Speaker 1: Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of
Speaker 1: performance through strong human relations, team building, and goalajiving. This
Speaker 1: is the seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host Paul Felloaledo.
Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to the seven Minute Leadership Podcast.
Speaker 1: It's episode seven point thirty three. Today we're talking about
Speaker 1: something that most leaders only think about when it's too late. Confidence,
Speaker 1: specifically the kind of confidence that holds you together when
Speaker 1: everything around you is falling apart. So I'm calling it
Speaker 1: confidence built before the crisis. And here's the truth, right
Speaker 1: out of the gate. If you're waiting for a crisis
Speaker 1: to figure out who you are as a leader, you're
Speaker 1: already behind. So let me paint a picture for you.
Speaker 1: Two leaders, same company, same unexpected situation. A key client
Speaker 1: walks away, revenue drops significantly, and the team is rattled.
Speaker 1: The first leader freezes, They start second guessing every decision.
Speaker 1: They hold three meetings in one day and make no
Speaker 1: actual decisions in any of them. Their team can feel
Speaker 1: the uncertainty rating off of them and it spreads like
Speaker 1: a cold and a kindergarten classroom. The second leader, they're calm,
Speaker 1: not fake, calm, not that weird, glassy eyed, calm that
Speaker 1: makes your team more nervous, genuinely calm. They gather the facts,
Speaker 1: they communicate clearly, and they make a call. The team
Speaker 1: doesn't love the situation, but they trust the person leading
Speaker 1: them through it. What's the difference between those two leaders.
Speaker 1: It's not intelligence, it's not experience, it's not even skill.
Speaker 1: It's preparation. One of them built their confidence before the
Speaker 1: crisis ever showed up. So how do you actually do that?
Speaker 1: How do you build that kind of camp confidence before
Speaker 1: you need it. The first thing I want you to
Speaker 1: understand is that real leadership confidence doesn't come from never failing.
Speaker 1: It comes from knowing yourself well enough to trust your
Speaker 1: own judgment even when you're not sure of the outcome.
Speaker 1: That takes work, quiet, intentional work that most people skip
Speaker 1: because it doesn't feel urgent. Here's a simple place to start.
Speaker 1: Get clear on your values. Not the values your company
Speaker 1: posts on the wall in the break room. Your values
Speaker 1: the things that are non negotiable for you when you're
Speaker 1: making decisions under pressure, Because when a crisis hits, you
Speaker 1: won't have time to figure out what you stand for.
Speaker 1: You need to know already. Sit down this week, seriously,
Speaker 1: block thirty minutes and write down three to five things
Speaker 1: that guide how you lead, not how you want to
Speaker 1: be perceived, how you actually want to behave. When it
Speaker 1: gets hard, that list comes your anchor. The second thing
Speaker 1: is this, you have to practice making decisions. Confident leaders
Speaker 1: aren't people who were born decisive. They're people who have
Speaker 1: made a lot of decisions. Learn from the ones that
Speaker 1: didn't work, and stop being afraid of being wrong. One
Speaker 1: of the biggest confidence killers I see in leaders is
Speaker 1: the habit of waiting for perfect information. You tell yourself
Speaker 1: you just need a little more data, a little more time,
Speaker 1: one more conversation, and meanwhile the team is standing around you,
Speaker 1: waiting for direction and losing faith in you by the hour.
Speaker 1: So here's the mindset shift. A good decision made now
Speaker 1: is almost always better than a perfect decision made too late.
Speaker 1: Start practicing that in low stakes moments, so it becomes
Speaker 1: natural when the stakes go up. Make the call on
Speaker 1: the small stuff. Where does the team eat lunch for
Speaker 1: the end of the quarter celebration, Make the call, what's
Speaker 1: the agenda for the new team meeting? Make the call.
Speaker 1: Stop deferring the small decisions, because that habit will show
Speaker 1: up in the big ones. The third piece of building
Speaker 1: confidence before the crisis is relationships. Confident leaders are not
Speaker 1: lone wolves. They have people around them, a mentor, a peer,
Speaker 1: a coach, someone who they can call when things get hard,
Speaker 1: not to be told what to do, but to think
Speaker 1: out loud with someone who's not going to panic with them.
Speaker 1: If you don't have that right now, that's something to
Speaker 1: fix today, not tomorrow. Today, because in a crisis you
Speaker 1: will need a sounding board. And that's not a weakness,
Speaker 1: that's wisdom. The most confident leaders I've ever seen are
Speaker 1: the ones who are completely comfortable saying, hey, I need
Speaker 1: to think through something with you. That's not insecurity. That's
Speaker 1: self awareness. Build those relationships before you need them, because
Speaker 1: nobody wants to make a new friend in the middle
Speaker 1: of a fire, So let's bring this together. Confidence built
Speaker 1: before the crisis comes down to three things. Know your
Speaker 1: value so your decisions, have a foundation. Practice deciding so
Speaker 1: you stop being afraid of being wrong. And build real
Speaker 1: relationships so you're never facing hard moments completely alone. None
Speaker 1: of this is complicated, but it does require you to
Speaker 1: be intentional about it, which is kind of the whole
Speaker 1: point of what we talk about on this show the
Speaker 1: leaders who show up best in a crisis didn't get lucky.
Speaker 1: They did the quiet work ahead of time, and that
Speaker 1: work is available to all of us. So here's what
Speaker 1: I want to leave you with today. Confidence isn't something
Speaker 1: you find in a crisis. It's something you carry into one.
Speaker 1: Start building it now in the ordinary moments, in the
Speaker 1: small decisions, in the honest conversations you have with yourself
Speaker 1: and with the people that you trust, because one day
Speaker 1: and I can't tell you when something is going to
Speaker 1: happen that tests you, and when it does, you'll be
Speaker 1: glad you started today. This has been the seven minute
Speaker 1: Leadership Podcast, and I thank you for listening. For more
Speaker 1: Paul Fell of Alito Podcasts, visit paulfellowalito dot com.