How to grow your Confidence when starting a Project

Welcome to the Project Mindset Podcast, where we combine the science of project management and transformational leadership. I am your host, Thea Brockmeyer, project expert, international leadership mindset coach for top executives, and trusted advisor to business owners for over 20 years. My goal is helping you stepping up from being an expert to becoming the leader that makes big projects happen, seeing your infinite potential, achieving the results in business and life that your heart desires. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today. Let's begin now. Hello, my wonderful friends, Thea here, and today we are going to talk about confidence, self-confidence by starting a project. Now, what is self-confidence? It's a feeling of trust in our own abilities, qualities, and in our judgments. And low self-confidence will hold us back from achieving our goals, right, and our potential. So it could cause us to miss out really many opportunities. And if you have ever struggled to competently pick the best strategies to grow your business, or you have been just chasing too many clients at the same time because you had difficulty setting priorities, Or have you ever felt insecure in your abilities to close a deal or to prepare a meal or to go for big construction projects or to build a company, to start a business? If you're a dreamer who has so many ideas and wishes but never starts a project because you just don't see all the steps to the finish line, because you're afraid to get hurt then this is right for you. So today we're going to talk in this episode about what is confidence, how we judge, yeah, how we judge, what is the difference between appearing confidently and feeling confident, why it's so hard to grow our confidence, how do we become more confident by starting and delivering projects, and how much confidence should we have about achieving our goals when we start a project. I will share an exercise with you so you can use that and do it with your team members and find out how much do they believe in your project. Good! Let's dive in and start. So what is confidence? It's our feeling about our own worth, about our own abilities, and trusting our own judgments, right? And it's how we think about ourselves. There is— someone with high self-confidence might think that they're good at things and that they have a lot of worth. So what makes us think somebody else is confident? There are different things we can observe. For example, how people walk? What is their posture? Are their shoulders back? Is their head high? Are they big? Have you ever noticed a person, a large person, a man coming into a room, whether his shoulders are hanging down or his head is up high, whether he's smiling, how he speaks, his voice? Does he speak with a slow voice, with a low voice, or he has a loud voice? What about the words? Are these words of empowerment? Are these words saying something nice, beautiful? Or are these words like whining, words of being a victim, acclaiming, whining about just, you know, talking about bad things? Is this a person who looks into your eyes, smiling at you and listening confidently? Or is it somebody who is speaking so fast because he's scary that they might shoot him on the stage? Or if somebody is doing a presentation, right, with PowerPoint, is he just looking to his PowerPoint slides or is he connecting with the people in the room? Or is it at the negotiation somebody who is just reading his notes from the book or is it somebody who is really building up a connection with you and delivering some energy. Yeah, so this is something— or is it somebody who's silent and not speaking up at all? Imagine you are at the dinner table and some people are just not speaking up. You have the same in team meetings. Some person speak always up and some never. And some people will say what they think And others will say, "Ah, I rather don't speak up for myself," right? They judge, but they don't speak up for themselves. And not that you have to do that all the time. So this is something we feel somebody is confident. And if somebody is bragging about himself on meetings, for example, We had that nice discussion that men speak more confidently and longer in meetings than women. There was a kind of research that, yes, we women like to talk a lot, but that in meetings where it's really important, men speak more up for themselves. So they feel more confident. Probably we have to do and to learn something that as well. But negotiating big deals, Recently, a coachee of mine, she said, "No, I don't go to that political, to that authorities. No, I can't do that. Who am I to present that big deal?" We had that in companies where engineers or sales managers came up and said, "Yeah, but I have to negotiate with the big CEO because On his business card there is written President and I'm just the sales manager. So does the business card give us— we think that person must be more confident? It's just a person, right? But it's a lot of assumptions we have about someone's confidence. It was a lot of fun when people are driving big cars, you think they're more confident. When they are wearing nice clothes, you think they are more confident. When they are spending a lot of money in big restaurants, in nice restaurants, you think they are more confident. That's not at all, but we make assumptions about people. And here are 4 types of people who are behaving differently. It's about the personality types we use in our trainings to help you, and I will go short into that. So in the leadership trainings, we talk about 4 personalities, and it's important that we know our own personality, that we understand how people perceive us. Whether we feel or not, that's a different story. So, for example, we have the 4 types. We have the— imagine a square with 4 windows, right? So a square. Inside we have 4 small squares. The left upper square is the red square in my model, and that's red and that's the dominant. Next on the left side is the yellow square, which is the inspiring. And the dominant and the inspiring are extroverts, right? Whoever does the Myers-Briggs— so this is the DISC model and the D-I-S-C S-C model, and we have the dominant and the inspiring, they are the extroverts. Below in the two squares, we have below the red one, we have a blue square, and below the yellow one, we have the green square. The blue square is the conscientious, and the green one is the steady. Now, the dominant, the red one, and the yellow one, the extroverts, they're talking fast, and you can observe, and usually they're perceived as confident, more confident because they speak up. They speak up and then maybe they think later. They're talkative. And the green and the blue one, the Conscientious and the Steady, they are by their nature— now we are all blends, right?