MBA2323 Q&A Wednesday: How do I give my team confidence?

0:09Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show. Power up your day and your business with our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zinhome. I'm also the co-founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started back in 2014. And today's episode is Q &A Wednesday. On Q &A Wednesdays, I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you've got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over at omar at 100mba.net. Today's question is from Brad, and Brad asks, Hey Omar, love the podcast. Been a listener for some time. Got an interesting question for you.

0:44I have a small team of five people, and besides me and another team member, I would say the others lack a lot of confidence. They're very unsure of themselves, and I feel like we're moving slowly because of it. How do I give my team confidence? What can I do to help them believe in themselves and pick up the pace? Thanks for your help, Brad. Love this question, Brad, because it's real. There are going to be varied levels of confidence across your team. Some people are going to be really skilled, but still lack confidence. And because of that, they are taking a bit longer than others. They're unsure.

1:20They're asking questions they know the answer to. They might suffer from analysis paralysis and take a little longer than needed to get things done. So in today's episode, I'm going to share with you what I recommend when it comes to building your team members' confidence. Things you can do every single day so you can see progress and not only help your business, but help these individuals on your team become the best versions of themselves. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Confidence is a funny thing. Some people just have it, they say, and some don't. Well, I'm here to tell you that that's a bunch of baloney.

1:56You get confidence from something. People that just have it, they probably got it because they received it growing up. Their parents maybe supported them. They told them things that really helped them build their confidence. They gave them experiences to allow to cultivate that confidence. They had circumstances and environments and a lot of factors that influence their level of confidence as they are an adult today. The environment, the people that are around all influence the level of confidence they have today. And some people just didn't get that or didn't get enough of that. This is totally normal.

2:27But guess what? It's never too late to build your confidence. It's never too late to change the stories that you tell yourself, the things that you believe about yourself, because that's ultimately where confidence comes from, is believing in yourself. Now, when it comes to helping your team build confidence, you're going to combine two things that are going to work hand in hand. Evidence-based confidence and non-evidence-based confidence. I'll explain, do not worry. Evidence-based confidence is basically giving your team members opportunities to do things so that you can show them evidence that they can do things.

3:02This helps build confidence. So, for example, you give them a task that they can do today, maybe a sprint, maybe some small task with a clear outcome, like I need you to make 10 sales calls today, or I want you to craft and send out an email newsletter that gets a minimum open rate of XYZ. The point here is, is that you want to give them tasks to build their confidence so that they go ahead and do it. They get a result and then you can point to it and say, see, you can do this. You are good. In the beginning, you want to make these tasks real softball tasks, really easy tasks that you know with full confidence that they can do it well.

3:41Then you can level it up as the days go on. Remember, this is just day one. Now, this is evidence-based confidence where they can't deny that you're right, that they did something, it was good, it got the result. And you're just reinforcing that so they can believe based on evidence that they are competent at their job, that they are a good fit, that they are a contributor to the team, that they're appreciated, that they are a winner. Now, non-evidence-based confidence is just basically like a parent telling their child, you can do anything you want. You are capable. You are smart. I know you can do this.

4:16You're a winner. When parents say this to children, they have no evidence that they are really smart, that they can actually do it, that they are actually a winner. I know this sounds kind of mean, but there is no evidence to that. But as human beings, we believe what we hear consistently. For example, if you turned on the news every single day and you heard on the news, the economy is bad, the economy is bad, the economy is bad. Just by nature, you're going to start believing the economy is bad because you're just hearing it over and over. regardless if it's rooted in truth or not. You're still going to believe it.

4:46So if I tell you something about yourself over and over, like you're really funny, you make me laugh, you've got a great sense of humor, you're the life of the party. If I say this over and over to you day after day, you're going to start believing I'm a funny person. So how does this apply to your team members? Well, sometimes you've got to give them non-evidence-based confidence in little ways on a regular basis every single day. It's like washing your hands. You've got to do it over and over and over, right? Throughout the day, throughout the days, throughout the weeks, throughout the months, in order for you to be a clean person, right?

5:14So you just have to have the repetition. Something as simple as if they make a comment or a suggestion in a meeting and say, that's a good idea. That's an interesting suggestion. Thanks for contributing. We needed to hear that. It's positive reinforcement, but it's also something that they will hear over and over and start believing. Building somebody else's confidence through these two measures takes time. It takes a lot of time, but the good news is that it gets better every day. That means they become more and more confident through these two methods, if you do it consistently every day. That means today they're going to be more confident than they were yesterday.

5:49And next week, they're going to be more confident than they are this week. And next month, they're going to be even more confident than last month. Now, the beauty of this is that they're going to absolutely love working for you because they feel like they're getting better. The best jobs, the best careers, the best positions I've ever been involved in are the ones where I felt I was growing. And I'm sure if you reflect and think about it in your own life, you probably agree. You feel like this place is making me better. Now, one of the things that I like to do when it comes to somebody with low confidence is to have ground rules.

