Support from managers helps build confidence – but it’s possible to over-support, too

The most robust version of confidence is grown from within. Of course, boosts to confidence often spring from external sources: a job title that provides a label for your level of achievement or the praise that you receive from others. These boosts can make a difference to the way that you feel about yourself, triggering pride and swelling your confidence. But there’s a risk of this being a temporary impact. If you don’t internalise these reasons to be confident and use them as a catalyst to update your self-image, then the lift in confidence is fleeting.

Over-reliance on others

As human beings, we are wired to care what people think of us, but when this care is overplayed we place too much emphasis on how others see us. We seek external validation in the form of praise and affirmation from others in order to feel good about ourselves. Outsourcing our sense of self to others, being reliant on their approval and praise, is both natural and risky. We’ve all been children, and during early childhood our sense of OK-ness has come from our parents. It’s not surprising that many of us take this experience into adulthood, taking with us a belief that the source of OK-ness is ‘out there’, rather than ‘in here’. We continue to look to others for reassurance, and we build our confidence based on the way that others evaluate our capabilities. 

Borrowing confidence

If we’re relying on others for validation, then it builds our confidence when we hear positive things, but confidence can crash when they criticise. We have invested power in their opinion; good when the opinion is a positive one, potentially disastrously undermining when it isn’t. Our sense of self is only on loan to us and our confidence is only present for as long as the other person holds a positive evaluation of us. If that person is our boss and they change jobs, our confidence evaporates. 

From borrowed to owned

It’s not as straightforward as ‘borrowing confidence = bad’. Borrowed confidence is OK if it’s a short-term loan, a sort of try-before-you-buy arrangement rather than a long-term lending library. For me, borrowing confidence from a supportive leader was a step on my journey to generating a solid, internal belief in myself. In my twenties, I worked for an incredible and inspiring HR leader. Jackie had vision, guts and compassion. Over the course of a decade, Jackie gave me a range of stretching opportunities. She invited me to do things that I didn’t feel ready for and promoted me three times.