— but they're by their nature more quiet. First they think and then they talk. And so just by being that different type of personalities, we might make wrong assumptions about their level of confidence. And I just wanted to mention that, that it's very important that we know that, right? Um, yeah, so let's have a look about what makes us feel confident. Accomplishments make us feel more confident. Accomplishments— that we do something, that we are capable, that if we want to achieve something, we can do it. That we trust ourselves, that we have self-integrity. So we say we go running and we do it, and we can make ourselves doing it. And yes, just by setting a goal that now we do that, or we stop drinking red wine, or we going jogging every morning, or we are doing our whatever 20-minute exercise, or we're doing our meditation because we heard it's or we are going to make our presentation. Wow! Doing a podcast is scary as well for me because it's something totally different compared to what I did before. So I'm not really feeling very confident at the moment, but I promised myself I will overcome that fear and get in practice, practice, practice. And then what else makes us feel confident is all the experiences we had in life. So imagine you have been traveling around the world. You have been living in different countries. You speak different languages. You had already the experience in diving into local communities with different cultures, different food, different habits, different languages. Or you are always, when you're traveling abroad, staying in, let's say, your local compounds. So I'm German, and we are with my family. We lived in different countries. I lived in Africa. I lived in US. I lived in UK. I lived in Hungary, in Russia, Germany, and more. And so for this, I just have to say that it takes a lot of energy for us. And it takes a lot of— for me, traveling to a new country, it's like, OK, I have that experience. For me, that's not a big deal, learning a new language. For example, I have been working in Mexico. Learning Spanish was not that big deal for me and working there. But for other people who had never even left their own, let's say, village, for them it's a big deal to go to the big city which is 50 kilometers away from them, right? So imagine you have been in the US living on the East Coast and now you come first time to the West Coast. It's just a different game. So it's about our experiences. Or if you have been never eating with a knife and a fork or in a fine dining restaurant, then the first time you will feel awkward. Or when you never went with high heels, you feel awkward when you first time go on high heels, right? And I remember in Moscow, I think the heels became higher every year. Yeah, if I look at my shoes, it was really funny. So today I feel fine and going with high heels. So anyhow, I want to say experiences we had in life. Experiences. I'm a mother of kids. If you never had kids, yeah, then if you never raised up kids, then it's maybe an experience you feel insecure when you have to look after them. But any topic or being a CEO, being an owner, being a leader to a, yeah, whatever, international business team, or working in the digital world on an international business team, leading people of different nationalities, whether you hire virtual assistants or you are working with people in your office who have different age, different nationalities. That is all experiences. Either you have them or you haven't had them. And it makes a big difference if you had that experience and it maybe was negative or you were not being conscientious. I remember delegating or giving tasks. I had lovely coaches who told me, "If you want to give the task to a man, you have to be very concise." And even to other business people, you have to make 3, 4 words in a sentence. By delegating and not making long sentences and not expecting them to assume that they will pick up the right idea, right? So, a lot of things. If you're traveling a lot, I was flying a lot and I had a lot of habits. And for me, flying was okay. And other people, they say, "Oh, I'm flying the first time and I want to be in the first row because this is for me the first lifetime experience and I'm scared and I'm asking everybody," right? Where to go. So all these things play a role. And when you never did a big party, when you never did a charity— oh, you feel, yes, I would like to do something good for the people— or you never did that business, you never started it, or you have the idea of doing something for, uh, your department because you have an invention, you are an expert you're an engineer and you feel like you know how to explain that, but you are scared to come up with the presentation because you feel like, "Oh, I'm rather one of the blue and green ones. I don't want to speak up really. I have some ideas, but you know, they are paid to be the managers and I don't want to talk about it. It's their business and whatever will they think about me, I don't want that." If this is you, then yeah, maybe you're just satisfied how you are now today, or maybe you're not good to do that at all, or maybe you— yes, you feel like you have a number of qualities that it takes to be the boss, but maybe you even feel like you can do all the things as well as all the others, or you're not so proud of yourself because Maybe you are in the wrong place and your qualities, you're not conscientious about