Gaining and Maintaining Confidence in the Workplace:

For many people, one of the biggest struggles they face is gaining and maintaining their confidence. Having the confidence to stand by your actions and commit to your choices without doubting yourself is a skill that takes lots of practice to achieve. Gaining and maintaining confidence is especially important for job searching. The confidence to search, apply, interview, and keep the job you are interested in.

There are many things that can help improve confidence, but maintaining it is the toughest task. Maintaining confidence means being able to stay confident even on your bad days. Today we are going to look at the strategies you can use to gain confidence at work.

Strategies to improve your self-confidence at work are: 

Asking questions.

Asking questions helps further understanding, makes sure you’re on track, and shows you are critically thinking about your tasks. Many people feel uncomfortable asking questions out of fear of feeling like they are messing up. However, lots of employers prefer you ask questions so that they know they can trust you with an assignment/task.

Attend professional development training.

Attending professional development workshops/training will improve your overall professional image especially if superiors see that you are taking the extra step to improve your work performance. Job Gym offers many workshop classes. Some of which include resume and cover letter training and job searching during COVID-19.

Check out Job Gym’s virtual hub! https://www.jobgym.com/virtual-hub/

Focus on strengths.

Most times people will focus on the negatives about themselves. Confidence is about rewiring yourself to accentuate the positives and diminish the negatives. The goal isn’t to get rid of the negatives altogether but to see them, recognize the mistakes or faults, and learn from them in order to turn them into strengths of yours.

Go outside your comfort zone.

Lots of confidence can come from going outside your comfort zone or what you would typically do. Although it is a risk, you can learn a lot from going outside the comfort zone and expand your knowledge past what you would normally consider your strengths.

Learning from mistakes.

This can go hand in hand with focusing on strengths. Part of growing confidence is to recognize you went wrong and learn from it instead of letting it make you insecure.

Learning new skills.

Learning new skills is very important for the workplace. In general, learning new skills will help you look more desirable to employers. Learning new skills doesn’t necessarily mean you need to learn about hobbies or concrete skills. It could also mean learning skills for professional development. For example, this could mean working on being punctual, working on your independence/teamwork. Lots of employers look at your experience and your life skills before anything else. If they see you are a trustworthy, hard-working employee they will pick you over someone who only has experience and doesn’t seem committed to their job.

Look up to role models in the workplace.

In most workplaces there is always someone who you’re going to look up to. Typically this is someone who inspires you to do better for your job. Do your best to try to find positive role models in the workplace and strive to be like them soon in your career.

Preparing for your workday the night before.

This is the best way to ensure you have a productive day. If you have a habit of waking up late then rushing to get everything you need to get done this is the best way to help you relieve some of that stress. Preparing your lunch, picking your outfit, packing your bag all can be done the night before. This gives you more time in the morning to prepare for your day and makes you feel more confident going into work.

Rephrase negative language.

The way you speak to others and the way you speak to yourself reflect how you are feeling and can impact how other people see you. If you speak to yourself with positivity you build your confidence and show other people that you have a positive self-image.

For example, rephrasing sentences like “I’ll never be able to do this” to something like “I can learn from this and do better for next time”.

Set realistic goals.

Setting yourself realistic goals ensures that you can achieve tasks. Doing small realistic goals every day can increase your self-confidence making you feel like you accomplished more and makes you feel better about getting your tasks completed. Your realistic goals can be for the workplace or for your home life. For example, I make sure to set goals like doing my dishes, finishing blog posts for work, and not eating out for lunch part of my everyday goals.

Confidence is all about the strength to stick beside your actions and your choices. When reading the tips above, think about how you can apply that to your own life and take note of where you can personally improve. Once you are able to think critically, learn from mistakes, and apply changes is when you truly gain self-confidence.