The Confidence Compass: Navigating Leadership with Self-Worth and Competence | #27

Welcome to Unleash youh Impact Unlock Others, a podcast about inspiring leadership. We hope to bring you grounded wisdom stories from real leaders and leave you feeling inspired. Let's dive in.

Welcome to Unleash youh Impact Unlock Others. This is a leadership unscripted episode and part two of a two part series on confidence in leadership.

Now, last time Rich and I were together, we talked about what healthy confidence, or we call it true confidence was and how that's grounded in emotional intelligence and the link between self worth and competence.

Today we're going to dive a bit deeper and Rich talked last time about his idea of a confidence compass, a way of actually navigating the difference between healthy confidence and unhealthy confidence. So, Rich, welcome back.

Thank you.

We've also got our guest from the last podcaster with us. Garfield is here. If you want to know why Garfield is here, go back and listen to the first podcast and it'll be very clear.

It's Garfield the cat, by the way.

Yes, Garfield the cat. So Rich, let's have a little bit of a recap on the first conversation we had. Healthy confidence. Just remind people what we meant by that.

So healthy confidence is grounded in what we call the connected centre.

So it's operating from a place of emotional intelligence where a person, through their high level of self awareness, so they're aware of their thoughts and their feelings, they have a healthy relationship with those thoughts and feelings and they can see them as things that they can be aware of and change from that self awareness, they're able to self manage. So we talked in quite a lot of detail last time about actually creating a gap between stimulus and response.

So somebody with a high level of self awareness can spot the unhelpful thought and emotional patterns, some of which go, you know, a long way back into sort of childhood and our early upbringing and how those potentially can be either unhelpful or helpful.

Okay, now today what I want to really dive into is and talking about those thought patterns, what happens when our confidence goes off balance.

Yeah.

Now I think that the starting point would probably be best to explain to anybody listening this idea of the confidence compass. What is a confidence compass?

Yes.

Can you sort of bring that to sort of visual life for us?

Okay, so as I said last time, so this, this model that I've created has come out of some of the research that I did when I did my Masters in coaching and mentoring and I did a dissertation on confidence and self esteem in coaching practice.

Yeah.

And it's part of the reading I did around this topic area and also, if you like, reflect on my own experience, the concept of confidence. There are two components of confidence, what we call a self worth element and a competence element.

And traditionally what's happened in the past is these two elements have been treated as two separate things. But actually I think that these two elements of self worth and competence work together in quite a complicated way.

So if you think about the concept of self worth, for example, self.

Self worth is the degree to which as human beings, we value ourselves, we value our strengths, we have an honest assessment of our strengths and our weaknesses and we believe that our needs, in the context of our interactions with other human beings need to be honoured and respected. And at the same time, we honour and respect other people's needs.

So in other words, our sense of self worth is not driven by what people think of us and our sense of self worth is not driven by how good or bad we are at some sort of thing. So if, for example, we fail at a particular activity or a project, self worth doesn't take a nosedive.

So that's an example of how competence and self worth sort of work together.

And then the other, the other facet, if you like, of confidence is the degree to which we have a low or a high view or overinflated view of our competence. So this is what you call skills based confidence.

So when we get good at something, we build competence in a particular area that can naturally help to build our confidence.

But as I said before, what we want, that healthy level of confidence in our competence needs to be rooted and grounded by this healthy sense of self worth. So the two interact together in quite a nuanced sort of way.

Do you think in the modern world, where obviously social media now is a big part of all of our lives, whether we like it or not. I know you don't engage with a huge amount of it. No, I'm limited in what I do, but it's in most people's lives.

Do you think that confidence is being impacted by that? Because obviously that extrinsic validation is central to how social media platforms work.

Yes.

And also, you know, you constantly get told you should be good at this, you should be good at that. It's almost driving that perfectionism type of mentality. Do you think that's part of why maybe there are a lot of people struggling with confidence?

Yeah, I think I often say, when I coach people on the topic of confidence, I often say that the death of self worth is when we compare ourselves to other people.

Yeah.

And so this, this constant, if you like, holding ourself up to the mirror of other people.

