The Confidence Multiplier – How Leaders Create Belief in Others | #70

Welcome to the Connected Leadership Podcast by Zentano.

For forward thinking leaders who want to lead with confidence, clarity and impact, we bring you grounded wisdom, real stories from real leaders, conversations that leave you thinking differently, feeling inspired and ready to act. Let's dive in foreign. Okay. Welcome back to the Connected Leadership Podcast by Zentano. This is episode six of our Confidence in Leadership series.

Now, in the last episode, Rich and I talked about the internal shift from self doubt into authority, that sense of really owning your role, especially as you become a more senior leader. Today we're going to be asking a different question, what happens next?

Because once you've started to find your own ground in confidence, the real test is what you do with it. Do you grip tighter or do you grow confidence in other people?

Now, Rich, we've seen so many leaders who when the pressure hits, they step back into doing and controlling rather than enabling and influencing others. So I guess my first question to you, Rich, apart from saying hello to you, is what's going on there?

Oh, hi there.

What's going on there, Rich?

Yeah, so over control is a coping mechanism, basically. And it's a coping mechanism that goes way back into our evolutionary history as human beings.

And it's a mechanism that is there intended to keep us safe. So if you think about the time when we're in the savanna as human beings, we're highly tuned to our environment, consciously or unconsciously.

And when the fear response gets triggered, that's when our coping mechanism gets triggered. You know, the fight, flight, freeze sort of response gets triggered. The problem is actually there's, there are not many tigers.

Well, there might be metaphorical tigers, but there are not many tigers in real businesses unless you're working as, unless you work in a zoo. So what often happens is our fear response gets triggered as a coping mechanism and it's a projected fear response.

So it's a coping mechanism for our own anxiety as leaders or our own self doubt. So leaders often don't want to betray their vulnerability and their self doubt to their team.

So what they often do is this coping mechanism kicks in and it's almost like they're unconsciously saying something like, well, if I control it, if I close down and control this, it's not going to go wrong, you know, which short term there might be times where you do need to sort of, you know, jump in there and control and that sort of stuff. But usually that fear response, that coping mechanism doesn't serve us well.

So what we're trying to explore, what we're trying to explore Here in this podcast is when our confidence gets challenged and our fear response kicks in. Actually, what's going to happen is your team are going to unconsciously pick up on that fear response.

And as well as you closing down, they will mirror that close down response in themselves. So they will close down as well.

Yeah. Which leads me onto my. The sort of first part of this conversation is, what's the cost of that over control? What does it do to the team?

Now, just to sort of preface that, I've got a couple of stats to share with you from an event I went to yesterday.

Okay. All right. Okay, cool.

So the first stat is that 88% of employers are concerned about employee retention. That's nine out of 10 businesses are concerned about retaining their employees. Yes, very high.

And more interestingly, there was also some stats around Google searches. So apparently in recent years, Google searches, broadly worded, how do I cope with my micromanaging leader? Have doubled.

Okay, interesting.

So clearly, clearly there is an issue out there, otherwise this wouldn't be happening. Yeah.

So I guess my first question is what are some of the subtle ways that leaders over control their team without actually realizing they're doing it?

Yeah, so it's interesting how this plays out because when we over control, obviously we say that closes a team down.

Actually when we operate from what we call the place of connected center with grounded, sort of secure, authentic confidence, you, we call that the confidence multiplier because the team picks up on that. So some of the over controlling behaviors can be quite subtle. So it can be as simple as a leader or a manager rewriting their team's piece of work.

So you receive a written report or you see one of their emails and actually there's nothing wrong with it in terms of, you know, content and you know, it's technically okay, but you can't resist getting in there and amending it to suit your particular personal style.

Right.

Or actually maybe you're the sort of leader that feels the need to sit in every team meeting that you're in and sense check the decisions that are being made. Or maybe you're like one of those over controlling parents that you know, when a question is directed to your child, you answer for your child.

And you know, there are plenty of team leaders out there that answer for the team and they don't allow the team to have a voice or maybe your shadow check in your nitpicking. So essentially what you're doing is you're narrowing down, you're closing down the decision space, if you like, for the team.

