Confidence

Confidence is critical to effective leadership. If you sometimes feel less than self-assured, there’s a five-step process that can strengthen your confidence and enhance your leadership. In this episode, Ralph and Bill break down the technique. Listen and give it a try.

Bill Berthel: Welcome to the GetEmergent podcast, where we discuss various leadership topics, team and organizational development ideas, and current leadership challenges and successes. I’m Bill Berthel.

Ralph Simone: And I’m Ralph Simone.

Bill Berthel: Ralph, today we’re gonna talk about this topic of confidence. I’ve been thinking about it.

I’ve been reading Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, and I think it’s rule number one, stand up, stand tall, he calls it. So this idea of confidence.

Ralph Simone: Leaders need it, right? There’s a leadership presence. For anyone who intends to be influential, right? There’s a physiology that influences the psychology.

But if we don’t believe, we’re not confident in our idea ourselves, how are we going to influence others to believe and support in it as well? So I think this is really an important aspect for leaders to have. And you don’t want it to be hubris, right? You want it to be confidence without arrogance.

But we find a lot of leaders lack that confidence, don’t we?

Bill Berthel: I think it’s why we start our Emergent Leader program with, you use the term leadership presence and it’s not hubris. It’s about finding your authentic values and purpose. So you can always anchor back to that. So that’s the spirit or the energy that is informing your decision-making, your activities, and your behavior.

Ralph Simone: So I love the word you used, anchor. Cause one of the things that we’re gonna demonstrate later in the session is a leadership practice called a circle of excellence, which takes people through a process of anchoring back to a time when they were very confident in applying that forward to a situation where that confidence is going to be needed.

Bill Berthel: It’s so important. I mean, even those of us that have, you know, a decent level of confidence and self-esteem, we may have had an experience that didn’t go quite as we hoped or quite as expected. We’re in the public speaking space all the time, and I, I gotta tell you, I actually, I get pretty nervous.

Almost every presentation I’m going to make, and I’ve got a pretty big one coming up. You know, it, it shakes me a little bit. I’ll be really honest, you know, I’m a little nervous.

Ralph Simone: Well, that’s understandable, but I think one of the things we have to be careful of before we actually go into shifting this energy is that that energy is okay.

We’ve worked with a lot of high-powered leaders. Coaches, I’ve worked with a lot of athletes. It is normal to have some level of nervousness. I’d like to suggest that if you didn’t have it, it would almost suggest you didn’t care, that you were indifferent. And so I think that what we wanna be careful of, but we, we wanna be able to manage that though in a way that our influence or confidence isn’t eroded.

Bill Berthel: I love that you said that. So I passed life as an HR director. I did a lot of recruitment work and a lot of interviewing, and so often you’d have someone that you’re interviewing, you know, showing the signs of nervousness or even saying, I’m so nervous, I hope I do well. it’s exactly what you just shared.

I would share, you know, your nervousness is totally normal and I appreciate it. It means this is important to you right now.

Ralph Simone: Yes. So embrace it. Don’t, don’t. Stuck in it. Yes. And then kind of redirect it towards what you want. And that’s one of the powers of the Circle of Excellence leadership practice, which comes out of neurolinguistic programming.

We actually anchor back to the time and the feeling of when we had high levels of confidence.

Bill Berthel: So how do I do that? I envision that, I think about that experience that I had?

Ralph Simone: Well, let me walk you through it. We’ll, we’ll actually model it. And so, you know, think about this as a very opening question. So what could you accomplish if you had more confidence when you wanted it?

You know, confidence on demand. Yeah. Right?

Bill Berthel: You would turn out really well. You would be influential. I would be accepted and embraced.

Ralph Simone: So this is a five-step process that, that I’m gonna guide you through. And which positive feelings from the past would you want to re-experience? And then we’re gonna work through this process so that you can transfer them from where they happened in your life to where you really want them today.

So the first step of the five-step process, Bill, I’m gonna ask you to relive the confidence. I want you to step back in your memory. To a time when you were very, very confident. It could be a time at work, it could be in the classroom, it could be in the performing arts, it could be in sports. But I wanna give you a moment to connect to a particular point in time when you were really, really confident.

And I want you, when you have that, to relive that moment, Seeing what you saw, feeling what you felt, and hearing what you heard. And let me know when you’ve anchored back to that moment.

Bill Berthel: What’s coming up for me is I’m incredibly fortunate that there’s actually a lot of those moments to choose from, and it’s really interesting that you know, I can come up with times where I needed to present a perhaps difficult polarizing topic, and I brought a group of people together.

