Persistent and widespread poor self-confidence is proving a major problem for one consumer goods firm. Coaching has worked before, but the problem is creeping back. What next for its HR manager?
Harry is a senior-level HR practitioner in a large, fast-moving consumer goods organisation.
The business has an ongoing problem of low self-confidence among staff, marked by a wide range of unproductive attitudes, feelings and behaviours. When setbacks or failures occur, staff confidence often buckles, which becomes an insidious and challenging source of interference to effective performance and wellbeing. The individuals demonstrate self-doubt, indecisiveness, isolation, disengagement and frustration, resulting in a downward spiral of poor performance and critical feedback, and deteriorating self-confidence.
In the past, the organisation implemented a coaching approach that focused mainly on helping the person understand the causes of poor self-confidence by examining past experiences, personality factors and cognitive-behavioural patterns associated with specific situations. While this had a positive effect, Harry has recently noticed negative behaviours becoming apparent again.
Harry is at a loss as to how to overcome this problem, but with challenging business targets set for this year it’s important that the issue is tackled sooner rather than later.
James Brook
Director, Strengths Partnership
I would suggest implementing a number of solutions designed to work on employees’ strengths.
Harry could encourage his staff to stay focused on their personality and performance strengths, and build a strong personal ‘brand’ that reflects who they are at their very best. To do this, they could keep a journal capturing ‘defining moments’ when they are performing at their best, use a strengths assessment profile such as Strengthscope™, or tackle internal voices of doubt by reframing these as voices of strength. For example, “I am no good at presenting” could be reframed as, “When I am well-prepared and know my subject, I have delivered effective presentations in the past.”
The key to maintaining confidence is not just to optimise one’s natural strengths, but also to learn creative ways to reduce or manage weaker areas and other sources of performance risk, including overdone strengths.
Harry can help staff to understand and live more easily with these, for example, forging complementary partnerships with others whose strengths they can ‘borrow’. Don’t just consider obvious weaker areas either. Help them understand what happens when their strengths go into overdrive – for example, performance shortfalls and damaged relationships – as well as the triggers.
People feel more empowered to work on less productive behaviours when they understand these are associated with a standout strength. Build in reflection time during and between sessions. This will accelerate them into a confidence-boosting, virtuous cycle of success.
Mark Mckergow
Director, Centre for
Solutions Focus at Work
It has been said that an organisation is its conversations, the mutual self-organising of the participants. So one possibility is for Harry to shift his attention to the conversations between staff members, their managers and their peers.
When people are feeling stressed, their conversations are often more about self-preservation than performance. Harry could find levers to start to generate a sense of holding the space, where people can experience ‘safe enough’.
Another shift he might consider is away from psychologising and onto the work and the people doing it. How clear are they about what they are expected to do? What helps them perform? How much discretion do they have? How do they help each other? How much priority is given to examining and building on successes, even small ones, in regular meetings? How do they recognise effort as well as results?
Harry could also use a confidence scale to build confidence in the group that it is on track to produce results. Using a solution-focused approach to the scaling, questions like, ‘How come you’re at a 4 on the confidence scale and not lower?
What else? What would be the first tiny signs that things were at a 5?’, might be useful.
Note that this takes the focus away from the people and onto the interaction of the people with each other and with the work – which may be useful as the group moves forward.
Volume 7, issue 6