Topics for Coaching: Confidence

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Exploring Confidence In The Coaching Room

Confidence, or the lack of it, is a topic that comes up a lot in the coaching room.

There are four areas to consider when it comes to confidence, and tend to feed in to each other:

1) Self awareness: the coachee’s thinking around confidence, their own strengths, weaknesses, and personality,

2) Self efficacy: helping them to feel as though they can find a way that makes sense for them

People are rarely lacking in confidence in every area of their lives, so they will have some resources, strengths, and experiences that can help them in this area, so we might spend time on that, so that start to feel more empowered, as well as explore transferable skills from those other areas of their lives.

And this all feeds in to

3) developing their mindset around the topic. Beliefs will come into play too. That might be beliefs about themselves, or about confidence and how that is perceived, demonstrated, and acceptable – or not.

And then

4) finding or developing the skills and strategies to help them practically work on confidence building.

This is where we could work with some embodiment exercises to help ‘try confidence on for size’ and practice with different ways to embody, feel, and express confidence in a way that’s right for them.

We can explore areas where they demonstrate confidence already (or have done so in the past), and therefore have some transferable skills. This encourages self-efficacy. This might be linked to the solution focussed approach to coaching where we are looking for things that the coachee can draw on from their own experiences and strengths. But also to understand the things they’re not so good at, and acknowledge them, maybe delegate, or get some extra training in if it’s something practical and skills based.

We might also want to explore elements of our coachee’s individual personality  and how that impacts their ideas of confidence.

Ultimately, most people want something to do, and trick or short cut, and whilst we don’t think there’s a magic pill. There are certainly some skills and strategies that might help them to bring their version confidence in to the situation where they need it.

Can Affirmations Help with Confidence?

Yes, and no. Affirmations can be useful as long as they align with beliefs and values you know are true of yourself.

Saying: “I am confident and am able to get my message across in management meetings” might be useful, but not if you don’t really believe this to be the case.

Research suggest that you’re actually better off using self-affirmation about something you know to be true about yourself, to bolster your confidence, even if the statement doesn’t appear linked to the situation in which you need the confidence right now. This could be about an area you are confident in, or about a value that you know is highly important to you. For example:

“I am present and heard in my team meetings”

Or even

“I value equal contribution from all parties”

Amy Cuddy mentions it in her book Presence, and says that effective affirmations are “about reminding ourselves what matters most to us, and, by extension, who we are”

What top tips do you have for coaches wanting to do more work on this area?

Helen says:

“The coach, as always, needs to create a safe space, to build trust & rapport, to have unconditional positive regard and to believe that their coachee can find their way to achieve this inner resource.  And also, to understand that confidence is something different on everyone.

I would also say, don’t be afraid to get people out of their seats and move their awareness into their bodies. And if you’re doing that with them, go there with them – stand up with them, feel what confidence feels like with them. And invite them to practice emobodying this: standing in this way, walking with confidence outside of the coaching space and see what happens for them.

It can take time, but equally, you might be surprised how fast the results come in!”

Our Doctors’ Transformational Coaching Diploma  covers cognitive behavioural coaching and embodiment coaching that will help to explore this topic with coaching clients. Take a look and get in touch if you have any questions.