Planning and Developing Employees’ Confidence

In discussing his performance review me, a friend indicated his employer thought he needed confidence. So, I asked, “What are they going to do to help develop that?” Dumbfounded, he shrugged his shoulders.

Isn’t it ironic that we talk about building confidences of soldiers, athletes, musicians and actors but not employees?  As mentioned in a previous post, the movie Top Gun is a classic discussion of confidence’s importance. Yet, while we give much time to planning and developing skills and education, we don’t with confidence. Every post in this series helps to change that. I call it placebo management because it focuses on intangibles that can alter our perspectives, performances and results.

In doing this, here is the critical question: If I had a very short opportunity with an employee, what would I:

• Reinforce as a developmental or change objective?
• Use as a keyword to communicate and highlight that objective?
• Tell as the ongoing narrative of the employee’s role, importance and talents in helping the company?
• Compliment the employee to instill confidence and help overcome any anxiety the objective might be creating?
• Say to ask, acknowledge, secure and thank for the employee’s help?

Ideally, this should occur when the employee approaches us as spontaneity and informality makes the opportunity more impactive. It’s very impactive to work these points in answers to employees’ questions. We can usually work in with various conversational techniques without having employees feeling we are taking control of the interaction they initiated. We can also encourage such interactions by making ourselves available through “management by walking around” activities and periodic “how are you doing” phone calls.

In this way, just as we turn a house into a home, we will turn a place of work into a source of confidence.