Top Tips to Rewire Your Mindset for Self-Confidence at Work

Self-confidence is vital to reach your full potential in the workplace and enjoying career happiness. Yet for many, lack of confidence hinders success and prevents opportunities.

Understanding what confidence is, the causes and signs of low self-confidence are the first stages of improvement. You can then build your self-confidence through simple and practical steps.

What is Self-Confidence at Work?

Confidence is when you trust and believe in your own abilities. You convey this to others through your actions and language.

Low self-esteem vs low self-confidence is often confused. The two are linked and one can influence the other. Self-esteem is how you feel about yourself overall, your self-worth or self-belief. You could have overall high self-esteem, but feel low confidence in a particular situation.

The mental health charity Mind offer suggestions for how to build high self-esteem. You can improve your self-esteem to build confidence.

What is the importance of self-confidence in the workplace? Kaplan Professional Education show that self-confidence makes you more assertive, more likely to push your boundaries, take on challenges and makes you a more effective communicator. Self-confidence is also critical when considering a career transition or as a new entrepreneur. Feeling low confidence at work can inhibit your performance and success.

What Are the Causes of Low Self- Confidence?

Most of us would like to be more confident at work. Research by My Confidence Matters has shown that over 73 percent of women feel they regularly lack confidence in the workplace.

“You can have anything you want if you are willing to give up the belief that you can’t have it.” – Robert Anthony

Psychology Today shows low confidence can be caused by a variety of factors. Studies have shown between 25 to 50 percent of the personality traits linked to confidence may be inherited. Life experiences such as parenting style, trauma or bullying can also affect your self-confidence.

Humiliating experiences in the workplace, such as harassment or disrespect, can affect your self-esteem at work and make you doubt your abilities.

The modern environment in which we live can have a huge impact on your self-esteem. From marketing and advertising images to the constant barrage of social media. We are bombarded with ideas of perfection and many of us feel inadequate in comparison.

Psychologies Magazine provides a self-confidence test to measure how confident you feel. Knowing your current level of confidence is the first step to acceptance and developing strategies for building confidence at work.

How to Build Self-Confidence at Work

Here are our top 5 tips for building self-confidence at work, particularly if you are going through a career change or starting your entrepreneurial journey:

1. Strengthen your skills. Build on your existing skills and develop new ones through personal development activities. Any change requires learning.

2. Focus on past strengths- focus on what you have done well in the past as evidence of your abilities. It’s good to remind yourself of your transferable skills during change.

3. Set Challenging Goals- setting yourself long and short term goal can help you to focus on a challenge rather than feeling overwhelmed. Feeling a sense of achievement as you work towards your goals will boost your confidence.

4. Ask questions- if you’re unsure of anything ask for clarification. Uncertainty and getting something wrong can impact your confidence.