John Ryan

Helping Others Begin to Overcome a Lack of Self Confidence

March 21, 2019 By John Ryan

I once worked with a guy who was terrible at building self confidence in his employees. He prided himself on burning through sales professionals. And he had an interesting process that he would go through.

First, he’d hire the best talent he could find.

Second, he provided little or no coaching or feedback, because he figured you should be able to sell, right?

Third, no matter how successful the sales professional was, if they didn’t sell “his way” he fired them.

Can you even imagine what it was like to work in this environment? It was like a revolving door of employees. Not only could you get fired for not making sales, which isn’t necessarily unreasonable, you could also get fired if you didn’t completely model his style.

This was an incredibly limiting environment and it didn’t provide any room for growth because the sales process was his way or the highway. This was a devastating environment for many young professionals.

So let’s assume that you are a bit more open-minded than this manager was and you are interested in developing your employees and allowing them to build their own unique strengths and abilities. When you help your employees develop their strengths and overcome their challenges, so they are successful in your organization, you will be amazed by how this serves not just the employee, but you and the entire organization.

In order to start this process, your employees have to feel comfortable coming to you for guidance. Think about people you approach for insights, what are some things they do and say that cause you to seek them out?

Do they listen to you?

Offer you their full attention?

For example, they’re not timesharing between you and any electronic device.

Do they offer judgment and blame or acceptance and understanding?

Do they focus immediately on what you did wrong or right?

Do you feel better or worse after talking with them?

People who you seek out for advice make you feel comfortable and valued.

They listen to you and focus completely on the conversation at hand.

They value you and take the time to consider your situation and offer useful insights for you to consider.

They tend to focus on the positive and build you up before offering ideas on ways to improve.

They respect you and they believe in your ability to grow and develop.

When you create an environment like this, you give your team the opportunity to learn from you and you have the opportunity to learn from them. When people feel respected and validated, they are much more likely to listen to what you are saying. If you haven’t created an environment like this, your advice, if you bother to give any, may fall on deaf ears.

How to be More Confident While Acknowledging Your Weaknesses

March 18, 2019 By John Ryan

Being confident isn’t about pretending that you don’t have any weaknesses.

None of us is perfect.

The difference between 7 percenters and the other 93 percent, is that they don’t run and hide from their weaknesses. They acknowledge them, do what they can to improve ones that can be overcome and they learn to live with the ones that can’t be changed.

If you constantly try to find your weaknesses, what is likely to happen? First, you’ll be really sensitive when a weakness comes up. You may even go to great lengths to keep others from seeing you in this situation.

Imagine that public speaking is a weakness or yours and your boss wants you to make a presentation to the entire company, including your direct reports. You know that you are currently a train wreck in front of an audience, what might this do to your confidence?

Think this presentation will be on your mind a bit?

What if you do fall apart in front of the entire company, just as you fear you might?

How will this impact your working relationships going forward?

#1: So, the first step is getting real about areas where you’d like to improve. Call them weakness if you like or areas of improvement, just get them down in writing.

#2: Now, make an honest assessment of the list, what can you change, what can’t you change. Keep in mind that I’m not big on chalking lots of things up to the “can’t be changed” category. For the most part, unless you can really build a case for why it can’t be changed, this is the time to get creative and think about how you might be able to change it.

For example, if a woman thinks she advanced as far as she can, as a woman, in her company, she might be inclined to say that gender is holding her back and that can’t be changed. Alright, I’ll give you that, but her beliefs about the situation can change. And if she doesn’t change those, she can always change where she works. Why would she want to work at a place that doesn’t respect her value as an employee?

So start thinking outside the box and make sure that your assessment of your weaknesses is accurate.

#3: Next, figure out which one of these weaknesses is most detrimental to you professionally. Be honest, even though it’s probably the last thing you want to have to think about, pick the one that you know either is currently or has the potential to hold you back the most.

#4: Then start brainstorming. What can you do to begin to overcome this weakness? Every step you take, no matter how small, in overcoming this weakness will be a boost to your confidence.

It is an incredibly powerful thing to tackle something that truly challenges us.

Motivation: Battery Half-Charged or Half-Empty?