Yeah, constantly holding ourselves up to the mirror of what we perceive, you know, social media to be telling us can be really undermining and unhelpful. So in essence, what we want our self worth to be is to be grounded and centered in the essence of who we are.

In other words, we're enough, if you like, you know, warts and all, as Oliver Cromwell said. So we're enough. And that sense of self worth is not knocked back by unhelpful things we see in social media.

Us unhelpfully comparing ourselves to other people, us being jealous of other people. All of those factors can play into what I call a very fragile sense of confidence.

Yeah, yeah, I get that. So I guess what we really want to do. We talked last time a lot about the importance of things like reflective learning.

You talked about mindfulness as well. Now reflective learning means you tap into intrinsically inside of you what matters.

Yeah, indeed.

And that's quite different to the extrinsic motivation that something like a social media platform would drive. I don't want to make this all about social media, but it is a big part of everyone's lives now.

Yes.

And I personally do think for some people who have confidence issues, that could be playing a part.

Yeah, yeah, there's no doubt about that.

So, Rich, as this is an audio podcast and I'm quite a visual learner, let's just create a bit of a visual for people who are listening. So this idea of a confidence compass, we have a north south axis and an east west axis.

For argument's sake, the north south axis is, is the self worth axis.

Yes.

And at one end you've got overconfidence, at the other end you've got self doubt. Is that right?

Yeah. So the overconfidence I would describe as the overinflated view of self.

Over inflated view of self.

Yeah.

So that's where the person, either consciously or unconsciously, if you like, values themselves as a human being over and above other people around them.

Yeah.

And the other extreme, you have this low sense of self where actually you keep comparing yourself unfavorably to other people.

Right.

So I'd often, for example, in coaching, when I'm coaching people around this concept of confidence, I often say that the death of self esteem is when we compare ourselves to other people and that's when we compare ourselves unfavorably to other people. So our view of us as a human being is diminished.

And somewhere on that axis in the middle is where we really want to be, where we have a strong sense of intrinsic worth for ourselves.

So that's what we call the connected center in the middle.

The other axis, east to west, is the competence axis. So just want to bring that one to life for me. From what, the two extremes on that one.

Yeah. So again, similar to the self worth axis, so on the left hand side we have what we call a low view of competence.

Yeah.

So that would show itself with a person who has to the people around them evident strengths and abilities.

Yeah.

But they would have a tendency either not to see that and or to put those down and underplay them and diminish those. At the other extreme on the right hand side of the axis, we have the overinflated view of competence.

So that's what, you know, human beings tend to do this naturally. We have a tendency as human beings to naturally have an overinflated view of our competence. But this is where it starts to get a bit more extreme.

So there's a really good example of this where they did some research on. They asked people to rate themselves on the degree to which they see themselves as an above average driver. And I think I know what's coming next.

Yeah, yeah. So I think 75% of people, I can't remember the precise figures, it was a high number of people rated themselves as above average.

And if you think about that statistically, that's just nonsense because half the people are below average and half the people are above average. So a good number of those people are over inflating their view of their competence.

So those two axes then work together, as we said, in this sort of very nuanced way.

Yeah.

And it's that kind of connected center idea that you talked about, which is where ideally where we want to be most of the time, it's probably not realistic to be there all the time because life will put pressures on us.

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly right.

And you know, our confidence will naturally ebb and flow, you know, as we get stressors and difficult situations in life and as we fail at things, sometimes it takes us a while to process those and get back, you know, to bring us back to that connected center.

And I'm also guessing, you know, like we said last time, so you talked about being at these extremes, devaluing yourself or overvaluing yourself. Sometimes that happens outside of our consciousness as well. It's not necessarily a conscious thing, is it?

No, that's right. Yeah.

So we can start to bring some of that to bear when we start to, as we said last time, bring some self awareness to those unhelpful thought and feeling patterns that play itself out that have been scripted in us since childhood. And, you know, providing they're not too deep, we have a huge amount of ability and potential to reshape those narratives.

So obviously this podcast is not a therapeutic podcast.