it. Or maybe you feel useless at a time because you are at the moment just depressed and feel not appreciated, not good enough, because just your boyfriend or girlfriend left you. And that could affect even all your self-confidence for a long time. And if that happened and you are listening to this, I have been through this. And yes, it can, even despite all your accomplishments and all your great accomplishments, can hurt us very much. And feeling that we are a person that is not so equal or not so worth at the moment. And we have really to work on to have more self-respect. How can we do that in such moments? Affirmations can help a lot. Every day remembering that we are worth, that we are enough. And just because one person did not like us or one person in our office did not like us— and it hurts a lot when our loved one does not like us. It's— yeah, so it could really be a big shock. But that positive affirmations, a lot of positive people around us, And then doing a project, maybe something small, which gives us accomplishment, could help us to overcome. So not feeling that or ignoring that feeling would be the wrong thing. I learned from my coaches that we should be aware of those feelings. If we don't feel that worthiness at the moment or if we don't feel enough, We should be aware of that. And once we are aware of that, we can work with affirmations. We can say, "Thank you. We understand, but you know..." And we talk to ourselves. So positive self-talk is here required. And it's a must and it's our responsibility, right? And ignoring it, it will pop up again. So even if we accomplish now with whatever project management the biggest mountain of the world, if we build the the biggest, tallest skyscraper in the world, this will pop up again, and it's not just enough to ignore it. But for the most of us, let's say, assuming we don't have a heartbreaking relationship breakup at the moment, so we feel fine, we just are just scared, feeling insecure, why is it so hard to feel, to become more confident? Because we have to step out of our comfort zone and we are fearing, we have the fear of pain. Maybe if you had a breakup, you have the fear of pain doing it again, right? Having a new project. Maybe a project got closed because there was not enough funding and you say, "Oh, I never do it again. The banks won't finance us or our departments could not finance it or the clients don't have the money because they're in recession or the company closed." or we lost the tender, and we have to go out of that comfort zone again and again. And our habits are our habits, and it's really difficult to change habits, right? So I would— if you stop exercising for some weeks, if you stop running, it will be difficult to get into the habit of running again. Or if you never did running, it will be very difficult to start and get into the habit. I was reading in one of the books a good story how you get into yourself, into the shoes, into the running shoes. The first step is put the running shoes next to your bed. The second is have your clothes ready so at least you dress up. Maybe you, for the first week, just dress up yourself. And the same is second week, then you go 5 minutes walking and then maybe you start running. Sometimes it goes with very, very small tiny bits and bites. Maybe a big project starts that the first day you just take and buy a Bulletproof Journal and write down, or take just a paper or take a Google Doc and you just write down, "Oh, my project, what it's about." On the second day, you do every day some 5 minutes towards your project. The second day you write down, maybe all the goals and everything what comes into your mind. And then the third day you start writing all the open questions, right? So you do some very tiny little, let's say, 5-minute steps towards your goal, not more. But that you do every day, and that will compound, and after a time you will get a kind of momentum into your project planning. The This is why we created, if you need a coach, a program which is a challenge. We do that once a month where we do this project planning momentum, right? And it's hard to break out of our comfort zone and do that alone because we want to have something familiar than rather doing new things that are unfamiliar. But it's safe if you do it with a coach. This is what we can promise you. Before we judge others and see their mistakes, I invite you to start doing something small. Whether you want to paint a picture, whether you want to organize a party, you want to build a business, you want to sell a hospital, or you want to do some other construction, you want to build pipelines, you want to sell technical equipment and implement it, or you want to build an online empire, or you want to build a course, Whatever it is, it's a project of your life, or you build your house for your family. Do it and plan it. And I invite you to make it a success. Yeah, step into the leadership shoes, be conscientious about it. And as we have been doing a lot ourselves, so come and join and get help. But how By doing. So if you do it, if you're on your pathway, you can find other people around, you can find experts around, you can find positive people around who could encourage you going. That could help you as well. And changing habits, it's good to have social triggers. So for me, for example, it— when I'm at home, I'm tired, I want to get up every early in the morning to go to enjoy the mountains. When I'm at home. So I have a social trigger that we are going every morning. I get to wake up and we go with the dog. And that's a cool social trigger, walking in the mountains for an hour before the day starts. Right. But a social trigger can be helpful. And the same when you have a big project. It's good to have a coach or a team which is waiting for you or a client which is waiting for you, which gives you the purpose. Now, how can project management help us to be more confident? Because project management, what I already said, maybe it's a big purpose, it gives, could be a big goal which is stronger than our fear of rejection, of failure, of pain. So this is why the purpose of the project can play