If you build employee confidence, you build your company.
Here are 10 Habits you can implement to build employee confidence:
1. Convey Your Confidence in Them
As a business owner, you greatly impact how your employees view their own performance.
Give them opportunities and responsibility. Acknowledge specific strengths that qualify them for the task you are delegating. Communicate that you believe they can and will do the job well.
When you identify an employee’s exceptional skills, allow them to teach others. This is a huge vote of confidence.
2. Communicate Realistic Expectations
Scale up their responsibilities gradually, building off previous skills and successes. Once they have run 5 miles, they can run 10, but asking for 10 upfront can be overwhelming.
3. Praise Their Successes
When we acknowledge good performances, the team benefits in three ways:
- Their confidence grows
- They see an incentive for performing well
- They are able to easily identify what behavior is appreciated by their leadership
- Other team members are also able to identify what actions elicit praise
Follow these guidelines:
- Be Specific: Explain exactly what they did well: “I really appreciate how you got the conversation rolling in the brainstorming meeting yesterday. Your comment about using recycled paper opened up the conversation and got others talking.”
- Be Timely: Don’t wait to acknowledge them. Respond quickly to show that you see what your team is doing and you value it.
- Praise them in front of others: Your employees want you to see their efforts, but they also value the opinions of their colleagues.
4. Ask Them What They Need
Go to the source. Ask them what they need from you. Here are a few helpful questions:
“How can I help you feel prepared for the tasks I assign?”
“Are there any areas where you need more resources?”
“Are there any areas where you feel underprepared?”
“What kind of tasks do you feel you excel at?”
5. Identify and Leverage Their Strengths
When each member spends the majority of their time on their strengths, productivity rises, wins are created at a higher rate, and confidence grows.
6. Provide Decentralized Praise
Employees glean value from knowing they are respected and viewed positively throughout the company.
Try implementing Decentralized Praise.
When a team member has done something well at Superpowers, we share it with the general leadership team. Different leaders who are not their direct supervisors then volunteer to reach out and mention hearing about their success.
7. Encourage Employees to Share Their Wins
An easy way is to implement communication channels for sharing wins if you use an application like Slack or Teams. Also, during department meetings, you can allot time for each member to share professional and personal wins.
8. Provide a Support System They Can See
Provide Tools:
- Develop a resource library and frequently announce it to your team.
- Provide tools and the training that will help them do great work.
- Ask your team what tools will help them. They will often know better than you. Let them state their case.
Provide a Team:
Use in-person meetings and company-wide/department-specific messaging channels to allow for idea-sharing and support between the team members.
As much as possible, set up mentor and mentee relationships.
It’s important to note: they need to be aware of the resources available to them. Make sure the resources are visible.
9. Create Guidelines in Which They Can Make Decisions
Write playbooks outlining processes and expectations for different tasks that your team needs to complete.
You cannot and should not be actively directing each employee’s workflow. But your playbooks and protocols can.
10. Thank Them
A thank you puts the giver in a humble position, allowing an employer to connect with their employee on an equal, human-to-human level.
“Thank you” may be the two most powerful words you can utter today.
These are our 10 tips for building employee confidence. We’d love to hear your ideas! Feel free to comment below.
Interested in building your team or learning more about Superpowers and our Executive Assistants? Book a discovery call today!