Ralph Simone: So pick the one that’s most vivid for you.

Bill Berthel: The most vivid, I think, was back in my human resource position where we wanted to move the organization to HSAs. So as health insurance, that’s a personally sensitive topic for most folks. They wanna make sure that they’re gonna be able to care for themselves and their families, and we were very progressive.

This was before HSAs were mainstream, so there wasn’t a lot of information yet. We did a great job. Educating folks and explaining how they will be better cared for, and used the word convincing, but it was really about partnering with people and that felt great.

Ralph Simone: So with that example in mind, yeah. I’m gonna ask you to stand up and we’re gonna create your circle of excellence.

Bill Berthel: All right? Standing up.

Ralph Simone: So go back to that moment, Relive the moment. See what you saw. Hear what you heard, feel what you felt. And as you feel the confidence building in you, I want you to now imagine a colored circle on the floor around your feet. What color would you like your circle to be?

Bill Berthel: It’s like a warm yellow-orange.

Ralph Simone: Okay. Would you like to give it a sound? Possibly a soft hum. That indicates how powerful it is.

Bill Berthel: Yeah, I can hear it. I don’t know if I can explain it, but it’s kind of a nice low hum.

Ralph Simone: Okay. So as part of step two, when the feeling of confidence is at its fullest, you can step outside of the circle leaving those confident feelings inside the circle.

Now this is an unusual request, but I know you can do it.

Bill Berthel: Hm. Yeah. Yeah, I think I get it. Yeah.

Ralph Simone: So now for our listeners, they’re gonna move to step three, selecting cues. I want you to think of a specific time in the future when you would want to have that same feeling of confidence that you had while in your circle of excellence, and I want you to see and hear what will be there just before you need the confidence.

You know, for me it was when I was actually backstage in the on deck circle before I presented my TEDx talk, and I needed to access that level of confidence. So I want you to envision where you’re gonna need that in the future.

Bill Berthel: Yeah, it’s this next important presentation. Good. Yeah.

Ralph Simone: So, so now we’ll move to step four.

We’re gonna link as soon as the cues are clear in your mind, I’m inviting you to step back into the circle and feel those confident feelings again. Imagine that upcoming situation unfolding around you in the future with these confident feelings fully available to you. While you’re in the circle, you can turn up the submodalities, make that yellow, orange brighter more vivid, make this sound stronger, more powerful.

Bill Berthel: Yeah, there’s a sense of strength and safety there. It’s really interesting. Yeah.

Ralph Simone: So now we’ll do step five, which is checking for results. I’ll ask you to step out of the circle again, leaving those confident feelings there in the circle. And while outside the circle, take a moment and think again of the upcoming event.

You’ll find that you’ll automatically recall those confident feelings.

Bill Berthel: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Yeah, just doing the practice sets me up for success, really relieves the nervousness, maybe the anxiety that’s around something I know I can do. Yeah. Yeah. It feels more prepared.

Ralph Simone: Well, the science behind it, right?

This, you’ve already created some new neuro association for yourself for the upcoming event. And you’re feeling better about it and it hasn’t even happened yet. And, And so, you know, you pointed this out. Remember practice makes perfect. But this is an activity I bet I’ve done 50 times with senior leaders, athletes, coaches.

Kinda to shift that energy. We’ve all had feelings of high confidence in a flow state performance, and if we can take the time to anchor back and then project that into a future instance when those feelings are needed, we’re powerfully affected by that in a positive way.

Bill Berthel: Appreciate the intentionality of this practice because when we’re in the flow, We’re in the flow state, we can’t do this.

And so as a practice to either prepare, to ready ourselves, we can be so much more intentional to connect to those more anabolic or positive energies.

Ralph Simone: And I think one of the things I like to think about for confidence is just we’re getting better each and every day. I’ll paraphrase this, but one of the things, the little sayings I like to do to help my own confidence when it’s wavering is each and every day I am getting better in every way.

You know, each and every day I am getting better in every way. Better. And sometimes it’s, it’s small steps. And I think the other thing about confidence is getting into action. Action creates motivation. And with motivation we learn more and we’re interested in taking on more.

Bill Berthel: Yeah, it is so important to actually be active, to be participating in those activities so we’re not just either ruminating or thinking about it perhaps worrying about it.

Love that. Be sure to tune in every other week to listen to more GetEmergent podcasts. Thank you.