LinkedIn asked me to answer “What do you do if your confidence in the workplace is lacking?”

I, of course, provided a detailed answer rather than something abrupt, glib (my opinion), and which left the reader with no explanations or solution paths.

Hence I’m posting this here. Hope it helps.

What do you do if your confidence in the workplace is lacking?

What do you do if your confidence in the workplace is lacking? Lacking confidence in something you want or are led to do can make you feel like a victim and that’s not a happy place to be.

First thing I’d suggest is getting away from the workplace; take a sick day, mental health day, PTO, vacation day, do some thing and/or go some place where work isn’t in your face. This can be in your living room, kitchen, bedroom, den, balcony, at the beach, in a field, your backyard, in your garden, your porch, the woods, he mountains, at the mall, wherever.

Second thing: Calm yourself. Lacking confidence in anything you wish to excel at can be a soul killer and the soul killing often manifests as anxiety, misplaced anger, irritation, making negatives where none exist, and so on.

Third thing: Decide if it’s a genuine lack of ability on your part or a lack of recognition on management’s and peers’ parts.

Third thing sub A: Do you lack confidence because you’re genuinely unsure of what you’re doing, how to do your work, or what’s required of you? Ask yourself if you have the proper training for your job or need some training. Definitely let management know, ask peers to help you do something, sign up for a course at a local tech school or college. Basically seek help and guidance. Should a genuine request for help and guidance go unanswered, mocked, derided, or ignored, GET A NEW JOB ASAP! You’re in an unhealthy work environment and one way or another your work will affect all other aspects of your life negatively. Save yourself and those people and things you care about by taking care of yourself and finding a new job or new place to work.

Third thing sub B: Do you lack confidence because you’re not being recognized by management? Are you getting regular reviews? Regular reviews are required for good management-employee relations. Mention needing a review to your supervisor. They ignore the request? Ask to be transferred or find another job.

Third thing sub C: Do you lack confidence because your peers are unkind or harassing you? That’s an HR problem. Speak to your HR team and/or your Union rep. Again, no satisfaction? Time to move on.

I’ve written more on soul killing at Beware of Soul Killers and more about emotionally, physical, spiritual, and mental health in That Th!nk You Do

Note this doesn’t touch on lacking confidence in personal relationships. Let me know it there’s interest and I’ll write something about that, as well.

Announcing RoundTable 360°

What makes creative people creative? What goes on in their minds that causes the ideas they put on the screen, in their books, their poems, their music, on a stage, in their songs, in a dance, on a canvas, …? Does the same blood pump through their veins as pumps through ours? What happened in their lives that causes them to express themselves the way they do? What drives their souls to shape worlds with their words, their brushes, their notes, their voices, their bodies, their steps?

Long ago and far away there were two TV shows which captivated me. One was Steve Allen’s Meeting of Minds. The other was Wim Kayzer’s A Glorious Accident. Sitting in the presence of people previously only known to me as names thrilled me. Listening to their discussion — not arguments, discussions! — of matters great and small enthralled me, and I’ve hungered for such a forum ever since.

 
Now that forum has a name and a place – RoundTable 360°. Each month a rotating panel of #actors, #writers, #dancers, #singers, #photographers, #mixed-media artists, … share, question, explore.
Come join us. Come grow with us and help us grow. Listen, learn, and share. We are all a Great Becoming.

Become with us.

Rob and Joan Carter’s MEET THE AUTHOR interview Snippet 7 – That Th!nk You Do

I mentioned Rob and John Carter and I chatting on their MEET THE AUTHOR show in previous blog posts.

This is post #7 in a series of thirteen snippets taken from the full interview video. You can also listen to the interview via podcast

Today’s snippet deals with my most recent non-fiction title, That Th!nk You Do. You can probably find it under self-help, personal growth, personal transformation, how to make vanilla icecream, and…

Okay, maybe not that last one (I’m saving it for Volume 2)

 
Enjoy!

 

Mistaken Identities

Note: this post originally appeared as a blog arc on my old BizMediaScience blog. I’m resurrecting the complete arc here as it’s referenced in That Think You Do‘s “Unhealthy Comparisons” chapter
Enjoy!


I was reading a news release in Science a while back and have been thinking about it for a while. The complete news item, In The Courts, is about a man of supposed superior intelligence who, for whatever reason, did an unwise thing.

The unwise thing this man, 70 years old and a pioneer in gene-therapy research, did was molest a young girl. He’ll now spend 14 years in prison, most likely in solitary because he’ll be at risk from the other inmates.

The news item shares that scores of letters asking for leniency were sent on this fellow’s behalf to the judge.

Sometimes, and I’m not sure why, we think that people of great intellect aren’t subject to baser thoughts and desires. I remember so wanting to meet Dr. Edwin Teller, the so-called father of the American H-bomb. I wanted to meet him because I was so enraptured by his science, by his intellect, by his ability to reason and find answers where others couldn’t even come up with the questions.
Continue reading “Mistaken Identities”

The Unfulfilled Promise of Online Analytics, Part 3 – Determining the Human Cost

Note: this post originally appeared as a blog arc on my old Analytics Ecology blog. I’m resurrecting the complete arc here as it’s referenced in That Think You Do‘s “Unhealthy Comparisons” chapter
Enjoy!


Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both. – James Madison

There was never suppose to be a part 3 to this arc (Ben Robison was correct in that). Part 1 established the challenge (and I note here that the extent of the response and the voices responding indicates that the defined challenge does exist and is recognized to exist) and Part 2 (I’ll resurrect them both if there’s interest) proposed some solution paths. That was suppose to be the end of it. I had fulfilled my promise to myself1 and nothing more (from my point of view) was required.

But many people contacted me asking for a Part 3. There were probably as many people asking for a Part 3 as I normally get total blog traffic. Obviously people felt or intuited that something was missing, something I was unaware of remained unvoiced.

But I never intended there to be a Part 3. What to cover? What would be its thematic center?

It was during one of these conversations that I remembered some of the First Principles (be prepared. “First Principles” will be echoed quite a bit in this post) in semiotics.2

According to semiotics, you must ask yourself three questions in a specific order to fully understand any situation3:
Continue reading “The Unfulfilled Promise of Online Analytics, Part 3 – Determining the Human Cost”