So it's possible that some people listening to this might have some deep seated issues around the degree to which they value themselves as human beings and value their competence. And if some of this is really deep seated and then you need to seek therapeutic help.

You know, this is dealing with what I call sort of ordinary confidence in the context of organizational work.

Yeah, yeah, let's make that really clear because we are not counsellors or psychotherapists.

No, no, we're not.

And we're not trying to be either. No. So when we imagine this compass.

Yes.

I just brought that to life a little bit. To me, like any model like this, it will sort of throw some natural styles out. And in this case, I'm calling them for argument's sake.

Some natural confidence styles.

Yes.

Yeah.

That come out of a model like this. I'd like to explore those with you. Maybe just discuss what the typical thoughts or behaviors of each style is, how that impacts leadership.

Because this is a leadership podcast at the end of the day, and maybe the path to getting past, if you recognize yourself as this type of person, getting past that. So let's start with somebody who's got a low level of self worth and a low level of confidence. It's almost like we call that person the self doubter.

Yes.

Yeah.

What does that look like? What are the typical thoughts and behaviors and how does that impact on leadership for that person?

So it's really interesting. So if you fundamentally don't believe you have intrinsic value, that will often lead to a hesitancy to act.

Okay. Yeah.

And so as a leader or a person person in an organization, you may wait for explicit permission to act before leading.

Yeah.

So it might mean that you hesitate around decision making or you make a decision you think, is that the right decision? And you're constantly rechecking and rechecking yourself.

So the self doubter, you know, the person with a low sense of their strengths and abilities and a low sense of self worth will often be underestimating their contributions and often seeking reassurance in an unhealthy way. I mean, we, you know, we all want social validation and we all want healthy, balanced feedback. People around us.

But the degree to which this type of star seeks reassurance tends to be undermined and unhealthy.

Is it probably true also then that a person in this situation would probably try to control things that they shouldn't try and control, Almost have a strong degree of control because it makes them feel safer.

Would that be true? Yeah, possibly. Possibly true, yes.

And also would hesitate to make decisions until they get the right answer. They need certainty to make a decision.

Yes. Yeah. And the danger is they're looking for certainty in a situation where probably in business now, you can't have absolutely.

No, you can't have absolute certainty on anything. We've talked about this in a previous podcast.

So making decisions in an ambiguous, uncertain situation can be a real challenge for the natural self doubter.

Yeah.

So what's the path to growth for somebody in, in this situation now? How do they get past that to try and get back to that connected center?

So what I'd say to that, you know, that the self doubt a person is to consciously manage your self talk.

For example, when you're going into a difficult meeting or you're going into a meeting where you feel, if you like, secondary to the other person you're engaging with, manage your self talk. You know, tell yourself I am enough.

Tell yourself, you know, I'm a leader in this situation and I have these strengths and abilities and bring, bring those to bear.

Yeah.

And the other thing I would do would be to engage in that journalistic practice that we talked about earlier. So reflect on your strengths and your weaknesses and ask for feedback on those.

And be open to the fact that when you get positive feedback, don't dismiss that.

Yeah.

You know, really take that in.

Yeah.

Okay, Brilliant.

So, Rich, let's move on to the next style of confidence, which is somebody who's got a low self worth but also an overinflated view of their confidence. Let's call that person the striver. What does a striver look like? How does that play out?

Yeah, this is what I call the perpetual striver. So this person will question their self worth. Okay. But what they want to do is to do things really, really well.

And they do things really, really well. If you like, to compensate for the low view of self. Okay, so they're always striving to do things really well.

So this is almost like the perfectionist type behavior where you see in this. So actually to fail is really, really bad. They have very high standards and if they fail, that has a massive impact on their self worth.

So you can see how the two axes sort of interact with each other.

So this, this unhelpful story that's driving this could be. I'm afraid of being found out.

Yes. I'm afraid of being found out particularly. I think also that this person will have a tendency to avoid challenges. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Think about, if you think about the psychology behind why that is. So if they avoid the challenges, it means they never fail.

Absolutely.

So with the self doubt we add hesitation here. Lack of willingness to put themselves forward with the perpetual striver. What we have is somebody who likes to stick to their comfort zone, to the.

