Fake it till You Make it in Business
Posted on July 13, 2021 by Todd Calongne, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
Tackle low self-confidence to be successful in the professional world by playing a role and acting the way you want to feel. You will soon feel it!
Having low self-confidence or self-esteem is visible. People around you will notice that you are not self-assured. This makes people; i.e. potential employers, colleagues, clients/customers etc. wonder if you can actually perform the tasks you say you can perform. Your lack of security can make others uncomfortable.
One common character trait among the world’s most successful people is confidence. They are confident not only in their speech but in their actions. We are drawn to these types of people; they earn our automatic trust just by being confident.
There are always going to be situations in life where you will feel less secure than others, but as long as you are not lying about your skills, only pretending to be more confident, it’ll be easier to complete the task. This is referred to in cliché form as “Fake it ‘til you make it.” Doing this without misrepresenting your skills or experience can help greatly by acting as someone with no self-doubt in their abilities. The benefits of “faking it ‘til you make it.” Can benefit you greatly and be very important in your future success:
— By exuding confidence you will find other people who are confident and successful helping to open up more doors of opportunity. You will find that building relationships with these types of people will make the goals you create for yourself bigger and you will end up achieving more.
— Clients and coworkers will trust you with responsibilities that they really believe you can handle. If you act confident in what you are doing, the more important those responsibilities will be. Nobody wants to entrust someone they can tell isn’t sure about handling a job or responsibility.
— Having increased confidence allows for more opportunities to come your way and you will find yourself taking more risks to keep or make yourself more prosperous and successful.
Once you begin to “fake it ’til you make it,” eventually the faking part will disappear becuase you have created a new habit. You will have trained your brain to think positively and have changed your attitude from “can’t” to “can.” You’ll believe in yourself, genuinely. So there will be no more Faking, you’ll have finally made it!
I joke that the proper answer to the hated question of, “What’s your greatest weakness?” should be, “I suffer from high self-esteem.” However, one should take heed that too much confidence can be just as bad as or worse than not enough. Becoming arrogant and making clients and colleagues feel that you are unapproachable is not conducive to success either. Also, do not set your goals so ridiculously high that they are outlandish. There is nothing wrong with believing you can do anything you set your mind to, but you want to be prepared for a fallout if it doesn’t happen the first few tries or at all. Make sure that you give yourself plenty of reality checks.
When you go into the job interview or begin a new job or career, or even when you show up at the office tomorrow, act more confident than you feel. Confidence is a great trait that will get you further and hey, it’s pretty sexy too!
