Episode 115: Confident Mindset vs. Ego: How to Stand Out Without Arrogance

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  Foundation of confidence will serve us in whatever we do in life, but especially in our careers. And it is a constant work in progress. The way we embrace a competent mindset is by understanding our values, our core competencies, the language we're using internally and externally, and how we nurture our relationship with ourselves.

You're listening to Prospecting on Purpose, where we discuss all things prospecting, sales, business, and mindset. I'm your host, Sara Murray, a sales champion who's here to show you that you can be a shark in business and still lead with intentionality and authenticity. Tune in each week as we dive into methods to connect with clients, communicate with confidence, and close the deal.

 Hello and welcome to Prospecting On Purpose. We have a very meaty topic for today's episode. We're going to be discussing confidence. If you've listened to the seven-part miniseries, Seven Crucial Skills for Effective Selling, a through line of effective selling is confidence. So I wanted to spend a little bit more time on this topic.

Every area of our life and career stems from confidence. Confidence in the face of rejection, or in our communication styles, or how to run a meeting, or being confident when it comes time to negotiations. So we'll get into all of those in upcoming episodes of this show, but for today I wanted to talk about confidence from a mindset perspective.

We hear the word mindset a lot. So as a quick definition, mindset is basically a mental set of attitudes or beliefs that we hold. Attitudes and beliefs impact what we do, what we think, feel, and experience. It's essentially how we move through the world. I listen to a podcast called Mind Your Business, and the host recently gave an example comparing mindset to a fish swimming in water.

Mindset is essentially the water in which we swim in and we breathe. So for these little fish in our water mindset, and our mindset is unconfident, doubtful, or insecure, we can imagine how this impacts the rest of the world we're swimming in and how we're showing up in that world. A foundation of confidence will serve us in whatever we do in life, but especially in our careers.

And it is a constant work in progress. It's also really easy to confuse the words- confidence, arrogance, and ego. So if we're swimming through our world and we're not taking certain confident actions because we're afraid it's going to come across arrogant or egotistical, imagine how that reads to the person we're trying to influence. It will come off as you're operating out of fear, or on the flip side, if we're trying to appear confident, what we may not realize is we may unintentionally be projecting arrogance, or our ego gets in our own way, and we're turning off the client, or our colleagues, in an attempt to portray confidence. So to give us a little orientation, I'm going to give a definition of each of these.

Confidence means feeling secure of yourself and your abilities, but not in an arrogant way, but in a realistic, secure way. It's this quiet inner knowledge that you are capable. Arrogance is someone who thinks they are better or more important than other people, and that can come with bragging about accomplishments or achievements, or ignoring those around them. Consciously or unconsciously, they can make others feel less important.

 And then ego. You know, there is nothing wrong with having an ego. It is important to value yourself, but the ego needs to be regulated and not used as an excuse to act superior or to justify arrogant or egotistical behavior under the guise of being confident.

Some small examples of ego and arrogance here. The need to always be right, always win, receive constant recognition. The conversations can be very one-sided. They may have difficulty seeing other perspectives and there can be a certain lack of empathy. It is a doozy, which is why it's a constant work in progress and that's why we're talking about it today.

The way we embrace a confident mindset is by understanding our values, our core competencies, the language we're using internally and externally, and how we nurture our relationship with ourselves. So we're going to get into each of these. 

So first up, values. If we understand our values, then we naturally have confidence that the actions we're taking are in alignment with our core values. Additionally, if we know those values, then we're more secure in our decisions and we don't spend energy second guessing ourselves. There is a lot of wasted energy in second-guessing ourselves. And if we're spending time stressing about decisions, did we make the right one, or reflecting on past behavior, then we're not spending energy in confidence building activities. So let's learn our values so we can stop wasting energy.

Confidence naturally becomes the result of acting in alignment with our values. Here's a quick small example. If one of our values is being detail oriented, let's say we're sending out a proposal to a client and we find a mistake right before we hit send. It could be a small mistake, like something is formatted wrong or there's a small typo in the terms that no one would notice. Some people might hit send and not worry about it, but our detail-oriented values have us pause and fix the proposal before we hit send. And then on a larger scale, let's say our boss calls us to ask about this proposal. Why did we send it? Is the math right? Did it go out to the customer accurately? We can confidently confirm because even if we don't remember the minute changes we made or the specifics of that proposal, we're operating in alignment with our values and that baseline value of detail-oriented always shines through in our work.

Our values determine a component of our personal brand and if we're secure in them, that's the first pillar of confidence. The next pillar of confidence is an understanding of our core competencies. Most people have heard of core competencies from an organizational level, right? How does our company differentiate ourselves from the competition?

But in this case, I implore you to look at core competencies as what are your personal core competencies that set you as an individual apart? What are your strengths? And there may be some overlap with your values here. For example, detail oriented can be a value and a core competency. But some other examples of core competencies would be Team player, analytical, Problem Solver, Good Negotiator, Organized, Decisive, Flexible, Accountable, Creative, Motivator, Good listener, Strong communicator, Risk taker, Well read, Quick learner, Patient, Tech savvy. You can see how some of those can be values, but a lot of them are pretty much core competencies. What makes you different from your colleagues or your competition? So these core competencies are essentially going to be married with our values, and those things together are going to help make up this confident DNA that we're building.

