Lacking Confidence?
Confidence is defined as the feeling or belief that one can rely on something or someone. When I first became a building principal I constantly thought about two things. The first was “please don’t let me mess this up.” The second thing was “I hope that I can get to the point where the decisions I make will be made with 100% confidence.” I thought so much about these two things that the thoughts consumed me and at times could even paralyze my decision making process. There was a perception in my mind that good principals always knew what to do, and they made their decisions with an efficient and calm confidence that was absolute. After a decade as principal I can say with certainty that the level of confidence I was seeking not only wasn’t possible, but sure wasn’t desirable.
Being confident is something that we all crave in our jobs. I don’t dispute that confidence is a positive, but I will dispute that it shouldn’t be our goal. The goal of having absolute confidence in our decisions is honestly arrogant. When I think of the job of a leader, particularly a building principal you will encounter things on a daily basis that you have never seen before. There is no amount of preparation, reading, research or experience that can prepare you for everything. If you think there is then you are doomed from the start and that overconfidence will be your undoing. Now with that being said there will be things that you will become very confident in dealing with as a leader.
You might be asking what are the things that I think you can become confident in? Setting up routines, minor tasks and applying your core values would be some examples. So, what kind of tasks or decisions will make you question your confidence?
Decisions that involve people
Decisions that involve things that are new to you
Decisions that will have lasting effects on the future of your building
These three decisions were the type of decisions that made me question my confidence? I truly believe that it comes back to the idea that it will affect other people and their emotions. These were things beyond my control and could create dissent, hard feelings, and division in my relationships with individuals and with the staff as a whole. Remember when I mentioned that I could become paralyzed by my lack of confidence in decision making? I viewed a lack of confidence as a weakness. I don’t know if the reasons I felt that way were because I was overwhelmed, new to a higher level of leadership or if it was my previous life experiences. I saw great leaders as calm, cool and collected so I didn’t consider the fact that great leaders even good leaders didn’t get there overnight.
The longer I led a staff the more I realized that the lack of confidence in my decisions wasn’t a bad thing, it was perfectly natural. I started to look at my inexperience or indecision as an opportunity instead of a weakness. When I was faced with difficult decisions it was a new chance to learn and grow. I began to look at these situations like an athlete looks at practice. I was going to have to test myself, push through the discomfort and maybe even suffer a little in order to get where I needed to go. It meant stretching my thinking, doing some research, and seeking the opinions of experts and the people around me. With this mindset you must be prepared for things to fall flat, miss the mark or even go horribly wrong. When that happens what do you do?
When things go badly it’s not time to feel sorry for yourself, but it is time to take accountability, reevaluate, dust yourself off and try again. This is where real leaders are born. They are born in the chaos of not getting it right and only through that chaos can you truly become confident in your decisions. Truly great leaders will fail more often than they succeed, because they will continue to search for the best solution and the best path. They don’t see failure, they see feedback. Some of you might be asking yourselves “is this guy saying there isn’t really a true level of confidence in the decisions you make?” Well, kind of. What I’m really saying is you need to have confidence in the process of getting better. Establish a routine that will help you make the tough decisions so when you don’t know what to do because you’ve never seen it you have a starting point to get you to where you need to go.
If you are paying attention you know I’ve brought you back to the beginning. Earlier in this post I stated that one of the areas you can be confident in is the routines you establish for yourself. The key word is routine. Routine is about process and procedures. If you have a clear process and procedure established for yourself when you need to make decisions and you are consistent with applying it then the lack of confidence doesn’t matter. The reason for that is that you have strength in what you have built for yourself. My challenge to you is to sit down and develop the process and procedures you will use to help you make the best decision possible when you don’t know what to do. Have a great day and remember to light the WICK of leadership today.
