The Manager’s Role in Boosting Employee Confidence
Within every company are individuals with certain personalities, strengths, weaknesses, and needs that need to be met. They come from a variety of backgrounds and differing personal histories. They may have been people you hired or have been with the company for years before your start.
Knowing you are the head of a large team can intimidate many managers. When this is the case, several responsibilities come into play. One such responsibility is building confidence among your staff.
The importance of building employee confidence
Have you ever been in a situation where you were expected to complete a task but didn’t have the tools or know-how? Have you ever completed a task well but failed to receive the recognition you thought it deserved?
Suppose you replied yes. You know how struggling with confidence at work feels. If you can’t feel confident in your work, don’t believe it is valued, and/or feel like there is no direction for your job, you know how challenging it is to put in effort and find motivation.
It is a genuinely negative feeling, and, as a manager, you should strive to prevent your employees from feeling this way, too. While you cannot change timid people into bold ones (they have to want that for themselves), you can encourage confidence and promote a more robust working environment.
How to build employee confidence
Building employee confidence will increase motivation and productivity, decrease absenteeism and tardiness, and, due to employee satisfaction, promote an overall healthier workplace environment.
Provide adequate training
Employees who do not know what is expected of them, do not see the flow of the day, cannot find simple, everyday tools and need the proper training to do their jobs will suffer. How are they supposed to do their job well if they don’t know how you expect them to do it?
Training and adequately orienting your employees is vital to preventing stress and the lack of confidence that results from a lack of training. This training can continue well past initial orientation. Educating your staff on new technology and trends will give them the confidence to stay afloat and relevant in ever-changing workplaces.
Offer consistent recognition
The performance levels of your employees will increase the more frequently you acknowledge their successes. And don’t wait for the significant achievements to recognize success – make sure you offer recognition for even the more minor achievements your employees meet.
You might offer recognition through monetary incentives, employee of the month programs/gifts, gift cards for when someone goes above and beyond or days off after challenging deadlines are met or projects are completed.
Listen to your employees
If you provide a space within your department where your employees can come and talk and process what is going on in their world, you will increase their confidence simply through active listening. Employees who feel like they are being heard and who see changes made due to speaking up will have much greater confidence and pride in their work than those who do not.
Practice active listening by taking the time to hear what your staff has to say, making the changes you can, and ensuring them that you will continue dialoguing with them through the process.
Give timely feedback
Staff members want to know they are doing a good job right away—not weeks down the line. So, while feedback is crucial, timely feedback is even more critical. Letting your employee know, “Hey, you did a fantastic job handling that conflict with that client earlier today,” will speak much louder than, “You are doing well with client relations.”
Additionally, be timely in notifying your employees about changes they could make. This will give them the ability to change unwanted behaviors sooner rather than later, leading to greater success for their work output immediately, not when the unwanted behavior has turned into an unwanted habit.
Be encouraging in the face of mistakes
No one is perfect, and not one employee will be flawless in their work performance. Oddly, your staff is self-criticizing enough as it is, so when it comes to addressing mistakes, be encouraging. Offer additional training, if needed, but ensure that with mistakes comes the chance to learn and make improvements for the next time.
Appreciate the individual
While you may be tempted to see your employees as wheels in the cog, remember that each staff member is a valuable human being with individual skills, traits and personalities. Take the time to appreciate them as such, and get to know them in a way that is more personal than simply what they do from 9 to 5. This will increase their confidence in knowing their manager is interested in them.
Need more staff support?
If you want to increase staff support, consider Mazzitti & Sullivan EAP. Contact us anytime to learn more about our employee assistance programs.