Think about watching a sports match between two teams, where one team is more confident than the other.  The members of the more confident team know that they have a good chance of winning. As a result, everyone on the team makes good decisions, and the players work together seamlessly. Meanwhile, the other team’s confidence is shaky. Players doubt their abilities, they hesitate, and they don’t commit fully to any particular course of action. When this happens, it’s likely that the more confident team will win.

The same principles apply in the workplace – when you have people on your team who have low self-confidence, this can hold them back from reaching their full potential. This is why it’s important that we do what we can to boost the confidence of those around us, especially if we’re leading a team.

Recognizing Low Self-Confidence

People who lack self-confidence rarely thrive. They see more risks than opportunities, they don’t perform particularly well in new situations, and they often have low self-esteem. What’s more, they rarely trust their own judgment, and they may see any successes that they do achieve as resulting from luck, rather than from their own efforts.

By contrast, people who have high self-confidence are more productive and more effective, and can raise the morale of the entire group. They’re also more comfortable taking risks, which can have benefits for their own careers, as well as for their teams.

Confidence can make or break people’s ability to achieve their life goals. So how can you help boost the self-confidence of the people around you?

Help Them Develop Knowledge and Skills

Chances are that there are several skills you rely on to do your job well. When you use these skills successfully, what happens? You feel confident! These are the skills that you’ve worked on over the years, and you’re comfortable that you can use them to accomplish the task at hand.

The same is true for the people on your team. The stronger their skills are, the more confident they’re going to feel.

So a good way to increase the self-confidence of people in your team is by encouraging learning, and by providing plenty of opportunities for additional training. The more knowledge and skills that people have to do their job, the more confident they’re going to feel, especially when they approach challenging projects.

Set Clear Goals, and Help Them Achieve it

Many people get confidence from completing tasks and projects successfully. But that confidence only comes if people know what it is that they’re supposed to do.

This is why it is so important to set clear goals for every member of your team. Goals define success, and give people an objective to shoot for. Without them, they’re working aimlessly.

So make sure that the people on your team know what goals they’re supposed to be working toward, and help them to achieve these goals. Then, when they succeed, celebrate their achievements!

Encourage Autonomy

If you want your team to tackle tasks with confidence, it’s important that you allow them the autonomy to make their own decisions. When your people have the power to decide what needs to be done, they start to take ownership of their work. It truly becomes their responsibility, and when they succeed, their confidence can soar.

Whenever you can, delegate tasks, and give your people the power to make their own decisions.

Be aware, however, that people who have low self-confidence may resist this at first: after all, they may doubt that they’ll make the right decisions. To fight these doubts, encourage them to take on small, achievable projects. Then, if they rely on you too much for help or guidance, encourage them to be more independent.

Celebrate Success

It’s important that all of us celebrate the success we’ve achieved, because recognition of success builds self-confidence.

Whenever your people accomplish a goal or hit a key target, then celebrate with them! Reward them (member-only article) with a party at the office, or even do something small like bringing in cookies or cake. At the very least, congratulate them on their success, and let them know how much you appreciate their hard work.

It’s also important to keep your team excited about what they’re doing. Celebrating success helps with this, but keeping motivation high long-term is key to building a team with high confidence levels.

Encourage Positive Thinking

Many people who lack self-confidence focus on negative thoughts. They may think things like, “I can’t do that!” or “I’m not smart enough.” These negative thoughts cause people to spiral down further, reinforcing their belief that they’ll never be good enough to succeed. Of course, this just makes things worse!

Encourage people to think positively. One technique is to show them how to “flip their thoughts” – every time they catch themselves thinking a negative thought, teach them to think its rational opposite.

For instance, if they think “I’m not smart enough to finish this project,” instead they should think “I know I have the knowledge and skills to finish this project. If I do need help, I can always ask for it.”

Balancing Self-Confidence and Over-Confidence

When people become more self-confident there’s always the risk they can become over-confident, or even arrogant. There’s no doubt that there is a fine line here, but once it’s crossed, these people can start to impact the morale and productivity of the group in a negative way. What’s worse is when people get careless, because they over-estimate their own ability to improvise in difficult situations.