If you like the strengths that they know well and they have a very high standard for themselves and their sense of self worth then is very fragile as a result of. Of that.

Yeah.

And how might that play out in a leadership context? How might you recognize somebody who is a perpetual striver?

So just like there's another star we're going to talk about in a minute which also has this sort of, if you like this streak of perfection.

Yeah.

In them, I think it's learning to have a healthy relationship with failure.

Okay.

So it's okay to fail. Okay. And to also to gradually start to push themselves out of their comfort zone and to recognize actually you don't always need to be right.

And to recognize that part of learning and growing as a human being is when we push ourselves outside of our comfort zone.

If you're a leader and you recognize that as you, then this is probably something that you need to address.

Yeah, yeah.

And again, the path to sort of growth for this person, is it the same as with the self doubter? Yes, that's probably true of all of these styles.

Yeah, I think so.

Absolutely.

Rich, let's move on to the third style then, which is I'll call the pretender. This is somebody who has an over inflated view of self, but a low view of their competence.

So as a pretender, this person will often appear confident.

Yeah.

They'll appear articulate and in control. Yet beneath the surface, they sort of harbor a persistent fear of being found out.

So they will have a tendency to rely on their skills and accomplishments to shore up that unhelpful sense of worth, that fragile sense of worth, that overinflated view of self. So they're trying to shore up that overinflated view of self with trying to be in control, be confident and articulate.

So it's like a pretence almost, that.

Sort of outer polish masking some quite severe doubt underneath the surface.

Yeah, yeah. The point Here is that doubt is underneath the surface.

Yeah.

So there's a degree of humility needed here, isn't there A degree of clarity needed for these people?

Yes.

The root to that is again is the same. There's some reflection needed to be doing, probably some feedback that's needed from other people who can see how that manifests itself.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And I think the important thing here is to sort of quiet that inner critic.

Yeah.

And you know, to move yourself towards that more centered sense of self worth.

Yeah.

And how does that play out in leadership leaders who have, who are the pretender.

So this is a person who almost has a psychological need to always display a high level of competence, even though they have a low view of themselves. So if they receive feedback about themselves, their fragile sense of worth and competence can quickly undermine.

So that that polished pretense can sometimes result in quite defensive, aggressive behavior if that's challenged.

So Rich, let's go on to the fourth style, which is the overachiever. So this is somebody who has an over inflated view of their competence and an overinflated view of self.

Yes. So the overachiever, this is a person driven by the satisfaction of reaching and often exceeding your goals.

So it's very, very important that you know, you achieve the highest level of success. And that highest level of success makes you feel better compared to the other people around you.

Yeah.

So you'll often step into, you know, high stake challenges with, you know, with apparent confidence. Well, it is confidence, but it's a very fragile sort of confidence because it's almost like arrogance.

It's almost pretend, isn't it?

Yeah, it's not quite the pretender. You know, the pretend is a bit different. And actually your surface success, you know, your self worth then is contingent on that.

So your value feels tightly bound up with each achievement. So you'll strive and strive and achieve and achieve, you know, so perfectionism will be, will be one of the core traits of this sort of person.

And you'll push yourself harder and harder and harder and harder and the very behaviors that drive your success almost like become a, you know, like a treadmill. So burnout is a very real possibility with this sort of stuff.

And sometimes it can lead to a lot of a relationship strain, you know, because you just, you never stop.

No.

Push, push, push, push, push, push. Yeah, I'm guessing with this style, much the same as the last one, might be quite hard to give this person feedback.

They might not want to take the feedback on board. But also same as the pretender, they need a degree of humility and perspective, don't they?

Yes. And this sort of person probably would take very little time to reflect on setbacks because they're always pushing oars on.

You know, their working diary is probably literally end to end with everything, you know, and even in their personal life, you know, there's just no stop. You know, the house is spotless, the car is spotless, you know, whatever that might look like for this person.

So it feels exhausting just describing it.

Do you think anyone listening to this podcast who is an overachiever would actually recognize that they are potentially not?

And I think that's why it's important for this person to take some time to put that gap between stimulus and response to recognize actually your natural strengths are drive and initiative and resilience and getting stuff done.