So the subtle underlying message is you do it my way, you do it my way. And you can imagine the impact that has on, on the team, you know, so that's.

Well, that was my next question, Rich, you know, what happens to the team's confidence when we grip too tightly? What does actually happen to the confidence of the team?

Yeah, and I think this plays out in a number of ways, which points to some of the complaints that senior leaders and organizations often have about the people in their organization. So for example, you know, if you've got a leader or a manager who's unconscious, messages do it my way.

Your team's not going to want to take responsibility. They're not want to, they're not going to want to take ownership and take initiative for stuff. So they sit back and wait for you.

They perhaps operate in a way where they're not prepared to take risks. So there's risk averse behavior that's being shown.

And certainly what you're doing as a leader, there is, you're building in learned, what I call learned dependence. So they're waiting for the boss either to make the decision or say, this is what you need to do.

And actually that just generates quiet resentment and disengagement, frankly. And employee engagement is one of the big issues that we know that's out there.

Well, clearly.

So if you over control, you're basically saying to the team, I don't fully trust you and confidence lives only at my level, you know, so you're not allowing the team to develop their own confidence. You're not allowing the team to learn and grow in their own way. You want them to be like mini me's mini years.

Yeah, yeah. So the next part of the conversation then, Rich, is how do we move from this, you know, I deliver mentality to I develop others mentality.

It's that, it's that shift, which I think you call it at the confidence multiplier and I think it's quite a good way of looking at it.

So basically what we're talking about here is a core identity shift as we go into leadership positions, particularly as we go into senior leadership positions, is that your value is no longer being the best individual contributor in the business. It's to create an environment where others can step up with confidence and deliver for you. And there's a distinct shift there.

And that's partly an identity shift for you as the leader. So I guess my first question around this is what does it mean to move from being one who delivers to being one who develops?

So I would imagine most people, if they think back to the early part of their career, and it's certainly true for me that there's a part of that sort of career development where actually you're developing your own capability as a person in the technical field that you're operating within. So what you're doing is you're needing to prove yourself by what you deliver. And that's all right and proper because they're paying you to deliver.

But as we move up an organization and we move into team leader to management, to senior positions, actually it's not about proving myself about what I deliver, but you need to create the environment where it's like a. What do we deliver? Yeah, it becomes collective. So in other words, you're creating the environment for effective collective delivery.

Yeah.

As opposed to it's all about you and proving yourself. So in other words, the confidence isn't for me, it's for the people I lead. And it goes back to this point I was making earlier.

You know, your team will subtly pick up on those unconscious signals that you're portraying.

So if you're operating from this fear based approach and not operating from this place of authentic confidence, that's going to impact the culture and the environment you're creating inside your team, because your job as a leader is to create belief in others, and you create belief in others if they see that actually you have this authenticity, not overblown belief in yourself. It's operating from this grounded place of inner, inner true confidence. So, yes.

So basically we've referenced it in a number of podcasts over the last couple of weeks. You're operating from this place, what we call a connected center.

So actually you're not operating from a place where your ego is fragile or overblown or whatever it is, you're operating from this place of inner authority. And that inner authority leads to outer empowerment in your team.

Yeah. So I guess the next question is how does that connect to confidence, both yours and the teams?

It might be partly obvious, but let's just be really clear about that. How does being able to get this identity right? How does that connect to confidence both in yours and your teams?

So, yeah, so I think the answer to that question is actually your job stops being, I'm the most capable person in the team. Yeah, okay. And it starts being, I'm the person who makes other people feel capable.

Yeah, I like that. Yeah.

So you're operating from this place of inner confidence and that's unconsciously impacting the team, and that's unconsciously Allowing them to grow and develop and to operate from a place of inner confidence as well.

Okay, so let's take that a step further because in the previous podcast, we've talked a little bit about what I know you call confidence masks, and there's masks built around our confidence compass model that we talked about as well. So I'm guessing these confidence patterns that you call masks, they will leak into how we lead.

And particularly when the pressure's on, they will leak in potentially more obviously. Yeah, so we've touched on these, but how do these internal patterns affect how we lead others, particularly under pressure?