If this happens to a person on your team, start by gently bringing the situation to her attention. Chances are that she might not have realized that she’s crossed the line into arrogance. Meet with her in private, be specific about what she’s saying or doing, and explain why her behavior could be construed as arrogance.

Key Points

If you work with people who have low self-confidence, there are several ways that you can help.

First, encourage them to develop additional knowledge and skills. Help them set clear goals, and sit down with them to identify specific situations that cause their confidence to plummet.

If you’re leading a team, give your people as much power as you can to make their own decisions, and celebrate the success they achieve along the way. But remember that too much self-confidence can be just as damaging to your team as low self-confidence, so help them find the right balance.

Imagine that you work in a classic autocratic organization, and your boss follows every little rule. He oversees each detail of every project and task – and he seems to believe that you and the rest of the team are incapable of performing without him help at every step.

This, in turn, has created an oppressive and discouraging work environment. Productivity is low, and many people have left to go to organizations that are less controlling and more empowering.

Does your boss watch over everything that you do?

So how can you improve your situation? How can you get your boss – and perhaps your organization – to trust you more?

Working in a micromanaged environment isn’t easy. I ‘ll highlight the disadvantages of micromanagement, and I’ll explore what you can do if your boss micromanages you.

Disadvantages of Micromanagement

There are several disadvantages to a micromanagement style of leadership:

It can hurt creativity – When your boss constantly checks up on you and tells you what to do, you have no power to think for yourself. This limits the solutions that you might find on your own.

It can cause you stress – Often, micromanagers make you feel as if nothing you do is good enough. This type of working relationship can make even small tasks seem overwhelming.

It can waste time - When your boss constantly holds meetings and gives instructions, he limits the time you could be working on productive tasks.

It can hold you back professionally – Because you’re dependent on your manager for every task, you don’t take responsibility for yourself and for your work. This limits your growth and development, which may impact your career.

So, what can you do about it?

Critique Yourself

First, it’s important to find out why your boss is micromanaging you. If he behaves this way only with you, then perhaps you’re the cause.

Look honestly at your own work and habits. Have you ever given your boss a reason to mistrust you? Does disorganization or poor time management cause you to miss important deadlines? Do you find it hard to concentrate, or communicate poorly? Or do you fail to follow up on important leads or emails that your boss sends you?

These are tough questions. It’s hard to look at yourself and your work objectively…

Team building skills are critical for your effectiveness as a manager or entrepreneur. And even if you are not in a management or leadership role yet, better understanding of team work can make you a more effective employee and give you an extra edge in your corporate office.

 A team building success is when your team can accomplish something much bigger and work more effectively than a group of the same individuals working on their own. You have a strong synergy of individual contributions. But there are two critical factors in building a high performance team.

•  The first factor in team effectiveness is the diversity of skills and personalities. When people use their strengths in full, but can compensate for each other’s weaknesses. When different personality types balance and complement each other.
• The other critical element of team work success is that all the team efforts are directed towards the same clear goals, the team goals. This relies heavily on good communication in the team and the harmony in member relationships. 

In real life, team work success rarely happens by itself, without focused team building efforts and activities. There is simply too much space for problems. For example, different personalities, instead of complementing and balancing each other, may build up conflicts.

 Here are some additional team building ideas, techniques, and tips you can try when managing teams in your situation:

•Make sure that the team goals are totally clear and completely understood and accepted by each team member.

•Make sure there is complete clarity in who is responsible for what and avoid overlapping authority. For example, if there is a risk that two team members will be competing for control in certain area, try to divide that area into two distinct parts and give each more complete control in one of those parts, according to those individual’s strengths and personal inclinations.

•Build trust with your team members by spending one-on-one time in an atmosphere of honesty and openness. Be loyal to your employees, if you expect the same.

•Allow your office team members build trust and openness between each other in team building activities and events. Give them some opportunities of extra social time with each other in an atmosphere that encourages open communication.