March 15, 2019 By John Ryan

In a recent edition of Sky Mall (yes, I travel a lot), I saw an ad illustrating a new solar powered battery charger for the iPhone. I’m sure it is a must-have for those who brave the outdoors for extended periods of time. But what caught my eye was that the picture illustrating the device had an iPhone in its cradle that had a low battery.

My first reaction was that if the phone is in the charger, it would be helpful to show that it is full and demonstrate how you can keep your phone charged with this handy-dandy solar charger (benefits). Clearly the advertisers thought differently, indicating that it was more persuasive to show a low charge because that is when you need such a device (risk).

So the age old question still stands…Battery half-charged or half-empty?

Well, it depends. It is still the same battery and extending the example to life, it is still the same situation. Glass half-full people are presumed to be positive people while glass half-empty people are negative. But it depends on your goal, doesn’t it? Are you trying to fill the glass? Or drink it down? Neither one is inherently bad, it really comes down to what happens afterwards.

Upon realizing that the glass if half-full, some people give up and say that it is good enough, after all, you can’t have everything in life. Still, when others see something as half-empty, they get motivated. They see it as reassurance that they can achieve their objective, after all, they’re already half-way there.

When trying to motivate others, we have to consider these types of differences. Not only is it important to understand how they view obstacles and success, but also how do they respond to them. That is the real power. Do you present the risks or the benefits…the pain or the pleasure. Remember it is not what charges us that is important, but what charges them.

Get Rid of the Speed Bumps In Your Life

March 12, 2019 By John Ryan

One of the banks that I use recently re-paved their parking lot. And it couldn’t have been a moment too soon. I’ve been using the bank for a few years now and they’ve been great…service-wise. However, when you went to their drive-thru ATM, at the exact spot you would stop in order to use the ATM, there was a huge pothole. And I mean huge. It was so deep, it felt you were going to bottom out your car if you weren’t careful. Sometimes, if you didn’t position your car correctly, it would make it difficult to reach the ATM to push the buttons. It was not a fun experience as you could imagine.

And the truth is that I hadn’t really paid attention to it that much until last week when I went to make a deposit. They fixed it! They repaved the entire parking lot and fixed the pothole. As I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed that it was paved and then it hit me that I had actually stopped using their ATM unless it was after business hours. Without making this decision consciously, I realized that I had started going into the bank to make deposits, just so I wouldn’t have to deal with their pothole.

Now the bank still got my money, eventually, but they inadvertently put a barrier between us. The job of a company is to make it as easy as possible for your customers to give you money. Because each little hoop they have to jump through, each little speed bump they have to overcome makes it that much more likely that they are going to look for someone else to fill their needs.

Take a look at your customer experience, from start to finish, and begin to identify if there are any potholes or speed bumps. Take an inventory of these trouble spots and start getting rid of them when possible. If you can’t get rid of them, do what you can to minimize them.

Defensiveness: A Reflection of a Lack of Confidence

March 9, 2019 By John Ryan

Ever spend some time with someone who is highly defensive? It’s a lot of fun, isn’t it?

In fact, they may even become aggressive and turn on you or others in an effort to make themselves feel better. This is just a simple misdirection on their part and don’t take the bait.

If someone lacks confidence, when they feel challenged, this triggers their insecurity and they move to defensiveness. It makes sense.

Their self worth doesn’t come from within, it comes from outside of themselves. And this is a dangerous position because in addition to being defensive, when feedback they don’t like comes their way, they are likely to want to bring others down as well, so they feel better about themselves.

This can be disastrous to those around them.

If you have someone in your organization who is prone to defensive behavior, also be on the lookout for behavior that may not be supporting the self esteem of others.

This may take the form of criticism, a high level of complaining, focusing on other people’s weaknesses, etc. This is likely not the environment you are going for, because when the self esteem of your staff takes a nose-dive, so do the results they produce.

Beginning to build the esteem of everyone on your staff will help improve the situation. The defensive person will certainly benefit as will those who have been hit by their arrows of criticism.

Keep in mind that it is hard for someone to undermine your confidence when it comes from within, as it should. This is because you have two things going for you.

First, you are willing to hear feedback and make adjustments that might be necessary.

Second, if the feedback is malicious, you are able to spot it as such and ignore it.

Highly productive teams are made up of confident individuals.

Serious about getting results?