How to Improve Confidence at Work

Do you second-guess yourself when asked to share opinions during a meeting? Does the ‘what if I’m wrong’ thought cripple your mind before speaking in the workplace?

If the answers to these questions are yes, you could have a low confidence issue that might overshadow your personality and affect your professional life. Some common characteristics of an under-confident employee are being silent at work and undermining one’s abilities and position in the company.

Being silent at work or doubting yourself can affect your ability to solve business problems, your chances to be part of significant company decisions, and the possibility of becoming a credible employee at the workplace.

This article suggests ways to improve your confidence at work.

What Are The Reasons For Low Confidence?

Every professional shift triggers a lot of emotions in employees. Thus, it is natural to have shaken confidence in a new job. However, if you find it hard to rebuild your confidence, some things might be adding to the problem; here are some reasons why employees find it hard to rebuild confidence at a new workplace or feel underconfident usually:

• Lack of skills or knowledge in the current job role.
• Less work experience than your co-workers.
• You face problems coping with the company’s culture and work environment.
• You are threatened that sharing your views might lead to termination or public humiliation.
• You feel unheard at the workplace.

Apart from these, there can be other reasons for low confidence, most of them related to your superior and co-worker’s behavioural pattern or the camaraderie you share with them.

However, the good news is that you can boost your confidence and career with practical and constant steps. Below, we have listed some ways to increase workplace confidence.

How To Increase Confidence At Work?

Assessing your personality

Hardly do you notice that maybe the reason for your confidence issues is you. What might seem like an external issue could be something brewing in your cognition or triggered by your personality flaws.

So, analyse your personality before looking at external ways to increase your confidence. Moreover, analysing your character will help you find answers to umpteen questions like:

• What are my strengths?
• What are my weaknesses?
• What motivates me?
• What do I love to do the most?
• How do I express myself to others?

You can take various online self-assessment tests to determine if your personality traits are the reason behind your confidence problem.

Otherwise, you can start with finding the unique traits that make you who you are. The individual stories, experiences, and features that describe your personality. You can consider things like:

• Background details include family, where you grew up, the neighbourhood that shaped your personality, ethnicity, education, religion, and more.
• Identify experiences that shaped you, such as childhood events, work experiences, failures, learning opportunities, relationship teachings, and more.
• The notable character traits that make you different from others like personality, habits, style, communication, etc.

Focus on your strengths

To evolve from a low-confident employee to a self-confident professional, you need to ask yourself, “What are my strengths as an employee?” Begin with looking at your strengths like courage, discipline, humility, excellent communication skill, or any other personality trait that makes you unique.

Focusing on your strengths makes it much easier to improve your confidence. It helps recognise what makes you a good employee.

For instance, you are a data science graduate with multiple certifications to your ante. However, due to low confidence issues, you face problems performing to the best of your capabilities at your new work. So, to turn around the situation, you need to remember that your multiple data science certification course is proof that you are a quick learner, and in a few days, you will start performing better.

Note: Sometimes, you need to be compassionate with yourself and be OK with feeling less confident. Maybe it’s a phase, and things will get better. However, if the feeling of ‘lack of confidence’ continues, it is best to look at different options on how to increase confidence.

Set goals and try to achieve them

If you are feeling underconfident, the best way to deal with it is by setting goals- short-term and long-term. While the short-term goal will concentrate on making daily efforts to ensure that you fulfil smaller targets like completing work on time, sharing pleasantries with co-workers, etc. Meanwhile, the long-term goal will include leading a meeting, talking to a client single-handedly, taking complex business decisions, and others.

Pro-tip: Setting daily affirmations is the best way to achieve your goals. Practice saying good things loudly every day. It helps in boosting confidence and reassuring that you can go through the day by making an impact at the workplace. Some positive affirmations are “I’m the best at what I do”, “I’m a worthy candidate for this role”, etc.

Seek out mentors

If you are not confident or losing your confidence at work, seeking a mentor’s advice will help you regain your self-esteem.

A mentor can be anyone you respect or look up to; they can also be someone from your current workplace or aware of your strengths and weaknesses.

A person with whom you can share your and thoughts and feelings. Be vulnerable with them about what makes you feel less confident.

Pro-tip: If you decide to choose a mentor as a way to improve your confidence, here are some prerequisites that you need to keep in mind while selecting one:

• Pick a mentor who shares your values and has the exact definition of success as you
• Someone with whom you share a great bond.
• Someone who has achieved the goals you are looking out for.

When choosing a mentor wary of the person’s attitude and personality because you will share a lot of your miseries with them. So, someone with the right intent and ethics will help you improve with time and let you be comfortable with being vulnerable and open.

Expand your network

A strong support group can help regain the lost confidence or develop the required self-esteem to participate in work fully. You can expand your network by connecting with others from your field. It could be anyone from your colleagues to your mentor.

Engaging with people will help you learn how to handle challenging situations. Moreover, you will know that you are not alone in this journey there are many more like you, which improves confidence.

If lack of motivation or recognition is the primary concern for your confidence issue, it’s time to make the leap. You can upskill to enhance your chances of getting a work opportunity that makes you feel worthy.

Incidentally, Emeritus India offers certification courses in partnership with renowned Indian universities to working professionals and freshers. Enrolling in our certification courses will accelerate your career and improve your chances of getting the highest-paid jobs in India.