•For issues that rely heavily on the team consensus and commitment, try to involve the whole team in the decision making process. What you want to achieve here is that each team member feels his or her ownership in the final decision, solution, or idea.

•When managing teams, make sure there are no blocked lines of communications and you and your people are kept fully informed. Even when your team is spread over different locations, you can still maintain effective team communication.

•Be careful with interpersonal issues. Recognize them early and deal with them in full.

 •Don’t miss opportunities to empower your employees. Say thank you or show appreciation of an individual team player’s work.

•Don’t limit yourself to negative feedback. Be fare. Whenever there is an opportunity, give positive feedback as well.

Build a team is a hard job, so don´t try to put all the tips in practice at the same time. Maybe you can start with two or three, when you feel ready, you can add two more. Your effort to build a high performance team is well worth it.

To delegate tasks, isn’t anything easy or to take lightly, a simple rule to bear in mind is if the task that you have to do, it can be done for someone esle. This will give us more free time to do the things that only we can do.

Next I tell you some rules to achieve the success on delegate tasks:

Know the  task: It is important to know in what  the task consists and determines the target. Do you realize that to fix targets is one of the more important skills of management? A target is a final destination, if you know it prune to prepare the route, to calculate the time, to find alternative ways and in the end you will have conscience of having come where you wanted.

Choose to whom you are going to delegate the task: If something isn’t urgent, I chose the person most indicated to realize the work, but nothing prevents from entrusting a crucial task to a capable and intelligent person, although it has no experience in this particular area.

Fixes parameters: The person in whom it delegates has to know the work that it has to realize but also the target to which he answers. It is important that he knows what hopes to be achieved and why. But he will need to know something more:  how long he has or what authority he has. Then it is necessary to provide him:

A target.
A delivery time.
Quality parameters.
A budget (if it is necessary).
To determine up to where his authority comes.
Information about the available resources.
Make sure that he has understood you: Cheers up another person to whom he speaks on the work to be sure that it has understood well what it has to do and why. Prune  him to suggest ideas whenever you don’t force him to adopt your approach.

Give information: If you can, help the person in whom it has delegated. Speaks with the chief of another department so that it helps him, tell to him where be able to find the information if you know already from which it can be extracted

Verify closely his advances: If the task or project is long,  it is important organizes meetings of pursuit. Even in the short tasks, don’t forget to verify how it goes: a pursuit closely, although it is informal, usually gives better turned out than a formal meeting. That allows to the person to consult to you the doubts that could have arisen, which he verifies that it isn’t getting lost in details or that it has chosen the wrong approach. The pursuit improves his confidence and, of step, also it calms you.
In any case, to do a pursuit doesn’t imply interfering. It verifies that it isn’t committing serious errors, but don’t lose the time with tritenesses. It is inevitable that not everything is to your taste and, probably, of having done you the work also you would have committed errors. You must only intervene in case of serious error and only so that the things return to his river bed. Don’t take the task or project from him, if you find an error, this turn out to be much a demoralizing person and must only be done in extreme circumstances.

Appreciatethe work. (Last, but not less important!) when the person has finished his work, prepares a meeting of evaluation. If it deserves it, congratulate it on his effort.  It is important that the person has learned one or more lessons on having realized the task. The next time will make it better.

A team is a group of persons (individuals), who have learned like working TOGETHER, to obtain a target.

One can realize when a group of persons is a team because:

• They establish clearly his mission and targets.
• It is well organized.
• It has clear the functions and responsibilities of his members.
• Between members the communication is  in an open way.
• It solves the disagreements internally.
• Steadies  in the capacities of his members.

When does a team come to his maximum potencial?

• Know well his targets and commits itself with them.
• They develop procedure of work effective, avoiding the bureaucracy.
• When they construct on the differences. This point is very important, since there cannot be avoided the differences(that’s why we are individual).
• They acquire flexibility and adaptability.
• They are capable of learning permanently.

What do yo think about it?