As a leader you need to cultivate and build your team’s confidence. Your team should have confidence in them self as well as confidence in your leadership skills. In general people will judge the probability of future success based on past performance. As you work with your team you will build a consistent history based on past successes and failures. If you maintain a good track record of success you will create a sense of optimism that future projects will also be successful. If you have a record of disappointment, your team will probably view any new projects as having a high chance of failing.

It is the job of the leader to select projects that will contribute to an overall sense of success within his team. By starting with projects that the team all believes will be successful a leader is able to raise the level of confidence for the next project. Over time the confidence of a team can be built to a point that it can complete a project that would have been a failure previously. A series of projects can be completed easily and successfully when they are ordered in such a way to build confidence while the same projects can all be complete failures when done in a different order.

The first project should very easy. Historically nations have built monuments to remind them of their success. While it might not be appropriate to create a sculpture or triumphal arch for every project, some projects serve as trophies themselves. Once a team has had some success, the difficulty of their projects can increase drastically. When leadership attempts to paint a failure as if it was really a success or just hide it completely it often amplifies the failure instead of minimizing it.

Ignoring this gradual approach to more and more difficult projects is on of the major reason leaders fail. Obviously the market forces and other driving factors of an organization may make it impossible to do things in the best possible order. But the skilled leader should be able to take larger projects and break them down into tasks that are very doable. In this way you can achieve the organizations immediate goals and still give your team the ability to build confidence even when you don’t have complete control over what needs done next or enough ramp up time to do things in the way you would prefer.

If you want to be happier and derive more from life incresing your self confidence and self esteem is the key and its easy to do with these simple tips.

What Low Self Esteem Means

Having low self esteem and lacking confidence in your ability to do the things you’ve always wanted to do can distort your views, making you think everything always seems to go right for everyone but you.

The Cure

In reality, people who appear to be high in self confidence and always seem to get what they want simply believe in themselves. Being high in self esteem opens you up to the possibility of success rather than failure.

If you are high in self esteem you understand that failing at something means just that, you have failed at one task, it does not make you a failure.

What is Self Esteem?

Self esteem refers to the way you perceive yourself and the way you think others perceive you.

If you have low self esteem then you will tend to have a low opinion of yourself, your capabilities and how people perceive you.

If you have a high sense of self esteem then you will have a positive and realistic opinion of yourself and how people perceive you. You will have a good awareness of your strengths and weaknesses.

How to recognize if you are suffering from Low Self Esteem

If you’re internal thoughts tend to begin with:

• I can’t…

• I must…

• I should…

The chances are you are suffering from low self esteem

How to Build Confidence and Self Esteem

People with a highly developed sense of self esteem have the self confidence to achieve their goals. Succeeding at the goals they set for themselves adds to the self confidence building blocks they already have in place.

Each successive achievement creates opportunities for greater success and self belief which increases their perception of self esteem.

Having a positive sense of self perception and self esteem is one of the most important factors for increasing your self confidence as if you believe you will succeed at a task then the chances are you will.

If you believe you are going to fail at a task, then you will act accordingly, and the chances are you will fail.

Tips for improving self esteem:-

• Make a list of all your strengths. Remember we are all good at something. Your list could include being a good parent, a loyal friend or a trusted employee.

• Perception creates reality so perceive yourself as someone who achieves the things you set out to do.

• Remember that success builds upon success, so set yourself small goals initially, and build on them.

• Believe in yourself. For every negative belief you hold about yourself think of four positive ones. If you can’t think of beliefs that are true at the moment then think of beliefs you would like to be true that you can work towards.

• Choose two things that you know you are good at and think of three ways you could work to improve each of these even more. By concentrating on areas that you know you are already good at will improve your confidence and be a good building block for future success.

• Even if you sometimes don’t feel like it always act in a confident manner.

• Make a list of positive affirmations that you can use to encourage yourself and raise your confidence.

• Surround yourself with positive, successful, confident people.

By practicing these tips aimed at raising your confidence and self esteem, you will begin to change the way you perceive yourself and the things you are able to achieve.

Increase Your Self Esteem & Get More From Life

As your self esteem increases you can start to think about the things you used to put yourself down for and use the same techniques to build on your confidence.

Don’ allow small setbacks to diminish your newly gained self esteem. Keep it in perspective and remember it’s just that, a small setback.