Confident Reinvention: Personal, Professional, and Corporate Transformation: Confidence, #3

PREFACE

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. - Buckminster Fuller

How well do we know ourselves?

How confident are we?

To what lengths will we go to defend our values?

How prepared are we when our circumstances demand a re-evaluation of who we are, what we do, and with whom?

To whom can we look for a little guidance?

If, as Robin S. Sharma says, "Leadership is not about a title or designation. It’s about impact, influence, and inspiration," then at no time more than during periods of reinvention, growth, transformation are we more reliant on our leaders for guidance. For leaders, sharing that confidence and guidance is a huge responsibility.

What can leaders do to guide and provide comfort and confidence during this time of massive disruption and work attitude upheaval?

Consider the journey of Kodak, once the unquestioned leaders of photography, ultimately declaring bankruptcy in 2005.

Kodak revolutionized the photo industry. This one company single-handedly transformed the world of photography from the work of professionals with bulky and sometimes dangerous equipment (consider the flash-point lighting) and gave it to Everyman. They were the leaders and were untouchable for nigh on 100 years.

They made their fortune from their photographic film including the famous, Kodachrome memorialized in song by Paul Simon. They included the cost of processing in the price of the film, so that purchasers bought the camera from Kodak, bought the film from Kodak, had their photos developed by Kodak. The cameras went to market at very low prices so that Kodak could be assured plenty of film sales.

When an individual in their own company developed the world’s first digital camera, Kodak kept it quiet; they just couldn’t and wouldn’t believe that anyone would want to view his or her photographs on a TV screen. As time and progress marched on they chose to see the world through their own lens (pardon the obvious pun) and not as it truly was: people no longer needed or wanted traditional film cameras or photos.

Kodak treated the new reality as a sidebar to their company mandate. They did make digital cameras and even led in that arena for a short while, but now had competition, something they weren’t used to at all. The problem was also exacerbated by a strictly hierarchical company structure where pay grade determined to what information employees were privy; communication was less than effective, and the blinders worn by leadership were firmly in place. When the problem finally became too big to ignore, Kodak tried to reinvent itself, but it was too late to hold onto its reign.

Kodak still exists today but as a shadow of what it once was.

What Kodak’s story illustrates so well is that we all, whether individual or group, leader or supporter, visionary or integrator, must be ever alert to the pulse of the world, how we can best serve the world, and how we can be successful in the world, all the while staying true to our beliefs and values.

Seek not to change the world but choose to change your mind about the world. What you see reflects your thinking, and your thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see.

CHAPTER 1

Confidence

No one can give you confidence because confidence comes from your assessment of yourself. Only you can bestow your trust in your own abilities.

Nothing in this world is permanent.

A tired acorn falls to the forest floor and, given the right temperatures, moisture, growing medium, and time, a tiny seedling will appear. If these conditions continue to be met, the seedling will be transformed into a mighty oak that in its turn will create another acorn that will again sprout and grow. Ultimately, the mighty oak will grow old and die because its life cycle is complete.

However, what happens if something occurred and changed the normal cycle?

What if the seedling becomes damaged?

If the damage is severe, it will wither and die, but before it surrenders that seedling will struggle for survival. In nature, there is never a question of desire or confidence; there is only life through adaptation or death.

The human life cycle is rather more complicated. Or, is it?

Where the oak sapling has only the need to survive, we humans desire to thrive, so where challenges to our growth plans appear, we can apply options. We can:

Stay with our original plan and stick it out regardless of circumstance,

Alter our plan to adapt to new information or situations,

Abandon the original plan completely in favor of a new one.

That sounds simple enough except we humans are both blessed and burdened with emotions that can either cloud or clear our vision. These emotional responses appear most severely when the challenges happen without our knowledge or consent and depending on the scope of the challenge, can range from casual acceptance to outright rage, panic, and fear.

What is it that allows some individuals to gracefully accept the need to amend a plan even when the need to do so is forced upon them, while others respond so negatively? Why do some actively seek new opportunities for growth, reinvention, and transformation while others are not only content but adamant to dwell within the status quo?

Since businesses, small or large, are created and managed by people, the same question can be asked except that in business, multiple individuals are involved. For many, the first reactions are solipsistic, self-centered, egocentric. Leaders are the first to understand that the need to reinvent or transform the business is not personal, permanent, or pervasive and that alterations to the original business plan may be needed and beneficial.

What is it about these people, these leaders, that differentiates them from those that follow them? Why is it that potential and possibility remain central to their thinking where others tend toward reluctance and negativity?

What gives our extraordinary leaders the courage and confidence to embrace reinvention and transformation, whether personal, professional, or corporate?