Yes, so as I've said in the past, and we go into much more detail on this in our online sort of confidence pathway. So when these masks come up, they're basically fear driven.

They're intended to keep us safe, and sometimes they're triggered by real issues that you need to address, you know, in the moment. So the fear response is real and rational. Yeah, but often that's. That's not the case. Okay, so these, these confidence masks often get in our way.

So, for example, that there's a number of masks that we talk about in more detail in the pathway. One of the masks is the self doubter mask. One of the masks is the overachiever mask.

So, for example, the self doubter mask, if that gets triggered, will have a tendency to avoid giving others stretch work, if you like, that stretches them because the internal fear is, if they fail, that reflects on me. So it sends the message, I'm anxious, so I need you to stay in the safe zone.

But actually, all you're doing is projecting your fear response onto them, and that's affecting their mindset and their behavior. Another example, you know, one of the masks we talk about is the, is the overachiever mask.

So this is the person that, you know, always has to demonstrate, you know, they're the one that's dominant in control. They know and they think they know better than other people in the room.

So, you know, when the overachiever mask comes up unconsciously, you're not going to want to let go of tasks. You'll keep the hard stuff for yourself because you want to be seen to be the hero.

And the subtle message with that mask is, I don't trust you with real responsibility, actually, because you want all the glory to go to you.

You know, so there are lots of different ways that these masks show up, but it's all about, actually it's all about you, and you need to let go of that stuff.

An emotionally intelligent Leader will self manage those fears, be aware of those fears, be aware of how they're projecting onto the team and will work with themselves so they can remove the mask, allow themselves to be vulnerable with the team and then the team will then unconsciously open up. Yeah.

And of course, because these masks, we often wear them subconsciously, we don't even know we're wearing them or we haven't recognized we're wearing them and therefore we behave in a certain way, which is not helpful. Which as you send, sends out these very subtle but quite damaging messages to members of your team.

This can actually blow up quite big quite quickly without anybody realizing it, can't it? And that's part of the problem here.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's important to realise that these confidence patterns, they don't stay inside you. No, no, they don't stay inside you.

They essentially become like, how can I describe it? Like the emotional climate that your team works within.

Yes, it's quite a nice way of describing it, actually.

Yeah, yeah.

So we talked earlier about, you know, your job as a leader is shifting now from the need to prove yourself to creating a collective environment where your team can thrive.

And if you're allowing your unconscious masks to, to leak out, that's going to leak into the environment and that's going to close and shut your team down.

Okay, so let's move the conversation on Rich then.

So what do confident leaders, so leaders that actually recognize they're wearing a mask and are going to do something about it, what do they do to create belief in other people?

Okay, I think they can probably do a number of things, actually. I think the first thing they do, and it's two things that work together.

So it's not about over controlling and tightening up and giving people, what would I say, unrealistic certainty.

Because you can't give often, especially in the environment we're working at the moment, you can't give people certainty, but what you can do is you can give them clarity, but you give them clarity in terms of the context of giving them autonomy.

Yeah.

Okay. So it's not about saying, right, this is what we do, this is what we do, this is what we do.

It's about creating a framework for them to operate within. So the outcomes and expectations and the boundaries, they're all clear. But it gives them space and a framework and genuine freedom on how to deliver.

Now, it depends on the environment and the industry that you're working with in, you know, there might be quality control issues or health and safety issues that are like red lines. But you define that within the autonomy that you give them.

But if you don't give people genuine freedom and authority, actually they're going to close down.

Well, that's really interesting.

So that's one.

So that's really interesting, Rich, because if anybody links back to the conversation I had with Alan Muskett recently around burnout, that was one of the points he was making and it makes it in his book. If you don't provide clarity and then provide autonomy, that is one of the things that contributes towards burnout in the team.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, sorry. So you're going to make another point. So that's one point. What's the next point?

Yeah, so the next point would be, is to notice and name strengths. Now, the reason I picked this is something to work on is a leader.

Because often leaders operate from the place where unconsciously they have to be the hero. They have to be the person that knows and. And be the person that gets noticed.

