Self-confidence in business is important, but how is business self-confidence measured and what do you to improve yours? We are going to talk about some ideas here on how business self-confidence is measured and what you can do to improve yours. If you want support in this area, check out our business confidence coaching courses.
Some questionnaires are validated for their ability to help us subjectively measure certain parts of oneself. A common questionnaire used in research to evaluate confidence and ability to cope with and work with stressors and triggers is called the general self-efficacy scale.
This quiz can be taken below and can be a tool for measuring business self-confidence. Take this quiz and then work on some of the suggested material recommended after this quiz. After you have been working on your business self-confidence for a while, you can come back and redo this quiz to check and analyze your work and progress.
Take the Quiz
To take this quiz, rate the below questions on a scale from 1-4 as follows:
1 = not true at all
2 = barely true
3 = moderately true
4 = exactly true
- I can always manage to solve difficult problems if I try hard enough.
- If someone opposes me, I can find the means and way to get what I want.
- It is easy for me to stick to my aims and accomplish my goals.
- I feel confident that I can deal effectively with unforeseen events.
- Thanks to my resourcefulness, I know how to handle unforeseen situations.
- I can solve most problems if I put in the necessary effort.
- I can remain calm when facing difficulties because I can rely on my coping abilities
- When I am confronted with a problem, I can usually find several solutions
- If I am in a bind, I can usually think of something to do.
- No matter comes my way, I am usually able to handle it.
Once you rate each one of these, add up the numbers.
The max you can get is 40 and therefore, the idea of
measuring where you are at with your business self-confidence
is to get as close to 40 as possible.
Once you get this number, you can start doing some things to improve your self-confidence. You can check back on this quiz every 1-2 months to make sure what you are doing is creating improvements. If you do not see yourself improving, then you will want to try different techniques to continue to work on improving this for yourself. Remember the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.
Therefore, this quiz is here to aid as a tool for you to let you know if what you are working on doing is effective for your goals. If you are trying some of the self-confidence exercises that we are mentioning in this blog and you do not see your score changing, you will want to try different techniques until you find something that is working for you.
Be honest with yourself. By this I mean, honestly evaluate if you are actually doing an exercise before moving onto the next one. The self-confidence exercises in this article will not work if you are not doing them on a regular basis, and this means daily or as much as possible.
So, if you take this quiz, score a 20, and then do the exercises only a couple times before retaking the quiz, it will likely not change much. In this instance, the problem is not the exercise not working, it is you not committing to do the work to create a change. Changing our behavior takes both times and repetition. Make sure to schedule the time that is needed to do the things that will help support you and your growth here.
Process to Improve Your
Business Self-Confidence
Self-confidence in business and life is a practice. We generally do the hard thing enough times and survive it (and hopefully thrive), and then we get the confidence that we are looking for.
Many people do not take the steps to move forward with certain things in their lives and business because they do not have the confidence to do so.
This situation creates a vicious cycle, because people do not do things due to lack of confidence and then because they do not take the risk to try them anyways, they never get the confidence they need.
The number one way to improve your business self-confidence is to do the hard thing that you are not confident in. When you do this, after whatever you are working on is complete, you can then reflect upon what you did well and what you would improve upon.
If you orient your brain to “success” as learning from your experience, then as long as you are taking the time to reflect and learn after you are done, you will be successful as long as you try. Just make sure that you do actually take the time to reflect about what you have learned and what you can do differently so that you continue to grow and improve.
And as the biggest way of improving business self-confidence is to practice this, an effective strategy is to begin to look for areas in your business (as well as in your recreational life) where you can do this.
Start by thinking about
the following questions:
- Where in your personal/professional life do you have difficult problems you could practice solving?
- Is there anyone that opposes you and your goals? What do they want? Can you have a conversation to learn more about what they want? Once you know what they want, think about a creative solution to help both of you win and then present this to them.
- What are your goals? Do you have a way to motivate yourself to stick to your goals? If this is difficult for you, how can you be better equipped for this? What will motivate you better? Do you need cues or ways of remembering your intentions? Be very specific about when you will take actions to move towards your goals. Put these sorts of things in your calendar and actually schedule them.
- Do you have a practice for keeping yourself calm during stressful times? What do you say to yourself during stress? Is your internal dialogue positive and helpful or is it more “gloom” talk?
- What sorts of difficult problems have you overcome in your life/business already?
- What sorts of difficult problems do you have in your life/business to solve?
- What sorts of activities do you have in your life that help you calm and self soothe? If you do not have any, what could you possibly do?
When you have answers for the above questions, pick 1-2 that feel most interesting to work on and begin practicing. For example, if you have a list of difficult problems that you are having a hard time solving, start with writing a list of how you could solve them. If you cannot think of any ways, then make a list of where you could find helpful information about solving them or who you could talk to in this regard. Then work on talking to people and gathering information from research until you have some possible solutions for the problems and then pick 1-2 to try. After you have implemented the solutions, reflect on the outcome. What did you do really well? What could you do differently in the future?
Remember, to orient yourself to success as learning from what you try. Therefore, if you take the time to reflect on what you did and learn from it, you are successful. Remind yourself this every day.
No matter which areas from this practice list you chose to work on, you can use similar types of strategies. For example, if you want to practice staying calm during challenging times, think of techniques that might help you do this. You can research ideas if you do not have any. Then, practice those techniques WHEN YOU ARE FEELING GOOD. If you practice when you are feeling good, you will be in the habit of doing these techniques, so that during stress you will remember to do these things. Once you go through a more stressful time and get to the other side, reflect on how you managed the stress. Did you stay calmer, focused and centered than you usually do? If so, it is working.