6:22People that lack confidence sometimes will talk negatively about themselves. So I always have a rule that says we don't talk negatively about anybody, including ourselves. We don't talk negatively about other people on the team, including ourselves. So if they ever kind of talk negatively, say, hey, we don't do that here. And sometimes they just do it out of habit or they feel bashful or they're embarrassed that they screwed up. Or maybe they're not really confident about the work they presented. So they preface it by saying, hey, I'm not that great. You can just stop them. They're like, hey, we don't do that here.

6:55It's either going to be great or we're going to make it great. We're going to make it great. We're going to improve it. We don't talk negatively about anybody on our team. And when it's a rule, it forces them to follow that rule. They're like, OK, I can't do that anymore. or this habit that I'm always used to kind of downplaying myself or talking negatively or dissing myself all the time. I can't do it here at this job. I keep getting caught. The point is, is that you've got to stay consistent. You've got to help them remind themselves not to do that. So anytime you see it, you have to catch it.

7:22The other thing is that you need to encourage other people to do the same. So when you're not around, they tell them too. So when it happens, you can say, hey guys, what do we do when that happens? Do we allow that? No, we don't allow that. Okay, somebody speak up. Say, hey, that's not allowed. don't talk negatively about yourself or about anybody on our team. So you're training the rest of the team as well to police it, right? To make sure that it's enforced. Next, you have an incredible advantage that you are working with them. We spend most of our weekly hours working, okay? That means you spend more time with them than probably their significant other, their family members, whatever it might be.

7:55So regardless of the environment they're living in, maybe they're in a very negative, toxic environment at home, you actually have the advantage because you're spending more time with them. So you can overcome over time what's going on over there if something like that is happening or they're in a negative situation. I know this for a fact because I've been working for over 23 years of my life and I've seen all these different kinds of dynamics where people are incredibly happy and confident at work, but not so much at home. And it's because they can be themselves and they can be their best selves and they're encouraged and they are kind of pumped up at work, but at home, they either get none of that or they get worse, the opposite of that.

8:35But you actually can change a lot of people's habits because you're spending a tremendous amount of time, effort, energy with them every single day. Remember I said that it's good to establish a rule to say, hey, we don't talk negatively about everybody on our team or anybody on our team, including yourself. Well, I also encourage the opposite, where you establish a rule on your team who says, hey, we seek out opportunities to praise each other, to support each other, to pump each other up, to give each other recognition. Whether it's your all hands meeting where you encourage your team leaders to give shout outs to their team members and praise them for their great work, or you make it a habit where you say, hey, everybody say something that they recognize this week that was amazing that somebody else did.

9:18Listen, we only have each other when it comes to our team. We got to help each other out. We got to make each other better. And even if it seems a little bit forced, it doesn't matter. It works. Just do it, guys. All right. And it's not hard to find something special, something interesting, something cool, something nice that somebody did in a whole week. For example, my executive assistant, Romina, recently did her all hands. I can easily just say, hey, Romina, you did a nice job with the all hands. You did the icebreaker and you took care of some announcements. I think you do a fantastic job with that.

9:51We want you to do more of that. This is just a simple example. It takes two seconds and you don't have to do it all as the business owner. You can easily tell your managers and say, hey, make sure this week you point out something great that somebody else did or encourage your team members to do that with each other. I'm a big believer that people are not just born with confidence. Confidence is built. It's cultivated. It's protected. And you're going to get people that have different levels of confidence. Your job is to nurture that confidence, to grow it so that your team members can be the best versions of themselves so that they can perform their best and get you the results you need in your business.

10:27What a great investment. Brad, thanks so much for asking today's Q &A Wednesday's question. If you've got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over at omar at 100mba.net. I'll make sure to answer it right here on Q &A Wednesday. That way, I can help you out and help everybody else out that probably has the same question or will be faced with that challenge in the future in their business. If you loved today's episode, if you love this podcast, the best way to pay me back is to share it. Go ahead and share it with your friends on social. Send them over to 100mba.net so they can subscribe to the podcast and follow along and join this community of ours helping you build your business.

11:05Before I go, I wanna leave you with this. Praise and building confidence can come in different forms, not just in words. A simple thumbs up, a high five, a fist bump, an applause, an emoji, whatever. The point here is that every little thing counts. Back when I was managing teachers as the head of department when I was in education, I was managing 30 teachers and it was kind of like a running joke that I was like the high five master. I was giving out high five like it was candy on Halloween. And people used to make jokes about it because I love to give people high fives. But guess what? They loved it.

11:39They smiled and it helped them. And I had a team that would do anything for me. They would run through a wall for me because I wanted to cultivate that kind of culture of, hey, we're in this together. I got your back. I'm going to praise you, help you. Let's make this happen. Pretty much any conversation I ended with a high five. All right, let's do this. High five. Boom. And maybe that came from my days playing basketball and team sports and all that kind of stuff. But find your thing. You know, it's OK if it's a little bit cheesy or a little bit offbeat. As long as it's appropriate. Right. And people are fine with it.

12:11Make it your thing. But the most important thing is to be consistent with it. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll check you in Friday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.