But actually if you, if you shift around, shift your focus around the other way and actually spot the capabilities in your people, notice them, name them, allow those strengths to develop, that creates a very different culture than it's all about me as a leader.

Yeah, yeah.

Another thing you can do as a leader is use questions more than answers. So this is what we call the coaching approach, basically.

So in other words, when somebody comes to you with an issue or a problem or a challenge to solve, resist the urge to jump in and give them the answer because you know best.

It's one of my big hobby horses is rich. I think there's far, far too much of this happens. We want to solve everyone's problems for them. We're not curious enough to ask question.

I think that causes major problems.

Yeah. So if you ask questions to encourage your team to come for the answer for themselves, there's learning in that moment.

Absolutely.

So that's really important. What else would I say? Another important thing for leaders to do is to share authority. So we talk about empowerment a lot.

So allow your people to talk to senior stakeholders, to talk to important clients, give them visibility and give them credit and allow them to grow. Obviously you stretch them appropriately and don't stretch them to breaking point.

So you stretch them in a way that's appropriate to their potential and capability, but share authority with them. And when you do that, tolerate what we call learning, stretch.

So except actually when you do stretch people and put them in places where perhaps they're going to be challenged.

Challenge, it's possible they're going to make a mistake, God forbid, and allow that to happen and use that mistake is a coaching teaching moment, I think.

So in other words, with all these things that we're talking about, actually what you're doing is you're modeling grounded confidence because you're not operating from a fear based place. You're open to what the team can do. You're open to their strengths and their capability.

And it's not all about you, it's all about them and allowing them to grow and to operate as a collective and to achieve collective goals.

The point you make about learning Stretch, I think is a really interesting one because most of us that have had senior leadership roles in our careers have come up through the ranks where we've done exactly what you said. We've been stretched, we've made a mistake. But that mistake was a learning opportunity.

But then why is it when we become the senior leader, sometimes the tendency is we want to have control, we want to have certainty and we kind of forget the fact that we forget that's how we learned, you know, that is how we learned in the first place. So, yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?

Don't forget the journey that you went on to get where you are because others have got to take that same kind of journey that you did.

Yeah, yeah. I think the final point I would make in this section, you know, it's okay not to have all the answers and to know everything.

Obviously you're paid as a leader for your knowledge and experience and all that sort of stuff. But usually the most confident leaders aren't the ones who have all the answers.

They trust the expertise and capability in the room and they're not operating from a place where they feel they need to demonstrate to everyone how wonderful they are. Okay, there is a subtle, there's a subtle thing going on here.

So yes, you might have the answers and you are paid to have the capability and the potential and all that sort of stuff. But also you're paid to create the environment where your team can grow as well.

And actually if you create that environment where your team can learn and grow, you're going to operate much more effective collectively than if it's just all about you.

Yeah, well, I think anybody listening to this who's a parent would know this. When the kids are really, really young, you pretty much have to do everything for. Because they haven't got a clue.

But as they start to get a little bit older, that's not the right way to parent them. They need to be Able to do stuff for themselves, make mistakes, and you're just there to guide them and pick them up when they fall.

It's not that dissimilar to growing a team from a leadership perspective, is it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Right, exactly.

Okay, so let's talk a bit more practicality here, Rich. So if I'm a leader, listen to this, and I'm thinking, yeah, this doesn't make sense to me.

What's one practical way I can start letting go without letting standards slip?

Okay, but I could give you more than one. Can I give you more than one more?

Go on then, if you want to. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Okay. Value for money. I've always said you're value for money, Rich.

Thank you. So I'm going to link this back to some of the points I made just now.

So, for example, one of the things you could do is about decision space, clarity, that point about making giving people space. So when you give somebody a piece of work to do, explicitly define what does success look like.

This is where you had the freedom to be very explicit about that and be very explicit about where the sign off points are and where the boundaries are. So that's the first thing. Actively think, intentionally think about the decision space you're creating when you're delegating work.

So that's the first thing, the other thing I would say, and we say this a lot on this podcast, say less, listen more. And I think so many leaders can learn from this. So stop and listen and turn every conversation with a team member into a true dialogue.

