How to Instill Confidence in Your Team
by Jena Brit
As a manager, you have a laundry list of significant responsibilities at the workplace. But between overseeing major campaigns and ensuring you hit targets, one of the most meaningful goals on your list should be empowering your employees. After all, the best leaders aren’t those who simply delegate tasks and keep staff busy. Rather, great leaders are those that help their team members grow every day — until they eventually become leaders too.
Below, we discuss the top three ways to instill confidence in your employees.
Help Them Learn From Their Failures
The textbook job description of a manager is to help employees stay on top of their roles and responsibilities. But if you catch someone making mistakes, be sure to not just correct them — encourage them to perform better in the future. As we shared in ‘The Component of Confidence That Causes Success’, a key aspect of becoming confident is having someone who will support you when you fail.
When employees fall behind, they might feel paralyzed to move forward due to the fear of failing again. Fortunately, as their leader, you can change this by showing them how they can turn their mistakes into valuable lessons. True enough, a study from Northwestern University points out that those who persevere after failure have a higher likelihood of reaching success. Not only will this help them be more successful, but it will motivate them to really believe in themselves, too.
Help Them Carve Out Their Career Path
While it is essential to ensure that your employees are completing their current workload, it’s equally important for you to foster their career growth. Sadly, researchers from The Harris Poll found that around 77% of employees feel left alone by their employers when it comes to developing their careers. However, this is where their managers can step in, as their leadership helps them see things optimistically.
Helping your employees identify career trajectories early on provides them with a clear path to work towards. In line with this, statistics from Maryville University estimate that over 3.6 million executives retired in 2017, and that number has continued to climb since then. This means that business leaders should prioritize nurturing the development of internal talent to help grow the company. In turn, it helps companies maximize their ROI on the talent they hire, while also motivating high performers to keep pushing. In this regard, try to sit down with each team member (preferably, once a month) and discuss what they want to achieve in the company. From there, see how you can help and what strategy you can flesh out from there.
Celebrate Small Victories
How often do you praise your employees whenever they put in effort? Is this only when they complete a big project or achieve great success afterwards? Although these instances are clear calls for celebration, it’s key to offer praise even for small yet meaningful tasks to give them a confidence boost. Success isn’t always measured on big numbers, sometimes it means accomplishing tasks in the face of adversity or meeting a difficult deadline. Don’t forget, the journey is just as important as the destination.
Moreover, celebrating their small victories doesn’t have to be a grand gesture, as giving them a friendly shout-out or simply thanking them is just as meaningful. True enough, researchers from the University of Toronto found that positive social exchanges between team leaders and their staff can help decrease the effects of workplace anxiety. All in all, a simple yet heartfelt compliment can make all the difference for your employees’ confidence.
Article written for kevinhogan.com
By Jena Brit