Yeah.

Rest in that. But I think it's to learn that you are good enough. You don't have to be the best at everything.

Yeah.

That doesn't mean you can't still strive to for excellence. You can still try and better yourself. That's a different thing to being perfectionist, isn't it?

It is, it is. Exactly. Exactly.

So, rich, we have the self doubter.

Yeah.

We have the striver, we have the pretender, and we have the overachiever. Now, some people who will listen to those descriptions you just give them will recognize themselves.

Yes.

Say, yeah, that's me. Some, as we've just said, possibly won't. Or if they do, they might want to push it away because it's a bit too painful to face up to.

Ultimately, whether you're any of those four, you need to try and get to that connected center. That's the point where we talked about true confidence. Healthy confidence is being in that connected center.

So I'd like to sort of unpack with you so that people really understand that what that connected center looks like.

Yeah. So as we said in the first podcast, this connected center is all about true humility.

Yeah.

So this is where we have a balanced sense of self. We have a grounded, realistic view of our strengths balanced with a realistic view of our weaknesses. Okay.

So our sense of self is then not reliant on the degree to which we build competence in things.

Yeah.

You know, so building competence and growing as human beings, they're just, if you like, natural expressions of our natural talents. But our sense of self worth doesn't rise and fall with every little failure or success.

No.

And I guess there's two different things here. Some leaders might be an Overachiever in one context but not another.

That's possible. Yeah.

And that's true of all of these styles we've talked about. There might be other leaders, though, that it's not so contextual. It is. I'm almost always in.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

So I guess the point here is how do we use the compass as this is not a diagnosis tool. This is a tool to help you with your levels of self awareness and with your personal growth, isn't it?

Yes, it is. Absolutely that.

And that's why we started the first podcast talking about emotional intelligence and self awareness, because the confidence compass inventory that's going to be in the ebook when we release it is just simply a self awareness tool.

So what we're trying to encourage leaders to do is to create that gap between stimulus and response and to be always bringing yourself back to that connected center, to put yourself in touch with the unhelpful narratives and beliefs that drive you away from the connected center to one of these four unhelpful styles.

Okay, so anybody listening to this who says, yeah, I would like to find out the conference inventory, you can contact us after this podcast and we will better get that to you at some point soon. But let's just talk about using this compass in practice.

So what are the ways in which somebody listening to this thinks, yeah, actually I want to be in that connected center. That's kind of where I would like to spend most of my time. How do I get there? So how do we use this compass in a very practical ways, Rich?

Yeah, so in the previous podcast we talked a lot about self reflection. I think it's really important, particularly for, say, the overachiever, is to take some time to reflect. So I'm not going to say any more about that.

No.

Seek feedback.

Okay.

So I think actually seeking feedback for all of these unhealthy styles can be really beneficial.

So for the people, say the overachiever, for example, sometimes receiving challenging feedback can trigger very defensive behaviors in you and in us, you know, because we all have that.

So it's to seek feedback and then to consciously manage your response to that feedback and to take that in deeply and to really go away and think about it.

At the other extreme, say with the self doubter, for example, is ask people for feedback and when they give you positive affirmations about, you know, your value as a human being and the strengths and the abilities that you have, is to really connect with that and to use that to build a healthy sense of self worth.

We're not pretending this is easy because we know the people that are struggling with confidence is not healthy. It's not the easiest thing to manage.

No.

Is it?

No.

But actually I think that you said the point is feedback is just information. You don't have to do anything with it if you don't want to. But actually feedback is really useful information that you can do something with.

And I think the other thing just to say is you can use this model as a potential framework to coach people in your team who perhaps are lacking in confidence or perhaps you have people in your team that are the overachiever or the pretenders.

They're more difficult actually to coach in this sort of area because they have a tendency to be defensive in their response to feedback and coaching around this.

But I think when people see this and they see how this plays out and when our ebook is released and they read some of the detail around what they can do and some of the potential pitfalls of these styles, actually that's a really good way of challenging people's self awareness of themselves.

Yeah.

