Self-Confidence as a Tool to Conquer the World

SIDDHARTHA GHOSH


The middle name of self confidence is belief. One cannot go to the top without self-belief; to build it, one has to believe in himself. Being perfect is not the idea— but one has to put a brave front and do the best he or she can. That's it in a nutshell. Here's a little more background on this.
Last term, I taught a 4-credit course to Post Graduate Management students at the Asian School of Business Management (ranked among top-10 B-Schools of India for 2008 by Deccan Herald). A second-year student approached and told me that he had read a self development book on leadership and personal effectiveness which spoke about the challenges faced by the top industry executives of US. He also requested that since self confidence is such an important parameter in an individual’s career, can they have extra sessions on the subject in their break periods.
On the same night, before retiring for the day, when I was pondering about the whole day’s activities, this issue really made me think that whenever I have dealt or communicated with CEOs, industry stalwarts or any top ranking personalities during my 10 years industry stint (of which majority was in Jet Airways - ranked world’s 7th best airline for 2008), I had rarely found self-confidence problems in them. It is almost impossible to make it to the top level in a multibillion-dollar corporation if you do not believe in yourself. On the other hand, when I speak to my students in the business school, I have noticed that students in my courses often want to talk about it.
This is such a crucial and interesting topic that I normally share these few suggestions about how an individual can build self-confidence. I also hope that the readers may have their own suggestions, which might be more important and valuable than this.
1. Human beings are never perfect. There are never right or wrong answers to complex business decisions. The best that you can do as a leader is to gather all of the information that you can (in a timely manner), do a cost-benefit analysis of potential options, use your best judgment — and then go for it.
2. Failures are stepping stones to success. Great salespeople are the ones who get rejected the most often. They just ask for the order more than the other salespeople. You are going to make mistakes. You are human. Learn from these mistakes and move on.
3. Planning and deciding without implementing is a waste! World is full of master-planners & strategists but still there are failures. Why ? Because the so-called leaders are so busy charting out plans and strategies, that they have no time or energy left in them to implement it. Don't continually second-guess yourself. Great leaders communicate with a sense of belief in what they are doing and with positive expectations toward the achievement of their vision.
4. Confidence Actor as Confidence booster – In some of your life situations, really the confidence may lack. But if you act and behave as if you are confident, the research has proved that it will really enhance your actual confidence-level.
5. Be “Courageous” to the world — If your team member see you as a weak and shaky leader, the whole team will crumble in its mission as it will have an adverse effect on their confidence quotient. Again a lack of courage on the part of the leader, would be a damaging black-spot for the whole entity as a whole.
6. Live in “Present” and eradicate procrastination from your life-diary. Life has a limited span. I believe that since we are all going to expire after a point, lets do our best to realize our goals by listening to our heart but acting or deciding only on the basis of our brain. Also, thinking about past or future too much, would result in unhappiness and frustration and please note that the world’s happiest people are not always those, who are rich and wealthy; but people who live their life in “PRESENT”. And also the presentists are the group of people who possesses maximum self confidence.

(Offline, Volume-5, No-9, January 2010; Siddhartha Ghosh is Fellow, Center for Research in Materials Management. He is Assistant Professor, Asian School of Business, Bhubaneshwar. He may be reached at drsiddhartha@yahoo.com)