a big role, and then we step out of our shoes and we say yes. Yes, I want it. I want to do that. Yes, I know I have to learn a lot about leadership, but I will just do it. Once you have that, then you can— yeah, maybe just hosting a party, right? Because you want to have a housewarming party. So, and then what comes if we invite people who are experts, who have a lot of expertise in this? We learn so so much by mirroring these people. Yes, we will take risks. Yes, we get out of our comfort zone. But then when we accomplish small things— and we should every day look what did we accomplish— we grow. We grow by our experience, by our expertise, by our accomplishments. And sure, we can fail. That can happen. But For example, I started telecommunication companies, I started real estate development in Manhattan, in Moscow, and I delivered leadership projects, programs, project leader programs, and I helped German companies and American companies to bring their products to the East European markets. So Sure, you can do a lot of mistakes, and when you are leading people, you do mistakes. But I learned a lot, and now I do this podcast, and I tell you, yes, it's scary. It's a totally different game, and it's totally different to put myself out to people I don't know in person yet. I hope we get each other to know. Let's see on Instagram, connect with me on Project Leader Academy. And I'm Thea Brockmeyer, and yes, I don't feel confident at all talking to a microphone. Because it's totally different than my experience, right? It's awkward. But I decided to do this and to learn it and to— even if there will be technical glitches and I'm not this writer and to do that. I want to do a weekly episode. I had two options: I do all that for two years and practice to become a professional or I start and learn on my way and do my best every single time, the best way I can. And yes, every day is different and there might be episodes which are better, the other not. I hope you give me good reviews and encourage me to keep going and send me your questions to hello@projectleaderacademy.com, right? Okay, but yeah, let's go further. You start visualizing yourself as you want to be. Then you set really small milestones. So that could be weekly milestones, that could be daily milestones to see the progress, track the progress. And then every day do one thing that scares you. So therefore it's good to learn something. Insecurities go away once you eat that frog in the morning, Brian Tracy says. So don't overestimate the competition and don't underestimate yourself. You are better than you think. So practice daily something new. Maybe scheduling is new to you because you know you should get organized. And maybe you just do 5 minutes of planning because if you don't plan, if you don't get organized— today we have so much information, you just get lost. Yeah, so in project management we call these small milestones sprints, like 2 weeks or 1 week sprint. And my experience is, uh, it's good to have as well daily focus. So to have some small daily baby steps that I do, and I overestimate what I can do in 1 week, but when I am doing daily things, then I become more confident. Yeah, and then learn skills for project management, how to facilitate project meetings, learn skills how to estimate, how to manage the logical sequence, what are the questions you need to ask despite all the tools which are available. You don't need tools to feel confident, you can delegate that, but you should know what to ask, what to know. And our Project management program like Momentum is very for the beginners who want to plan a business or a project and to get accountability, right? And we will teach you all the skills you need. And then if you want to learn communication skills, you can join the business class because it's all about communication, communication skills, how to facilitate meetings, how to negotiate, how to talk to yourself, how to deal with all these different personalities in your team. And as well, how to plan, how to do estimates, how to present your big idea to people so you get it financed. All this we can teach you, and we do that, and we have been doing that for 20 years. So there is some expertise. Not that I'm doing everything right, but I have a lot of things as a trainer to bring to the table. It's like in the soccer, the trainer knows a lot of things, but maybe he's not the best soccer player on the ground, on the floor, yeah, in the stadium, but he knows a lot of things. And this is how you could see me. Besides communication skills, where we can learn to speak confidently, there is something else which we need. It's like this body-mind connection. We need to exercise our body. Daily, a little bit, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever. I'm very proud of my son who is really running a lot. He's always posting on Instagram like, "Oh, I've been running here and running there." And then I think, "Oh, I should do running as well." So this is a kind of leadership. We are encouraging ourselves. Or my daughter, she's going to yoga classes and doing intensive yoga classes and breathwork. And exercising. Yes. And actually, I think I started with my father. So I want to say thank you so much for teaching me. And I have phases I do that more, I do that less. And I feel when I don't exercise my body enough, then my overall energy, which I bring to such a project, is pretty low. Right? So, and then we have to exercise finally our mind. Because I knew all that. I did all that except exercising my mind. I felt like I should be in the balance when I'm in negotiations. I felt like I need to get into balance quickly when maybe all the stakeholders were fighting at the table and I just felt like in the Middle Ages where people are there with their swords fighting about who is more important and who wants to have that piece of cake of a project. Yeah, somehow, I don't know. It happens not only at the table of negotiations. It can happen in a workshop where you think, hey guys, we're just playing. But there is something in our brain, which is still a reptilian part of the brain, which can cause people to behave