Confidence is a great quality. Confident employees tend to feel positive about their work and motivated to get things done. They trust in their own abilities. They’re productive and successful.

Confidence is something that you can build over time. And there are a lot of things that can boost your confidence. For instance, gaining relevant work experience, earning your coworkers’ respect, and receiving positive feedback are all things that can make you feel confident about your skills and abilities.

But according to author Sammi Caramela, there are also “confidence killers” that can bring you down and cause you to question your strengths. Here is a list of those confidence killers, and some tips on how to overcome them:

  • Being a perfectionist – It’s great that you take pride in your work and want to do a good job. But in many cases (especially when working on team projects in which you don’t have full control over the end product), it’s simply not possible to be perfect. So being a perfectionist can be incredibly stressful and make you feel terrible if you miss the mark. To avoid this problem, try to remind yourself that you don’t need to be perfect – you simply need to do your best. And your best work is something to be proud of.
  • Having a micromanaging manager – Micromanaging managers can make you feel like you’re not doing your job properly. They’re so involved in every detail of your work that they can make you start to question your skills. To avoid this confidence killer, try to remind yourself that micromanaging managers behave this way with all of their employees. You’re not being singled out, and the quality of your work is not being called into question.
  • Feeling disengaged – If you feel disengaged at work, it might be because you’re being asked to do work that doesn’t take advantage of your strengths or perhaps you never received the proper training. This can cause your confidence to drop. To stop this from happening, try talking to your manager about taking on projects that would play to your strengths. And if possible, try to get additional training, which would really help to boost your skills and confidence.
  • Being frightened of making a mistake – If you’re afraid of making a mistake, you’re probably going to avoid taking on challenging projects. So you won’t feel confident in your abilities because you’ll never have the chance to try something different and learn something new. To combat this, start small. Take on a new task that’s a little bit outside of your comfort zone. Once you realize that you can accomplish it, you’ll be ready to take on new challenges and you’ll have much more confidence in your abilities. And remember – even if a project doesn’t turn out exactly as you planned, it’s still a success if you learned from it.
  • Having critical coworkers – Try not to let critical coworkers bring you down. Do your best to be civil so you can continue to work together. Always be fair, polite, respectful, and professional. It’s OK if you don’t have (or want) a close relationship with certain coworkers. But don’t waste your energy being angry, and don’t let negative coworkers chip away at your confidence. Try not to take their comments personally.

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Caramela, S. (2018, June 26). 5 workplace confidence killers and how to beat them. Business News Daily. Retrieved from: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7828-women-career-confidence.html