignments but they will not learn from you.

As a leader you must develop humility if you want to have confidence. Humility gives you the ability to listen to others, to admit you are wrong and correct your mistakes. Humility gives you the ability to

Having a position of leadership gives you the authority to lead but does not make you better than anyone that you are leading.

Telling ourselves that we are the best does not make us better at something. When we are humble we know how much we have to improve on.