The Confidence Blueprint: 7 Essential Steps To Unlock Your Power As A Female Leader

It also affects our world from a personal point of view, both positively and negatively. It can determine whether you go for that big promotion, or not. Whether you take the leap and make the decision to quit your job and start that business that you’ve always dreamt of. It affects your relationships with others and their opinions of you as a leader. It quite literally can be the one thing that holds you back from achieving the success that you desire and deserve in your life.

For so many women, confidence feels elusive—like something reserved for the naturally bold or extroverted. However, here’s the truth!  Confidence isn’t a personality trait. It’s a skill. And like any skill, it can be learned, practised, and mastered. 

In this article, I’ll show you how to cultivate the kind of unshakable confidence that transforms you into a powerful, impactful leader in today’s rapidly evolving world. A powerful leader of others but also just as importantly, a powerful leader of yourself. 

I will share with you 7 essential steps that you can take to build your confidence and unlock your personal inner power. You will discover the secrets to be able to confidently lead yourself and those around you to create the success that you desire and deserve.

SO WHY DO YOU NEED TO CULTIVATE HIGH CONFIDENCE?

We are living in an increasingly complex world and are facing rapid change in nearly every area of our lives. The familiar old models of work and life are falling apart, leaving many of us feeling extremely fearful and out of control. In the current paradigm shift that is taking place confidence becomes the anchor that enables leaders to thrive in such turbulent times. It’s more vital than ever that we cultivate our self-confidence to become truly effective, to lead with courage, conviction and clarity and encourage others to make the necessary changes to successfully adapt and grow.

What are the positive impacts and outcomes of Confident Leadership? 

Inspires Trust

Leading with confidence creates a feeling of stability and assurance in others and can boost morale for all, driving up productivity and increasing work effectiveness. Others have faith in the leader, trusting her views and directives and builds cohesive and aligned teams that deliver powerful outcomes together. 

The Ripple Effect

Not only does it drive one’s own personal success it also influences others around you and in your team and business. The positive impact will be seen and felt by many, leading to even greater business success for all.

Builds Resilience

Enables you to be resilient when faced with the unknown, with adversity and challenging situations. It enables one to calmly and effectively manage crises and instill confidence in those around you to follow your lead.

Fuels Decision Making

Feeling confident and more certain in one’s own abilities enables faster and more decisive actions with reduced levels of anxiety. It enables one to quickly assess a situation, weigh up the risks and benefits and clearly communicate the required action to others.

Builds Courage

When you are feeling confident you have the courage to tackle difficult tasks and situations and are more willing to take the risks. In our rapidly changing world, we are facing new challenges everyday so possessing courage is a vital attribute for a leader that is to succeed.

So, how can you build your confidence to live the life you want and achieve the personal and professional success that you desire? Below you will learn about the actions you can take right now to build your confidence muscle. By making a commitment to yourself and consistently taking daily action on a daily basis you will rapidly unlock your unique inner power to achieve all that you wish for.

7 ESSENTIAL STEPS TO UNLOCK YOUR POWER AS A FEMALE LEADER

1. External Versus Internal Confidence

Firstly, it is vital that you understand what confidence is. Most of us think that it is a singular entity. An innate trait that we are either fortunate enough or not to have been blessed with it at birth. Yes, some people are more naturally confident than others but as I’ve already mentioned it is a skill that can be learnt, built upon and mastered.

Confidence can be split into 2 parts. 

External Confidence

Many things happen that are external to us that can have huge impacts on how confident we feel or not. World events, the economy, disasters and catastrophes. Other people, their comments, opinions and actions. These things tend to be unpredictable; they can fluctuate wildly and are often reactions to events outside of our awareness. They change rapidly and can often be momentary and fleeting occurrences. The important thing to realise is that these external happenings and events things are IMPOSSIBLE TO CONTROL. Understanding that you cannot control these events is extremely powerful. Allowing these things to negatively drain you of your energy is pointless and will simply hold you back and slow you down.

Internal Confidence

You are responsible for building and maintaining your inner self-assessment and self-awareness. Your inner thoughts, the words you use and your inner beliefs which are built and maintained by you make up how confident you feel internally. The important thing to realise here is that YOU DO HAVE THE POWER TO CONTROL what you’re telling yourself. To consciously choose the habitual thoughts that you focus on. Are they positive and empowering or negative and bring you down? You have the choice where you place your attention. 

The higher your inner level of confidence, the more able we are to effectively deal with the external events that we cannot control. Confidence is built brick by brick, so consciously focusing on cultivating positive thoughts and inner dialogue will raise your base level of internal self-confidence and subsequently raise your overall level of confidence.

2. The Power Of Your Beliefs

This is a BIG one! Our beliefs are just STORIES. They are not true.  Many of our beliefs were formed when we were young, instilled in us from our parents, our teachers and those in authority. To keep us safe. To keep us away from harm. To maintain the status quo.

Beliefs can be hugely positive, empowering and motivating and they can propel you forwards towards achieving your goals and ambitions. 

However, they can also be extremely negative. They can keep us small, keep us stuck and hold us back from going after our dreams. We may have been telling ourselves for years that we are not good enough to get the top job in our profession. That we are not as good as everyone else and that we are lacking in some way. That we are not clever enough, bright enough, experienced enough etc. etc.