What is confidence, where does it come from, and what does it need to continue throughout challenges regardless of how or where it is applied?

Dictionary Definition

Functional Definition

Confidence is your own belief in yourself. It is your truth, your values, your understanding of your values, how far you will go to defend those values, and your trust in your own abilities to do so.

According to David Neagle, author of The Millions Within, although confidence defies scientific measurement, "it is more influential in determining the outcome of any situation than the variables that can be measured." The perplexing issue really is that if you do not know who you are or what you want, how can you be confident in yourself or your ability to reach your goals?

If you do not understand the values you hold, how can you know what you believe? Have you ever truly examined how you came to believe what you absolutely know to be true? How can you know what you want if you don’t know who you are? If you don’t know what you want, how will you know if you ever get it? Even more, how will you become a confident individual if you never feel the pleasure of accomplishing a goal? You cannot celebrate the win if you never reach for the trophy. Until you examine who you are, what you want, and then create and activate a plan to get It, how can you ever know that you can?

Confidence cannot be celebrated or even acknowledged unless there is some form of struggle. If catching a ball has always been easy, why would we even think about the effort and skill involved in doing so? It is only when you miss the ball that there is cause for celebration when you finally catch it.

Positive results mean nothing unless there are negative ones, too. Consider the desire to ride a bike. Were you to get on a bicycle the very first time and simply ride away on it; it would be a non-event; you would assume that everyone could do the same and no confidence is gained. If, however, you want to ride the bike, get on it without support, pedal once and then fall over, you realize the difficulty of reaching your goal. Then, when you ultimately become capable of riding away, you celebrate, and the more difficult the process of learning the skills was, the harder you party when you triumph over those difficulties. To do this, of course, you first must have access to a bicycle, you must want to ride it, and you must want the benefits associated with riding it. For it to give you confidence, you must fall off and get back on. You cannot have faith in yourself if that faith is never tested.

The stronger the desire, the greater the fear of not reaching the ultimate result. For those of us lacking confidence, the fear of failure stops the pursuit of our desire in its tracks. If we don’t really want or need to ride the bicycle, it is of little consequence if we never learn, and if we never learn we cannot ever feel confident to ride the bike, or even that we might be able to learn how in the first place.

Confidence then, is the result of the pursuit of a desire, meeting difficulties along the pursuit that cause us to question our ability to attain our goal, and then finally, when successful, enjoying its rewards and knowing that we did it despite the barriers that threatened to thwart us. The stronger the desire, the more difficult the struggle, the sweeter the reward, and the bigger the boost of confidence.

What happens when we try, struggle, try again, but fail to reach our goal?

The most common result is to blame an outside party for our failure. There is an old saying: The person with the biggest smile is the one who has found someone else to blame. Rather than let our confidence take the hit, many of us are quick to find fault somewhere else than within ourselves.

If we are walking along a sidewalk and we trip over some small bulge in the concrete, how do we react? Some of us may quickly look around to see if anyone noticed our impromptu dance as we regain our balance. Others may immediately look to see what caused the slight mishap. Aha! we might say. Look at that bulge! It caused me to trip, but I’m fine. No harm was done. Still, others may look to find the cause of our unscheduled dance, and once we locate the offending bulge in the concrete, feel insulted as if it was a personal slight. We might report the location to the municipality and demand that something be done. We might get so wrapped up in the story that the slight bulge becomes a mole hill, then a mountain, then a volcano that erupted and caused a danger to life and limb! Furthermore, everyone for miles around bore witness to the catastrophe, our reputation hangs in the balance, and the formerly pleasant walk is now a torturous episode designed explicitly to embarrass and bring shame to us, the poor hapless individual.

It sounds ridiculous, and it is meant to offer a little hyperbole to make a point. To a degree, we have all looked elsewhere to cover embarrassment, but confident individuals tend to participate less in this external blame game. Confident individuals recover more quickly because it doesn’t matter if anyone saw them trip a little. They may even quickly find the humor in their stumbling dance of recovery. With this attitude, blame is unnecessary; it was just a little accident after all. Even if they had fallen, bumped their head, scraped their knees and elbows, and suffered some embarrassment, it was a still a temporary problem, it certainly was not personal, and life as they know it will carry on without another thought to the incident.

The point is that many of us instantly look for external blame rather than letting our self-confidence feel stress, discomfort, or even outright pain. Confidence is directly related to ego, and ego can be a delicate thing that is easily wounded and from which complete recovery is not certain. It is not that confident individuals don’t care about shame or guilt or embarrassment or attacks on their integrity; rather, it is that they believe in their goal, they know why they want it, and they trust their beliefs, their values, and in themselves to overcome any limitations or obstacles in their paths.

Consider