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Leadership

The great thing about Leadership is that we are never done learning. This blog allows members to share ideas on Leadership allowing our members to grow, understand themselves more and reach their potential.

Top tags: Leadership Capability Character Courage self-confidence

Self-confidence as a key factor in leadership

Posted By Jakub Grzadzielski, 20 May 2020
Updated: 20 May 2020

Self-confidence is undoubtedly one of the absolutely necessary traits of every leader. It is hard to imagine that a person characterized by low confidence could inspire employees and lead in the direction of the chosen vision. Self-confidence is a key factor in leadership. Especially nowadays people want to work for leaders with specific views and traits, among which is self-confidence.

However, I often coach leaders with misinterpreted confidence, consisting of an aggressive attitude towards others. In my opinion, this type of attitude is not part of leadership because it does not strive to create a harmonious work environment or build lasting, positive relationships based on mutual respect. From my experience, this attitude is most often taken by leaders trying to mask their complexes and low self-esteem in this way.

In addition, I found that the impact of leaders who do not adopt an aggressive attitude is definitely greater. Their positive attitude and confidence will always attract more people because they simply have more to offer. In human nature, the desire for stability prevails, not perpetual aggression and fierceness. I noticed that confident leaders have a better impact on their people in many ways. I would include, first of all, their naturalness in contacts with my employees. Such a leader does not have to pretend anything or anyone. It is authentic and therefore also reliable.

When people see and know that what they observe is not a game on the part of their supervisor, they start to trust him more and more. His naturalness in behavior allows employees to get to know him more as a human and in this way begin to identify with him and his views. But positive self-confidence not only helps in building relationships. It gives the leader the opportunity to consistently lead the team along the chosen path, create and cultivate a favorable culture, and establish ethical rules. This is indirectly due to the fact that he does not have to constantly strive to maintain his position among other leaders. He can devote all his attention and energy to the team.

From my experience, I can add that self-confidence gives a great inner peace, which is very useful when making many decisions every day. I also noticed that confidence is very contagious and easily transferred to other members of my team. This can easily be explained. If employees feel calm and support, they begin to act and behave more confidently. Another benefit is greater ease when taking risks. Of course, I mean well-thought-out decisions, but burdened with an unknown outcome. An experienced leader realizes that his path will never be a series of endless successes. However, the essence of the matter is that his confidence remains unwavering even after failure.

I found that self-confidence is probably the most visible during public appearances. I believe that it is always a check of the capabilities and confidence of each leader. Therefore, it is a trait an inseparable element of inspiring the people you lead, and thus the basic task of every supervisor. What also distinguishes great leaders is the promotion of the success of their employees and taking full responsibility for team failures as well as not building a distance between them and employees. This is due to self-confidence as a team leader. Confident leadership also means better coherence, communication and transparency in the team. Increases the credibility of a leader, drives his team and enables achieving above average results in the long run.

Tags: Leadership self-confidence

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The Three "C"s of Leadership

Posted By Calum Byers, 03 September 2017

The British Army has been providing courses on leadership development at Sandhurst since 1812 when it was recognised that leading men into battle required more than an aristocratic background. I was at a leadership seminar there recently where the commandant was reflecting on what they saw as the criteria for leadership.

He summarised them as the three “C” s - Courage, Capability and Character. It is interesting to reflect on how well these map directly onto leadership in a business context.

Courage.

Although not generally asked to put their lives on the line – being a leader requires courage. It can be difficult to hold the line on an unpopular initiative, or to move well outside a comfort zone to take on new challenges. One definition of courage is “to act in accordance with one’s beliefs, especially in the face of strong opposition” and this is critical for a leader to ensure that they can remain consistent and keep an activity – and a team – focussed on the overall objective. Sometimes, a leader may have to maintain a distance from colleagues – this can be very lonely and takes courage to live with the realities of leadership challenges without the ability to share the load.

Capability.

To be credible as a leader, the nature of the task being undertaken must be understood and the leader be seen to be adding real value – either directly based on their experience in that field – or indirectly through their ability to motivate and aspire the team. Intelligence, communication skills and creativity are all factors which contribute to the ability of the leader to add value – and to be seen to be doing so by the team and other stakeholders.

Character.

This is perhaps the broadest and most interesting topic. At Sandhurst, there is a very thorough selection school which tests courage and capability but which is particularly focussed on character. There are several aspects to this including openness, self-confidence, self-awareness and resilience - but perhaps the most important is integrity. I’ll come back to this in a later post.

An exercise: how well does this model map onto how you assess people for leadership roles? What would be the aspects of character that you would look for – and which are the most important?