Self-Confidence in Emotional Intelligence by ‘Cracky the Coaching Cockatoo
I’m Cracky the Coaching Cockatoo 🕊️ and this is my next article sharing my Emotional Intelligence expertise with you on how I’ve managed to engage and train my human, @Simon Smith to trust me, feed me snacks and become my friend (have a look at my first article here.
Today I’m going to talk about Self Confidence – an especially important competency of Emotional Intelligence, and part of the Self-Management segment of Emotional Intelligence (see picture).
First of all, yes, like all the Emotional Intelligence competencies you can learn to develop your self-confidence.
Self-Confidence
The Self-Confidence scale measures how much you accept and respect yourself and how much you like the person you are.
“Emotionally intelligent leaders accept and respect themselves and essentially like the people they are. They are confident in their skills, abilities and judgements and possess the emotional resources necessary to maintain motivation and achieve challenging goals.
See end of article for Self-Confidence Coaching Strategies.
However, self-confidence can be a double-edged sword. So ultimately it’s about understanding where are your strengths, and where are your development areas and blind spots?
I proactively decided I would choose to trust Simon. I took the leap of faith – and I have been regularly rewarded for taking the opportunity. And now, amazingly enough I’ve built my self-confidence from putting myself out there, small step by small step, and now I actually am confident stepping onto the internal windowsill 😊
The key was taking a moment to acknowledge myself for taking those small steps forward – ‘Catching myself Doing Something Right’, as Simon says.
Interestingly, other birds in my flock have followed my example (I think that makes me a leader in my flock?) …but they don’t demonstrate the same self-confidence I do and don’t embrace the opportunity like I do – so they don’t get as many nuts as me!
Occasionally one will try being the super-confident cock…atoo and barges to the front. Simon doesn’t tolerate or reward that behaviour and soon sends them packing!
They rarely stop and consider their behaviour though. That’s one of the dark sides of being too confident, they think they’re right all the time and its always other people’s problem. Building emotional intelligence and understanding people’s perception can changes that though.
I think that’s all sort of the same in your world, isn’t it… if you’re too confident people think you’re a bit of a cockatoo! But also if you demonstrate the confidence, people believe in you more and you’re more likely to get more opportunities and rewards too?
If I hadn’t had the initial self-confidence to tap on Simon’s window in the first place, I’d never be where I am now! But if I’d not been self-aware and had been too cocky a cockatoo, Simon would have ignored me as well.
I’m very proud of myself looking back at all that. important to look back at what you’ve achieved, even the small steps – that personal acknowledgement and Catching myself Doing Something Right’ gives me a little more self-confidence to go out there and have a go at something else next time 😊
Recently, I’ve been considering going a bit further and jumping from the inside windowsill onto Simon’s desk…However, I’m a bit concerned that Simon may think that’s overstepping the mark a bit – there’s that fine line again!
From what I see looking over Simon’s shoulder, the same again applies in your world! If you’re over-confident people tend to disengage and turn their backs, and even find another place to go.
Also, I now have enough confidence to even let Simon stroke my feathers – I was scared of that at first, way out of my comfort zone! But, I believed in myself and had the confidence to step into the space and try, and that I could fly away or put my foot on Simon’s hand if I had to, so felt comfortable enough it should be ok. I now know that I get more nuts if I let Simon stroke my feathers, so I’m actually more self-confident in that space now – still a work in progress though!
The ECR Emotional Intelligence 360 Simon & his team uses offers a set of Coaching Strategies for each of the 10 Emotional Intelligence Competencies:
Coaching Strategy for Self-Confidence
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Work with a coach to develop confidence in setting challenging goals and initiatives, then commit to achieving them.
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Be generous to yourself and develop an attitude of gratitude for your experience and value; respect the person that you’ve become with your distinctive qualities.
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Build levels of self-confidence in your people by finding ways each day to communicate that you like them and believe in them.
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Become a Pygmalion-like leader and communicate that you expect your people to succeed. Provide your people with appropriately challenging assignments that draw out their talent.
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Continue to communicate enthusiastically; invite the participation of others but accept personal responsibility for being the CSO – ‘Chief Story-telling Officer’ regularly communicating your vision and The Why.
I hope you can apply the knowledge to the humans you work with – your team, your reports, your manager, your stakeholders – and better engage and lead them (and yourself) and become an even better leader, leading yourself as well as others. Maybe people will feed you snacks too, like I’ve engaged Simon to do 😂🕊️
Flaps and squawks from your friendly
‘Cracky the Coaching Cockatoo’
For more information on our ECR360 and supporting coaching programs, click here: One of our programs supports leaders to build a personal professional Roadmap of EQ-related Strengths and Development areas
If you want to have a conversation about developing your, or your team’s Emotional Intelligence, get in touch here
A few examples of different levels of Self-Confidence on behaviours:
The generally accepted view is that the higher your self-confidence – the more you like and respect yourself – the more you will like and respect others and the more secure they will feel with your leadership. This also ties in with that all-important ‘Executive Presence’.
Whether we like it or not though, as with all of these things it’s all about perception: your perception of you, and the perception of your day-to-day behaviours by the people around you (your team, your manager, your peers, your other stakeholders).
Like everything else, high, and even low self-confidence can be both great strengths and crippling weaknesses when used in the wrong ways, wrong place, wrong time. As Simon says, it’s nearly always about working on a reasonable balance – as all of these Emotional Intelligence traits.
And as a leader, you can boost or crush someone’s self-confidence very easily. Being aware of your strengths and development areas is critical.
The ECR360 tool he uses seems to do a great job giving people real-world feedback about how their self-confidence is perceived, and some tips on getting that balance right, whether you under-rate or over-rate your self-confidence.
I like to think I’m a confident Cracky the Coaching Cockatoo 😊 Confidence can get you what you want! For example, I was the only cockatoo to have the confidence to fly up to Simon’s window and tap on the glass. I had the self-belief that Simon will notice me…what was the worst that could happen…? He’ll tell me to hop it?!
I’m proud of myself that I had the self-confidence to try that – and I got the reward for taking that leap of faith!
However, the downside is I’ve got to be careful how I talk about it with my peers and say it in the right way so as not to appear like I’m bragging – else they might think I’m a right arrogant…cock…atoo! It’s all about getting the balance right.
When I get too cocky a cockatoo I sometimes cross the line though. My cocky over-confidence and it all being about me blinds me to what’s going on for Simon, and I misread the situation.
My self-confidence comes across as demanding, arrogant and being entitled – that usually doesn’t end well for me! Especially if I start demanding and chewing the window frame… (Simon gets really annoyed at that, I can’t understand why 🤣) and shoos me off. Then I get nothing. Got to get the balance right.
When Simon opens the window these days, I confidently step onto his inside office windowsill – with the confident expectation that I’ll get a nut or 3. And I invariably do.
However, interestingly I didn’t feel confident at all early on! At first, I was very wary of and super under-confident in stepping into a space I didn’t know.
But I used my Emotional Intelligence to help me read the situation and Simon. That helped me believe in myself. It was enough to help me decide to behave like I did have confidence.
