Leadership is about confidence, not cockiness. Do you have the confidence to lead. And if not, what can you do about it? — BTB #23 One on One
Behind the Billboard S1EP23
(0:00:00) Intro: Welcome to the Behind The Billboard podcast. Here’s your host, Kris Lindahl.
(0:00:06) KL: There is one thing that all great leaders have, and that’s confidence. Not to be confused with cockiness or being arrogant but having confidence makes a massive difference in a leader. The reason that is is because if you don’t believe in what is happening, how are the people that follow you or how are the people in your organization that you lead, how are they going to get excited? How are they going to believe that you’re going to win that battle if you don’t believe it and you’re not confident? I think about the passion behind confidence. Have you ever met someone that’s just so passionate about what they do? They absolutely love it. Well, that’s me. I get super passionate about our organization and super passionate about what we’re doing and where we’re headed. We are going to win. I have that confidence. Because I have that confidence, people around me have that confidence. They go home to their families and their families have that confidence. When you’re a leader, you’re impacting so many that if you’re not confident and you’re insecure and you’re not sure that you’re going to win and you’re not sure that you’re going to win that battle, well then why would the people in your organization be sure of that?
I see so many leaders or potential leaders that have conversations within their company and in their meetings that the way that they act on social media and the way that they post and the videos that they put out there and theres not much confidence behind it. I watch those things and I go, “If I was working there or if I was a part of that organization, would I really be that confident in my leader?” I share these thing with you today because obviously we all have ups and downs in life and in business, personally and professionally, where sometimes it’s hard to be confident. But remember, there are other people that are counting on us to show up in confidence. Even if we don’t know the right answer, we just have to believe in it. We have to believe in the decisions that we make. Because when
we believe it and we put passion behind it, others get excited. And actually, it creates more excitement for us as well. I know from the years of growing our brand, I know I’m after ‘respect’ not ‘like-ability.’
Now, I’m not out to disrespect anyone. I’m super kind to everyone that I come in contact with. But I share that I’m after respect and not like-ability because for me I want to do the right thing for the people in my organization whether or not the people on the outside like my decision or not is not going to impact where we’re headed. Now, I want them to respect us. I don’t them to think that, “Hey that organization is a joke” or “That leader is a joke.” I think that’s what we’re after. We’ve earned that. We’ve earned that respect and not everyone is going to like our decisions, like our position, like our plans, like where we’re headed, but I’m after respect. A quote that comes to mind is Eleanor Roosevelt’s. She said, “Do what you feel in your heart to be right for you’ll be criticized anyway.” Isn’t that so true in leadership?! Where we do something but no matter what we do, people are going tom are a decision or they’re going to come to a conclusion on why we did something. They’re going to interpret why that person was right or why that was wrong. So you just have to have passion and confidence behind what you’re doing.
I want to share a few things that I’ve done along the way that have been great and not so great. So the first thing I want to start with is that you don’t want to be so confident that you ignore risk. You want to have people around you that are letting you know I you’re being a little too crazy in believing nan idea or thinking that you’re going to win this battle that you might not win. Or maybe you’re set up to win! I share that because when you’re passionate about what you do and you’re confident, you can get your blinders on. You need to have people around you that say no. You need to have people round you that fill those voids and fill those areas where you’re maybe not the strongest because that’s where, as leaders, we can get so confident and so passionate about what we’re doing that we don’t see our blindspots and we don’t see the risk. So make sure that you don’t get to point where you’re so confident that you start to ignore the risk factors. I think about some of the positives and think about being a part of an organization where I get super excited when I have a confident leader and I have someone in charge that I’m like, “I believe in that person!”
Think about the President of the United States or think about a past President of the United States when we had big wars, when we had big disagreements and the country was in turmoil and there are times where the country is in turmoil and there needs to be big leaders that show up and step up. When you go to war, whether you’re in the service or whether you’re just a citizen of the United States, when you go to war, you want to be confident that you’re going to win the war. You want your leader to show you that they believe that we’re going to win. Because you don’t want to go to war and your leader says, “Well we’re not going to win. This isn’t going to be good. We’re going to lose.” You don’t want to go. You don’t want show up. You’re not excited. I always think about that. I always think about if you’re going to war or battle and, obviously as I share this I don’t mean literally going to war, but wars are different for different people, different businesses, different organizations. But if you’re going and you have your people, do you have their back? Do you have their back and say, “You know what? We’re going to win! We might not get everything right. There might be some learning opportunities. We might have some stepping stones. We might fail along the way, but we’re going to win!”
See, when you are in a mindset of winning and confidence behind it, people want to get behind that. They want to be a part of that. When you’re like, “You know what? We’re not going to lose. We’re going to win!”
Does a football team start a season off thinking they’re not going to win the Super Bowl? Absolutely not! You look at the posters in the locker room and it says how many days until the Super Bowl and we’re going and every day the 11 people that are on the field are one step closer to winning that Lombardi trophy. That’s the goal that we should all have— to have that confidence! At training camp when, whatever training camp means for you, it’s just one step closer to winning that Super Bowl. When you have that confident, everyone in that organization has that confidence when they show up for their clients, when they show up for their families, when they show up for they community. Now they have that confidence like, “We are doing something! We’re changing the game! We’re changing the industry! We are going to win! We might not get it all right, but we will win!”
When you talk that way, people start to get really excited. I get excited being around people that are confident. Now, when I say ‘confidence’ like I said at the beginning, I don’t want you think that means cocky or arrogant because I can’t be around people like that. I want to be around confident people. I want to be around confident leaders. I want people to believe in me. I want to believe in others. I really want to put some passion and confidence behind that. Because people want to know that you ave their back if they’re working for you or they’re part of your department or you’re leading them, they want to know, “You know what? This person’s got me. I believe in this person!”
Because you know that theres been times in your life when you worked for an organization when you didn’t believe in the leader. Well guess what? You left. You left. What are people going to do in your department or your organization if they don’t believe in you and they don’t believe in your decisions and they don’t believe that you’re confident? They aren’t going to be confidence and they are going to seek out a different leader that’s confident.
I challenge you to get that confidence. I’m not saying that I have all the answers. I make a lot of mistakes. There are a lot of learning opportunities along the way. We don’t always have it figured out. But what I know is I put confidence behind our people, our organization, our technology. Every decision we make, I’m 100% confident. That doesn’t mean we’re going to get it right every time. But we’re going to learn from it. When we’re in position like we are within our company where we’re essentially disrupting our selves, we’re not going to get everything right. We’re going to learn from it and we’re going to put confidence and passion behind it and we’re going to make it right if it wasn’t right.
People want to be around confident people. It’s not fun to work for a leader or be part of an organization where you have someone who’s insecure as leader. It’s
your time to show up for your people. It’s time to get confident. If you’re not confident, it’s time todo some research. Listen to some podcasts. Read. Do some learning. Expand your brain. People have done this before. There are ups and downs in business, but every single day that you show up for your people, they are counting on you. They’re counting on you to show up. Show up with confidence and show up with passion and you will have a successful group of people ready to win that battle right along side you.
(0:09:16) Outro: If you loved this episode, give us a great review, subscribe and share us socially so we can spread the word and build a community of “difference-makers” and if there’s a leader who inspires you, send your suggestions for future guests to Kris’ team at BehindTheBillboard.com so we can get better.