The third of The Three Big Shifts Every Leader Needs to Make requires changing our definition of “confidence” from one that’s based on functional skillsets to a new kind of confidence that is rooted in self-awareness, self-knowledge, and an understanding of your own strengths and assets.
Instead of relying on your past experience to efficiently deliver results, this shift requires you to draw on what you already do well—and then expand on those capabilities so you can more effectively deliver results.
To make this shift, you must understand your strengths. That’s the only way to see how you can expand what you are capable of and move beyond what you’ve done in the past to what you can do now.
Here is a great example of how one of my clients used one of his personal strengths to create a successful outcome for a major challenge he and his team were facing. As the leader of a real estate management department in a large company, he was having challenges getting his staff on board with a company-wide change initiative. They were reticent to embrace the change, “stuck” in their old ways of doing things, unable to see the possibilities that this change could bring to their work and their own professional paths.
I encouraged him to discover his strengths, to tap into his innate talents and gifts, and unleash the dormant talents he already had to become a more effective leader and inspire his team.
When we determined that his top Signature Strength was creativity, we thought: How could he use that strength in a formal, structured function like real estate and facilities management? (Let’s face it: real estate and facilities might not be the most exciting and dynamic area to work in.) He developed a fun competition that helped the teams see how they could collaborate and compete at the same time to achieve their goals. In the end, they exceeded their goals—and everyone had fun in the process.
As my client demonstrated, making this shift requires you to develop deeper self-knowledge and self-awareness. By knowing what you are capable of, you can expand on that to see what’s possible—so you can do even more in the face of change and uncertainty.