very strange suddenly. And I think we are all included, me, myself too. And I think we can turn around this energy by affirmations, by having social triggers, by meditation to deliberately install good positive beliefs about ourselves and other people. And especially when things go wrong, that we are the one who radiates the positive energy in such a project. And that means growing. Whether you have children, whether you have family, whether you are in trouble with friends, whether you have conflicts, um, it's not about changing them. It's about our own energy that we bring to the table. And affirmations are really very powerful, especially when things get challenging in projects. So this is how we can grow. And all these Yeah, the talk to our inner critic and all that, which we need to learn to make successful projects happen, is something why I started this Project Mindset podcast. Because to make big successful projects happen, small projects happen, it's all about mindset. So stop criticizing yourself, start approving yourself. Start projects and see what happens. And now last, I wanted to help you sharing the question: How much should we be confident about the— that we can achieve the goals when we start a project? So this ultimate exercise can help you to understand and assess the level of confidence about a project, right? So here it is. We did that question always in our workshops. We have two different ways that we can use this exercise. The one is you take a flip chart and draw a scale of 1 to— yeah, a scale. So from top to down, you just put a scale, and on the top is 100%, and on the low is 0%. And then the middle, you make a line for 50%, and then one for 75%, and one for 25%. 5. And then you can do something like little dots, give it to the people in your team and ask them to write down their name on the dot or on the sticker, on the Post-it notes. And then you ask everybody, maybe hidden so they don't see what the others do, to put their sticker on that scale, how much percentage they believe How confident are they that this project will happen? And that is amazing. And you can then discuss later why to do it anonymously. It's— I think if somebody says, oh, I am 100% confident, you know, then everybody puts it there. Whereas somebody starts in the beginning and says, oh, I absolutely don't believe into that, that could really influence the opinion of others. So they should write not only their name on the sticker, as well already the 25, 50, 60, whatever percent they feel. And so they don't get triggered by others. What does it say? We learned that research shows when you are less than 50%, like 25%, 30%, just probability, that is your level of confidence. That would not really help because it's not very likely that the project goes on, that you get enough energy to jump over the 50% mark or over the 60% mark where you could say, "Yes, if we stretch ourselves a little and we work a little hard and we are creative, we can do it." Right? So this is— I wanted to invite you to do that exercise. Research shows that above 60%, maybe you don't see the pathway to the top, but it's very motivating. If it's 100%, maybe it's boring because you say, "Ah, I know that 100%, I know exactly how it is." And a little variety, a little something new, challenging, research shows that our brain likes it. We want to have a little challenge, right? Not too much out of the comfort zone, but that little bit, yeah, that's cool and that causes motivation. So like 60-70% is 80%, depending on your level. That is something we are looking for, right? So, and if you have different people, discuss it. Maybe even it's good they come up with some risks, you can discuss them. And then there is another exercise my coach did with me when I have so many different projects and I could not really choose which project I go 4, because I knew I should not spread my energy in too many projects at the same time. And we did, we wrote the project names on paper and we put these papers on the floor, but with the name of the project down, so we could not see which paper which project name is on. And it's good to have maybe a friend, a coach, or somebody of your team doing that for you. Could be just a friend or a sister or family member. And then you step onto that paper, you have a notebook, and then you write down how do you feel, how likely do you feel is this to be a good project. So you have situation: you're standing on a piece of paper, beneath that piece of paper is written your project name and you have no clue what kind of project it is, "stör," but so you don't You don't have to know it exactly and then you just ask yourself, "How do I feel about it?" and write down your feelings or tell it and record it. You can do that with an iPhone or you can do it with your computer. Record it or have somebody recording it for you and then— don't do it more than 10, right? And ask yourself, "How likely is it?" And it's really interesting that this technology can help us to unreveal some subconscious problems or subconscious even possibilities. You will be surprised which projects, which are the 3 ones you felt best, and then pick one of them or pick all 3 of them. I would say one of them and go for it, right? Especially when you want to pick up what are the clients. We did that. We do similar exercises with Lego bricks when we are talking about, yeah, when we are talking about relationships in companies or in negotiations, preparing negotiations. We do a lot of that stuff. Which, these are tools which we use to reveal subconsciously situations which we don't see. And to look into situations or to ask questions, dig deeper. So this is what I want to invite you to do as well. So whatever, remember, when there is more than 60% probability that you can do the project and do that goal, go for it. If you reached this far in this episode, that means you must have loved what you have just heard, and I want to say thank you for listening. I also want to prompt you to take a a simple action step that would really make my day and support that what I do here on the show. 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