So if you've got a leader out there who is fairly competent in their coaching ability, they probably could pick up the ebook, take that information and go and use it to coach others. You might have people thinking, I'd like doing that, but maybe I need to come on one of your coaching confidence workshops.

Yes. Yeah.

First of all. And learn how to do that. And that's absolutely fine. We can teach you how to do that.

There are probably a lot of leaders out there that can recognize people in their teams that are the overachiever or the pretender or the strive or the self doubter. And actually those people potentially are not maximizing their potential, are they?

They're not necessarily reaching their full performance capability.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. The other thing just to say that we haven't really touched on is actually confidence has a tendency to overflow.

So it's perfectly natural as a human being when we come up against challenges, when we are faced with life's traumatic events, that can knock our confidence. And I like to think confidence is a bit like a bucket and a bucket filled with water.

Yeah.

So using the analogy of bucket filled with water, that's our level of confidence. So what we want to be doing is to keep the bucket topped up.

Yeah.

So that's why journaling is so important. So if you do something that's really good. Okay. Journal that. That's water in the bucket.

If you start to develop a talent and ability, you know, that's water in the bucket. And sometimes we fail or bad things happen and it's a bit like kick in the bucket, a bit of water sloshes out.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

But the water's only sloshed out. It's a bucket and you can fill it back up again.

So building your confidence, if you like, is a lifelong journey of using your self awareness to keep refilling the bucket and to build that connected center, to reconnect back with that connected center and to keep that bucket filled.

Yeah.

And I think that's a really, really good analogy and it's a good point as well, that confidence is one of those very fluid things.

It is a fluid thing.

Yeah.

And I've talked on this podcast before about some pretty quite traumatic stuff that's happened to me in terms of deaths in the family in the last couple of years. And I gotta be honest with you, you're right, those things did knock my confidence.

Yes. Yeah.

Probably not from a professional point of view as much as from a health point of view. And you know, I'm a dad, I've still got a fa, so you're right. These things do ebb and flow. There's no doubt about that.

And it's recognizing when actually it has impacted your confidence.

Yeah, yeah.

And more importantly, like you said, what can you do to top the bucket back up again?

Yeah. And the recognition of the ebb and flow thing is. I think we talked about the book self compassion in the last podcast.

Yeah.

So it's okay if your confidence ebbs and flows.

Yeah.

You know, actually, if.

If you have a big disappointment in life, it's natural for you to need time to process that and just to get yourself back on track and start to fill in the bucket again. That's okay.

Yeah, that's okay. As you said, you are enough in your current state, but you can also strive to improve.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, true, healthy, lasting confidence is not the absence of fear.

No.

Okay. And it's not completely stable.

No.

Always ebbs and flows with life's events.

So that's probably enough for today. Rich closing thoughts, top tips that you give anybody listening to this today.

So the top tips would be get some feedback and to listen. And if you feel the defensive response coming up, shut up and listen. I've said this before, but, you know, it's so, so important.

So many leaders push away feedback. If you're the sort of person who pushes away feedback because you don't like to build yourself up in inverted commas, just stop.

Manage that gap between stimulus and response and use that as an opportunity to fill the bucket.

Yeah.

My top tip would be going back to the reflection thing again because obviously there's these four styles of confidence being knocked in some way, shape or form.

So if you do think maybe I'm a self doubter, a striver or a pretender, or even an overachiever, and often that will occur when you're under the most pressure. So think about when you're under pressure. Where do you go? Which of those actually resonates with you?

If you don't know, then go down the feedback route.

Yes.

But some of you will know. Some of you listening to this will know. So use that compass as a lens.

Yeah.

Don't label yourself with it because as you said, everything's going to ebb and flow. But use it as a lens to develop your self awareness. Top the bucket up.

Yeah.

And move on.

Yeah.

So Rich, anybody wanting to know more, we will be running more workshops again this year, so look out for those. You can purchase the ebook from us shortly. So again, look out for that. And there's also the confidence inventory will become part of that ebook.

So you can, you can do a bit of a self awareness, a bit of self diagnosis if you like and find out where you're at.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

So for today, from me, from Rich and from Garfield, thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Bye bye.

Bye.