Believing you can do difficult things is at the heart of raising your game. This is not self-belief based on an inflated sense of your own self-importance, it is self-belief rooted in your competence, self-worth and values. Self-belief comes from recognising your own qualities and acknowledging the contribution you are making to the world, either by virtue of the expectations of others or by a more private, inner conviction arising from personal affirmation or faith. Honing your ability to do difficult things perpetuates a growth in self-confidence and effectiveness.
Continuing to strive to do difficult things keeps us alert and growing in effectiveness.
Very few of us can stand still for long. We end up going either forwards or backwards. If we think we have 'arrived' and don't need to do difficult things any longer, the likelihood is that we will decline in confidence and effectiveness. Sometimes doing difficult things actually involves doing things you have done before but, perhaps because of health constraints, what was previously easy has now become difficult. Believing that difficult things can be done in these circumstances is just as important as when you are healthy. Believing you can do difficult things is not about trying to do the impossible, but continually stretching the boundaries so that one step after another you are reaching outcomes that have never felt possible before.
Kevin White, who has been HR director for two major UK government departments, talks about a person who demonstrated they had stepped up successfully by being able to perform and take others with them. This person was comfortable around the meeting table and a confident contributor in team meetings, showing passion in what he was doing and rising well to a challenge. When faced with new things, he set about doing them without embarrassment; he did not need to pretend he already knew it all or was doing a bigger job.
He was not pretending to be fully effective from day one. He was bringing a step-by-step approach and demonstrating that the job could be done without anguish. This impressed his director.
To Kevin, those who step up successfully are those who have an inner self-belief that allows them to blossom and demonstrate confidence. They do not feel false or come over that way. Their inner belief might come from their parents, their upbringing or their experience and is evident in a calm, confident approach. Kevin finds it dispiriting observing people who do not quite succeed because something is holding them back from moving on confidently; he wants to shake them up and make them realise that they can do it. But he accepts that tackling self-belief is not always that straightforward.
One way of building up your confidence to is to look back on the difficult things that you have accomplished. People all too rarely take the opportunity to take stock and celebrate things they have done that have gone well.
When Rosemary took stock about her progress as a senior manager over the preceding 18 months, she said:
I have done things I did not know I could do. I have learned how to build relationships that enable me to go forward successfully. I have learned how to motivate people to get things done successfully and that I need to rely on other people and not try and do everything myself. I am conscious how seriously people take my words and have become more deliberative as a consequence, and I have always believed in telling the truth and speaking my mind; in the long run that has always proved the right thing to do.
Can you reflect on your journey over the last 18 months in terms of how you have handled difficult tasks?
What enabled you to be successful?
Was there a point when you believed you could be successful?
How did other people help you believe in yourself?
How did you know that you were taking the right first steps?
How did you assess whether you were making effective progress?
An honest affirmation of the resources and skills you have used successfully to do difficult things well can provide a firm basis for tackling other difficult tasks well in the future. False modesty can get in the way of building on what you have done successfully in the past.
What you are called can have a powerful effect. Finlay Scott talks about a time when he was in the Territorial Army and was helping to support an indoor exercise at the Staff College, which required regular officers to role-play more senior roles to the one they currently held (Majors became Major Generals and others Brigadiers). The effect was immediate – the regular officers began to behave as if they were in the senior role straight away. When people wear a badge they often grow into the role.
When some individuals take on a more senior role there is virtually no period of transition. What enables that to happen? What do they do differently?
For some, wearing the 'badge' is comfortable immediately. For others, there is a degree of discomfort at the start and the ease of wearing the badge only comes gradually. Sometimes you need to allow yourself the pleasure of being given the badge to enable you to move up a step and to banish embarrassment.
Archie Hughes has held senior positions in both the private and public sector in aeronautical engineering. When he was 29 he did his first major job in the aeroplane business. He said that when you look above you, all you can see is the bottom of the floor above. He worked 14 hours a day to understand the four walls and the ceiling of the space he occupied.
For Archie, progress came through being confident in the contribution that he could make:
Do not try to be all things to all people. I had to trust my judgement in people. You cannot fool them when you are new to a role. It is taking their skills and using them well. It is understanding your own skills. I had to unlock people's potential. Often it was doing little things well first.
The starting point in believing that you can do different things is acknowledging that other people think that you can do difficult things well. Every time you change jobs, somebody is choosing you. Someone has faith in you and is giving you a chance. They want you to succeed to justify their own selection.
Difficult tasks tend to become less daunting when you have thought them through. Once a problem has been broken down into a sequence of steps, the outcome seems much more attainable. Writing a book of 40 000 words seems daunting and almost impossible; writing 25 separate chapters each of 1600 words seems far more attainable.
What might be the key elements of a personal strategy aimed at increasing your level of confidence in doing difficult things well?