You know, often I think leaders make the mistake that they're having a conversation, but subtly, actually, really, what's going on? If you analyze the conversation and what's actually going on, it's more of a monologue than a dialogue. And a dialogue. Dialogue.

The term dialogue means two way learning.

Two people are in it.

Yeah, well, two people are in it and two people, two people are learning from. From the conversation. Okay. So in other words, you're open to what the other person is. You're genuinely open to what the other person is saying.

And it might be that they have an idea or some capability that you don't have, that if you close them down through these projected fears, through these projected fear responses, those ideas, and that potential is not going to show itself.

When you say less and less and more. If you were a fly on the wall, it would be obvious that the energy in the room massively goes up, doesn't it? It's quite palpable sometimes.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Absolutely. So a lot of these practices, they sit on top of, you know, this inner work that we think is really important around confidence.

And we explore this much more deeply in our sort of on, in our online confidence pathway.

I think you also, in terms of you said I can give you more than one suggestion. Just talk a little bit about the confidence ladder. What does the confidence ladder look like?

Oh, yeah, so we have talked about this in the past. So this is where actually where you start small. So you give your team low risk decisions that they can fully own.

And as their confidence grows, as their capability grows, you stretch them a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. Now there are a couple of advantages around the confidence ladder, both for you as a leader and for your team.

So it's good for your team to be gradually stretched because taking small steps and then celebrating those small steps and then doing another small step and celebrating that, that's a good way to build confidence. Okay. Yeah. So that's a natural confidence builder inside the team.

But also by operating with this confidence ladder and starting with small, low risk decisions, that gives you confidence as a leader to let go more. Does that make sense?

It does.

It operates both ways. So I'm a great believer in taking small steps. And taking small steps is a great way of filling up the confidence bucket for you and for your team.

So can I.

And we don't often do this on this podcast, but a little bit of a shameless plug here because you've talked or you've hinted that we've developed this online confidence pathway. How does this link back to that program that we've created and particularly you've authored a big part of that.

So with the confidence pathway, we take the learners through a process of really developing that deep, grounded inner confidence. So we believe in Zentano.

Actually, if you get the mindset right, the inner stuff right, that then is going to show itself up naturally in the outer stuff. So we've started by creating an online pathway which helps people develop this inner, grounded, authentic confidence.

We're going to create another pathway later in the year which focuses on the outer stuff, the gravitas stuff stuff. But until you get the inner stuff right and operate from this place of grounded confidence and eliminate as best you can the fear based responses.

I think that's the best way, I think, to operate from, as a leader, from this grounded, connected center.

Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think the mindset is the key to everything, isn't it?

In terms of if you want to change behavior, you need to make sure the mindset is in the right place. Otherwise you'll get limited. Limited to no change happening.

Yes. Yeah.

Great. Okay, so that's the conversation for today. And thanks again, Rich for your contributions here.

So for anybody listening, if this episode today has surfaced a few uncomfortable truths for you about how you lead under pressure, you're probably not alone, don't worry. Well, no, you're not the only one.

We've all done this, haven't we? We've all done this.

We all done this. And most leaders that I speak to, they don't set out to over control.

I think it's something that just creeps in when the stakes rise or the expectations on the mount. Okay, so I guess from Rich and I, the invitation from listening to this episode is quite simple really.

Notice where your instinct to grip tightly shows up and experiment with operating with less fear and a bit more openness. And try and tap into, as Rich said, that that inner grounded version of you which is there. It's in all of us if we develop it.

If you'd like to explore your own confidence patterns in more depth, then by all means get in touch with Rich and I and we'll talk to you more about our online pathway forwards within our confidence. And it is something now that's commercially available.

So by all means get in touch with us and please, we'd love to help you find out more about that in the next episode. Rich, we're going to look at a different lens to confidence.

We're going to look at what high potential traits in people tell us about how leaders show up under pressure.

Interesting, interesting, interesting indeed.

But for today, thank you Rich again for your expertise and for your sharing of ideas. And for everybody else, thank you for listening and we will be back again very shortly with that next topic.

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