Coaching for confidence

Many people think of confidence as a personality trait—something you’re either born with or without, or something that’s ingrained in you through upbringing. I’m on the side of those who believe that confidence is a skill, and like any skill, it can be developed. No matter where we start, we can make significant progress in this area. Since confidence is a recurring topic in my coaching sessions, I’d like to share a few tips that have worked well for my clients.

In another post, I discuss what confidence really means and how it’s linked to the opportunities we encounter. Here, I want to highlight an important aspect of confidence, using a coaching case as an example, to show how you can either build or undermine your confidence.

When Good Isn’t Good Enough

One of my clients is a high-level executive. He loves his job and makes a conscious effort to do it well. Working with him is easy because he has a strong sense of self-awareness and can deeply and honestly reflect on his behavior.

He had the opportunity to attend a special training, which he really enjoyed… but he wasn’t satisfied with his own performance during the training. This isn’t uncommon for him (in coaching, we call this a pattern); he had previously mentioned a workshop where, despite putting in a lot of effort and contributing actively, he still felt dissatisfied.

I asked him when he would have been satisfied with his performance. He couldn’t quite answer. Then, I remembered that he usually feels satisfied at the end of our coaching sessions. We began discussing why it’s easy for him to feel satisfied during our sessions. He quickly realized that at the beginning of our coaching sessions, we set a clear goal to work towards, and we define what success will look like by the end of the session.

We decided to test whether this approach would work for him in his day-to-day work. We looked at the challenging situations he would face in the near future and considered what outcomes would make him feel satisfied in those situations. He even gave it a name—he calls it his “minimum bar.”

At our next session, he reported how well things had gone. His energy was completely different, and his focus had shifted: instead of a negative tone, he spoke with pride about how well he could bring out what he wanted from himself.

Is That All It Takes?

Sometimes, yes. If we don’t set goals, we can easily fall into the trap of undervaluing our own performance. But if we do set goals, we gain a much more objective view of whether we achieved what we wanted.

What’s the Takeaway?

When you face a challenging situation, take a moment to think about how you’d like to come out of it. What would make you happy if it happened? When will you feel satisfied? Don’t be too hard on yourself; instead, set realistic goals. These goals can be challenging, but don’t expect superhuman results from yourself.

Is there a situation coming up in the next few weeks that will be challenging in some way? What would make you happy? What’s your minimum bar?

Tamara Szabó
OD consultant, trainer, coach (MCC), team coach