How to Achieve High-Acting Confidence: 4 Tools You Can Use Today

We Are Not Simply Confident, or Not. There are 5 Levels.

Most People Sit at Level 3. Here’s Your Quick Guide on Reaching Level 4: High-acting Confidence.

What’s the one thing that stops us speaking up? Being noticed? Or our great contributions kept hidden away? Confidence.

It’s a career killer. When we think of confidence, our mind tends to turn to trembling people sitting in the corner, but that’s not it at all. It’s confidence in a room of 10 senior people. It’s sharing what might be a stupid idea. It’s the confidence to give a piece of feedback that might be taken badly. It’s the confidence to deliver a pitch to a client in such a way that they love it. Confidence is not two layers.

There are 5 levels of confidence:

1. Avoidant
2. Learning
3. Practising
4. High-acting
5. Authentic

Most people in the office are at level 3 (Practising confidence). Some operate at levels 4 (high acting confidence) and 5 (authentic confidence). We don’t, and we need to rise to that level 4 challenge, otherwise we’ll not get the recognition we deserve.

So, what is the difference between practising and high acting confidence? Being seen and heard.

Level 4 is proactive confidence. It is about wanting to stretch outside our comfort zone, wanting to influence people we normally don’t, and being proactive & taking chances. This is the confidence I am talking about. The type of confidence that is not arrogant and has a desire to be seen as a force for good, for making a huge difference, and not being afraid to say, ‘Maybe we could see this another way…’. Or ‘I’ve got a thought that could help…’.

I coach people, and some are afraid to say to me that confidence is what they need because they think that when they say it, I’ll think that they are talking about levels 1 and 2. I can see that they are not at levels 1 or 2. They are level 3 and struggling to articulate a need to be at level 4. Through coaching, they normally identify one of 3 things they can do to push themselves into level 4 and create high acting confidence:

• They make a promise to themselves that if they have a great idea, they will tell someone, because who knows? It could be a brilliant idea.
• In every meeting with senior people or a team, they ensure they have said something. Anything. Ideally, something that adds real value.
• They will say hello and more to any senior person that they meet, and ask a question.
• Accepting that this higher level of confidence is a skill like any other, they start to have a thirst to learn high-acting confidence and that usually means they:
  • Watch Amy Cuddy’s Ted Talk
  • Read Quick Confidence
  • Watch the TikTok video from @Mollietrainor on confidence
  • Understand Stephen Covey’s Habit 2 ‘Begin with the End in Mind’
  • Know the confidence equation
  • Use the Word on Head technique (Google it)
  • Improving your self-talk

This article was written by Darren A. Smith for The Grocer. View the original article.