I suggest you take some time, think through what are your strengths, write them on a post-it note right next to your values, and it's behind my desk. I have my values. professional, approachable, fun, creative, intentional, and my core competencies- Risk taker, Good communicator, motivator, Ideas Galore, I could talk to anyone. Those two things together give me those pillars of confidence.

And while we're talking about strengths, I want to take a couple of minutes to just talk about quote unquote weaknesses. If we're aware that we're a really strong presenter as one of our core competencies. But we struggle with follow up. It's helpful to be aware of it so that we can work on that area. Can we outsource it? Can we prioritize it to be the first task of our day? Can we talk to our manager for support? Can we gamify our weaknesses? For example, I like to give myself little treats. So if I have to follow up and I'm dragging my feet on it, Okay, Sara, knock out an hour of follow up and then you can go on a bike ride. Then you can take a bath and read a magazine. How can you find workarounds to bring in those areas where you struggle, because that's going to instill another layer of confidence. And I think what a lot of people do is instead of working through those areas, they use it as an excuse and it just becomes part of their fixed mindset.

For example, Oh, I suck at follow up. Oh, I suck at remembering names. It just becomes part of your personality when it really doesn't have to be. Really, your personality is made up of your values and your core competencies and how you interact with the world around you, including how you talk to yourself and how you talk to others, which leads me to the third pillar of confidence, internal and external dialogue.

Watching our inner thoughts is so important and I totally get it. Our confidence, arrogance, ego, they're all doing a dance up in our brains. So when I say watching your inner dialogue, another way to word this could be challenge negative self talk. We need to notice when we're being self-critical and replace those thoughts with neutral thoughts or positive thoughts.

So if we're thinking in our brains, I'm worried I made a mistake. I can't do this. I'm so stupid. I'm a poor presenter. You know, we all have that negative self talk. There are two tools we can use. First, I'm sure we've all heard this one. Ask yourself, how would you speak to yourself if you were talking to your best friend or a child? What words would you use? Would you say you're stupid? You made a mistake? You can't do this? Of course not. We all know that what we're saying to ourselves is much harsher than what we would say to our friends and our children. So that's just kind of a golden rule of challenging negative self-talk, right?

But the second tool we can use is a script that we're discussing with our values episode and today's episode. The script is, I value blank. And one of my core competencies is blank. So if we're using an example from this episode, you're stressing out about something, an upcoming meeting, an upcoming presentation, an incoming call from your boss, or if you forgot something, that's all wasted energy. If you can replace it with, I value attention to detail. And one of my core competencies is organization. Then the way you show up in that meeting or conversation is going to naturally be more confident because you know your values, you know your core competencies. There are so many examples when it comes to inter dialogue, and it's something I've been working on for years, and I actively work on every day.

And I have noticed a huge difference in how I show up in my life, and how I stand up for myself, and the behavior that I accept, and the way I communicate, and the way I negotiate, and the way I show up externally. Watching our inner dialogue takes a lot of self-awareness to pay attention to it and then to start to change it. It is a constant work in progress, so let's all give ourselves and each other grace when we're working through this stuff. 

But then that leads to external confidence and external dialogue. Again, constant practice, constant work in progress. One thing I used to do, and I've had to actively work on not doing it, and I know it's going to sound familiar to everyone listening, I'm in a meeting, I make a statement, it's a logical statement, it's relevant to the conversation, and then I follow it up with, does that make sense? Or, before I ask the question, I might preface the question with, This may be a silly question, but, this may be a stupid question, but, I'm sure this is sounding familiar. I think we use these little buffers, you know, one, just social conditioning, but two, we're using these little buffers as a way to not appear arrogant. And at the end of the day, if we make a statement and we're secure in that statement, it's going to come across confident, not arrogant. It may be wrong, it may be an incorrect statement, but it's still confident, and that doesn't lead to arrogance or egotistical. And that leaves us with our final and most important pillar of confidence.

We really have to have a nice relationship with ourselves. And of course, this includes the inner dialogue and the self talk that's happening in our brains, but if we're constantly talking to ourselves and telling ourselves we're losers, or we're stupid, or we're incompetent, or we can't do this, or we can't do this, then we're hurting our relationship with ourself. And that's clearly going to reflect in the outward confidence we reflect to others. 

Practice self care. Take care of your physical, mental, and emotional health by getting enough sleep, eating a balanced diet, exercise, walk, engage in activities that bring you joy and relaxation. Making time for yourself is not selfish. It's going to give you the right confidence you need to show up in the world for others. And at the end of the day, the relationships that we have with ourselves is the most crucial. If we have this great relationship with ourselves, then the way that we show up and start building authentic relationships with others, which serves us in life, of course, but is one of our strongest assets in business, becomes so much more seamless and fun.

If you got value out of today's episode and you're thinking about confidence and our four pillars a little bit differently, please leave a review or share it with a friend or colleague. And if you're listening to this and somebody sent it to you, it does not mean that they think you are not confident.

That's your ego talking. It just is a different perspective on how to look at how we show up in the world and interact with others around us. And we all know sharing is caring, so they just care about you.

I'd love to start a more formal relationship with the listeners of this show. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you tuning in and I'll see you next week. 

Thank you so much for listening to the Prospecting on Purpose podcast.

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