Building and Understanding Confidence Essay

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Confidence is a somewhat abstract concept that can be studied from an array of different academics disciplines or perspectives and is relevant to nearly any course of study or profession or any stage of life. Depending on your individual goals and what you wish to achieve in life, it is not only important to work to build confidence in yourself, but it is equally important to understand how you and others build or recognize confidence in other people or systems. For example, you may intuitively feel confident in someone else's decision making ability based on personal heuristics, however these heuristics may not accurately reflect the ideal decisions; the confidence bestowed upon another individual might not be deserved and it is important to recognize any biases that could be present.

Thus developing a basic understanding of confidence can be useful on many levels, not only to build your own, but to understand how others (and yourself) are drawn to confidence in others. Although confidence is an abstract concept, it affects us all in a range of different scenarios and it is important to understand confidence in our personal and professional relationships. This analysis will look at confidence from a variety of perspectives and try to identify any underlying themes that may be present relative to confidence. It was found that there are a few things that can be done to build confidence in yourself and your abilities as well as understand how confidence can manifest in other people. This analysis maintains the positions that understanding confidence on different levels and though different perspectives can be an invaluable asset to personal and professional development.

Executive Summary

This analysis uses a multi-disciplinary method of investigation to attempt to build a comprehensive understanding of confidence that based on a wide range of perspectives. The analysis uses research that focuses on confidence in a range of different circumstances such as giving speeches, improvising jazz vocals, determining investor behavior, and even negotiating for the fate of entire countries. It was found that to personally develop confidence in yourself that preparation and a level of knowledge acquired about a particular interest can help build confidence. The more that someone knows about a subject or situation, the more likely they are to feel comfortable enough to assert their confidence in the matter. Furthermore, it was also found that individuals often base their confidence on heuristics which can be influenced by levels of knowledge, professionalism, and even culture. Heuristics can be imperfect, but they can also be an efficient means to decisions making in regards to making timely and confident decisions. This analysis will attempt to identify some of the heuristics that are commonly related to a position of confidence and how these decision making tools can both be assets as well as liabilities depending on the circumstances.

Literature Review

There are many strategies that are proposed in the literature to help an individual develop confidence based on the circumstances of their situation and their overall objectives. For example, in the business world it is often extremely important to be able to deliver effective presentations with a level of confidence. However, public speaking does not come easy to everyone and it can be a daunting experience for some. Many people are fearful of making presentations yet the ability to think on one's feet and to deliver presentations is a skill that employers desire in their employees (Blaszcynski & Green, 2010). Furthermore, although prepared presentations can be frightening in themselves, impromptu presentations, regardless of the length, can be even more terrifying and it definitely takes a level of confidence to overcome these emotions. Impromptu speeches are common in business and are ?delivered on the spur of the moment with minimal preparation (Blaszcynski & Green, 2010).

Some researchers have outlined a four-step process that promotes becoming an authentic speaker those steps include four intents: to be open, to connect, to be passionate, and to listen (Blaszcynski & Green, 2010). Yet many people have natural tendencies that are not quite consistent with these steps. For example, it is often common for an individual to use fillers as they talk such as "uh," "er," "um," "like," and "you know" which are all phrases that can indicate to an audience that the speaker is not only not confident in their abilities, but these fillers can also be considered distracting and/or annoying to the audience. One strategy to practice speaking without using fillers can be to record your own speech habits and systematically practice speaking based on your speaking habits.

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Then, if you can overcome your own habits of using fillers, you can quickly build confidence in your presentations (Blaszcynski & Green, 2010).

There are also many other situations that are common in the business world that schools and training programs attempt to impart relevant skills and help these students build confidence. For example, effectively working in teams is commonly considered to be a critical success factor in many business environments. However, many students feel intimidated by a team environment and it can be difficult to devise a curriculum in which students can gain real-world experience in a team management position. One study reveals that overall team performance moderates the relationship between self-efficacy of working in teams and the outcome variables, individual satisfaction and individual performance; self-efficacy significantly predicted individual performance and individual satisfaction in low-performing teams, but not in high-performing teams (Sanjib, Megan, & Lanis, 2002).

The concept of self-efficacy in psychology has many similarities with the concept of confidence. When an individual is high in self-efficacy, they believe that they have the ability to perform well relative to the obstacles that could be between them and their objective. Since many personal and professional objectives require an individual to work in a group to achieve their goals, it follows that practicing working in these situations can help build a sense of confidence in a team environment. Therefore, teams have become a useful part of management education in allowing students valuable experience in team environments before they graduate and become involved in real-world team situations (Sanjib, Megan, & Lanis, 2002).

One study suggests that individual-level variables are important in understanding how students react in classroom team situations and self-efficacy, the self-belief in one's ability to perform a specific task, is a valid predictor of performance and can be helpful in understanding how students work in a team environment (Sanjib, Megan, & Lanis, 2002). Students that are initially lacking in self-efficacy inherently can build their confidence over time through practicing best practices and developing a level of experience relative to this environment. For a student that is not comfortable with working in team environment, this situation can be intimidating and it can take extensive preparation to overcome such limitations.

Furthermore, there are other aspects of confidence beyond building self-efficacy through training. For example, the ability to identify, use, understand, and manage emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others is termed as emotional intelligence. This ability in individuals also helps in defusing of conflicts. Many aspects of an individual's daily life are affected by emotional intelligence like the way one behaves in general and with others (Andrews, 2004). Emotional intelligence also can be measured by the ability of an individual to be self-aware and thus using this awareness, be able to manage oneself by controlling impulsive feelings, behaviors and emotions in healthy ways, adapt to changing circumstances and take initiatives to follow through on commitments. Emotional intelligence helps in development of effective teamwork through efficient leadership, managing relations successfully, creation of service orientation, undertaking of initiatives and increasing of collaboration at workplace and socially, intelligence quotient increases the ability to achieve success with challenging tasks, by the proper and efficient analysis and connecting the dots in research and development (Murphy, 2006).

There are many other effective leadership qualities that also can be amplified by an individual's level of confidence. For example, success in business today demands constant creativity and innovation. There are many modern challenges that a business leader will face that will require them to generate fresh solutions to problems and the ability to invent new products and customer experiences for a changing market are driving the economy and are part of the intellectual capital that gives a company its competitive edge (Anderson, 2006). Creativity is believed to be the root of innovation. However, at the same time, an individual can only have the means to be creative if their environment fosters the ability to express creative ideas. There have been many studies that seem to indicate that our creativity decreases as we progress through our education; in one study, a researcher gave 1,600-5-year-olds the creativity test used by NASA to select innovative engineers and scientists and later retested these same children at ages 10 and 15 (Anderson, 2006). The research suggests that young children have genius level creativity, however this creativity drops as they progress through their educations. It is believed that children can be taught to fear failure and….....

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