But consider this-surely if beliefs were true everyone would believe the same things wouldn’t they? 

Everyone would have the same political beliefs. The same beliefs about marriage. The same beliefs about education. About religion. About sustainability and the environment.

Why is this so important to understand? Well, if they are simply stories that we’ve made up over the years and we now know that they are not true, then if these beliefs are not serving us in a positive way, 

YOU CAN CHANGE THEM! 

If they aren’t moving you closer to your goal, then choose to install new constructive beliefs that are resourceful and support you in achieving the success your desire.

3. The Confidence-Competence Loop: The Power Of Repetition

When we do something, anything, for the first time we are generally not very confident about being able to do it well. We are not yet competent at whatever it is. We don’t have the experience yet to trust in our abilities and don’t have any proof of our competence.

Now imagine we repeat the action. When we finish, we feel a little more competent and in turn this gives us a little more confidence.

Now imagine we keep repeating the action over and over again. Our competence increases and as our competence increases so does our confidence. 

Remember when you were learning to drive a car. It felt scary and uncomfortable because you weren’t proficient and competent at driving yet. You hadn’t learnt the skills required and didn’t know the laws and rules of the road. However, I bet that when you get in the car and drive now you don’t have to consciously think at all about how to do it. You have repeated the actions so many times that your brain has become wired so that driving is almost automatic and you feel supremely confident about your abilities.

So, if you want to become a more confident leader, you must become a more competent leader through learning, experience and repetition.

4. Your Circle Of Influence

As Jim Rohn famously said,

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

This simple message reminds us that the relationships we choose to have in our lives can be hugely impactful, both positively and negatively. If you choose to be in an environment where you are surrounded by positive, motivated and ambitious individuals who encourage and support you to achieve your goals this can positively influence your progress towards achieving success.

Conversely, if you spend a lot of time with negative nay-sayers who constantly doubt or criticize you this can hinder you from moving forwards, slow you down and make you doubt yourself and your abilities.

Why not spend a little time auditing your inner circle this week-who inspires you, and who drains your energy? Who supports and encourages you to go after your dreams and who pulls you down and tells you all the reasons why you shouldn’t. Remember, you have the power to choose who you want in your inner circle of influence, and who you will chose to distance yourself from. Why not choose those that lift you up and that celebrate your successes with you and encourage you to keep going when things don’t work out as you wished.

5. E + R = O

This is a simple and yet powerful model to remember that can help you to keep focused on what you want to achieve as a leader and consciously become aware of how your responses to events may be sabotaging your efforts. In our busy and noisy lives, we can find ourselves on auto-pilot, responding and reacting to external events automatically and then blaming other people or external factors when we don’t achieve what we want.

EVENT + OUR RESPONSE = THE OUTCOME

This simple model reminds us that we always have a choice about how we respond to any event in any given situation. This may be an internal response as to how we let our emotions and thoughts take over in a negative and overwhelming manner or in a positive, considered and resourceful way.

Our response when dealing with a difficult client or work colleague could be reactive, antagonistic and highly emotional resulting in a breakdown in communication and potentially devasting consequences. Or it could be calm, considered and come from a place of empathy and understanding which could diffuse a potentially explosive situation and result is resolution or a positive compromise.

6. Constant Growth & Learning

A successful leader in today’s rapidly changing world must be actively seeking to constantly learn and grow as a human being and as a professional. To be confident in your abilities to handle the daily challenges that you face and lead your team effectively, you must embrace the need for continuous and active improvement. To be well versed and read in what is happening in your specific industry or field is vital to be able to confidently build strategies to achieve targets, compete effectively with your rivals and take fast and relevant action when needed. 

Embracing actively the need to continually adapt, develop and nurture a growth mindset will ensure that you remain relevant and become a respected and recognised leader in your field. Examples of positive actions you could choose are taking a course in a new emerging area that will potentially impact your business. Hiring a business leadership coach to support and champion you in developing your mindset to succeed.  Reading relevant and inspirational books and publications, seeking feedback to identify how you can improve-these are all essential in our changing work environments and world.

7. Self-Care & Wellbeing

Taking care of oneself is closely tied to possessing confidence. Scientific research has proven the powerful connection between the mind and body and that to perform at you optimum you must have a balanced approach to your health and wellbeing. When we are feeling physically fit and strong, are fuelling our bodies with the right food and drink, are getting adequate sleep and rest and are paying attention to our mind’s health, our levels of confidence increase in alignment.

 

TO CONCLUDE

To become a powerful and truly confident Female Leader in our world today we need to embrace many things. We don’t have a hundreds of years of historic female role models to draw upon-we are the pioneers, the first generations of women who are carving out what it means to lead in the modern era. This can be overwhelming but so exciting in equal measure. We are proving to the world how powerful, brilliant and vital we are for the survival and successful evolvement of our planet.

So, we need to build our levels of confidence and self-belief by embracing all these essential steps and taking consistent action. Remember to focus on strengthening your internal confidence by choosing positive thinking, using empowering language, acknowledging your achievements and celebrating your wins no matter how small.

Choose to surround yourself with like-minded and inspirational people who will encourage you to step out of your comfort zone to grow and expand and support you on your exciting journey to become the very best version of yourself.