When your confidence is based on who you are, over what you can do, and you fail, you know that you are not a failure as a person. You possess the strength to look yourself in the mirror and face the fact that you failed in that particular experience alone, without feeling like a failure. Then you can figure out what is needed to grow as a leader. In essence, get back up to the plate and keep swinging.
Before we jump into a few practical thoughts, let me mention that my book “Confident Leader” may be very helpful to you and your team.
4 Practical Insights To Strengthen Your Confidence as a Leader
1. Pay Attention To What Rattles Your Confidence, That Provides Insight To Strengthen Your Confidence.
What rattles your confidence more, something personal like conflict, being embarrassed, or rejection? Or is it more like delivering a talk that didn’t land well or leading a ministry project that didn’t work like you hoped or failed?
One is more a matter of the soul and may need a counselor and the other a matter of skill, requiring a good coach.
Your confidence as a leader can always be strengthened if you know where to start, ask for help and remain intentional.
Your level of confidence as a leader is a dynamic process. Don’t expect it to be perfectly stable, we all have moments of doubt. It’s how quickly we can process, grow and move through the doubt that matters.
2. What You Believe Shapes How You Lead and the Consistency of Your Confidence.
There are two foundational beliefs that greatly affect the level and consistency of your confidence as a leader:
- Believing that God is with you.
- Believing in yourself.
Believing that God is with you is not referring to your salvation and eternal life in heaven. It’s believing that God is actually present and with you in your leadership of the church. (Or a particular ministry within the church.)
It’s about you believing that God sees and knows what is going on, that you are not on your own, and His Spirit is within you.
Believing in yourself and your leadership is essential because if you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will either.
I have personally experienced that in my own moments or seasons of doubt, someone believing in me makes all the difference. I’m sure it would with you as well.
3. Resilience Within Your Character Gives You Strength To Keep Going.
- Resilience is that part of your character that allows you to keep going when the going gets tough and to recover quickly from challenging circumstances.
- Resilience is the ability to handle pressure well while solving problems and making progress.
- Resilience is that inner reserve that allows you to sustain unanswered questions, unresolved problems and an unknown future.
Your resilience as a leader is largely determined by a combination of the environments you’re in, the people you are closest to, and together they determine the pressure you can sustain.
