Editor’s Note: Grace Ueng is CEO of Savvy Growth, a leadership coaching and management consultancy founded in 2003. Her great passion to help leaders and the companies they run achieve their fullest potential combined with her empathy and ability to help leaders figure out their “why” is what clients value most. Grace writes a regular column for WRAL TechWire.
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RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – On a flight several years ago, I sat behind a young woman donned in UNC apparel. I immediately struck up a conversation as my son had just started freshman year at UNC, and I’ve served on faculty at their Kenan-Flagler business school. I soon found out she was a member of the famed Tar Heel soccer team that has produced winners like Mia Hamm. Months earlier, I had been asked to meet one of her teammates, a goalie, prior to her Nike interviews to provide coaching. Extremely impressive, vibrant women. What made them so?
The UNC women’s soccer team has won 23 of the 27 ACC championships and 21 of 40 NCAA national championships. After hearing about the research I was doing, she immediately told me that their coach had all the women read the book, The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance – What Women Should Know. A research rich book, I highly suggest it not just for women, but for men too.
Katty Kay and Claire Shipman poignantly share research that women, who achieve what they set out to do, share confidence – “potent, essential even, and for women, it’s in alarmingly short supply.”
Confidence, is partly genetic, a big chunk, likely over 25%. Therefore, Kay and Shipman even sent off for genetic testing to see where they stacked up. There is another portion that psychologists call “volitional – our choice.”
Many extraordinarily capable and smart women leaders I coach do not have the confidence levels that you would expect, so I partner with them to increase their self efficacy.
Seven years ago, when I undertook a year long positive psychology journey, upon becoming an empty nester, in order to not fall into despondency, I started writing and speaking about happiness. And how happiness creates success, not the other way around. I now share with you my takeaways and thoughts on confidence. Research shows that higher self-confidence and self-esteem predict a higher level of happiness. And the other way around is true as well. Happy people are in better touch with themselves and their emotions and believe in themselves, and this connection can raise confidence levels.
A beautiful virtuous cycle: Confidence adds to happiness, and happiness adds to confidence!
You can expand your confidence, just as you can your happiness. For many of us, it is not easy and takes diligent effort. It is worth it; when you exude confidence, it is attractive, powerful, and contagious.
My Top Takeaways:
- A central theme of confidence is self-efficacy – a belief in your ability to succeed at something. And you also have a bias for action, to just “do it!”
- Success correlates more closely with confidence than it does with competence. Evidence shows that confidence is more important than ability, when it comes to getting ahead. Confidence trumps IQ in predicting success. So for those of us not in the genius range, we have hope. Researchers found the power of habitual thinking creates physical changes and new neural pathways in our brains, which reinforce and even override genetics. So we can overcome our genes by our thoughts.
- Women can learn from men but not be men. When I was raising my son, I was careful to give praise to him, only when truly due. I learned years ago not to promote more of the trophy generation. When I tell my son that he has done something well, he provides the succinct reply, “obviously.” I am told this isn’t a cocky response, it’s a term young people use today in exuding confidence. My son did not study but a fraction of the many hours as I toiled in college, but his father and I believe that he will go farther in life than both of us combined. He has experienced failure earlier and has learned to carry on. He is more confident than I was at his age. Early in my career, in one of my first executive roles where I was the only female on the leadership team, I tried to be like the men. Now, I am simply Grace. It comes more naturally, it’s easier to just be me.
- Don’t worry so much about pleasing people. One client told me in the first week of her engaging my advisory services, “I seek truth, not comfort.” This CEO grew to international acclaim. Top leaders don’t pay me to say niceties to them. They have enough people brown-nosing them. They need feedback that can make them better, stronger and in turn, their companies.
- Women often ruminate and over prepare. For my first Fortune 50 board interview fifteen years ago, I reached out to a couple of male friends for their advice. They simply said, “Be yourself.” Women who lack the confidence of many of their male counterparts compensate by being thoroughly prepared. It can be exhausting. I prepared a great deal to understand the company and its key issues. I found it fascinating, akin to prepping like I did for every class at Harvard Business School, to open a case, in the chance I was the chosen 1 in 80 students, cold-called to open. Then, often I was frozen in class, to inaction to say even one word, after preparing for hours armed with pages of notes. I tell my coaching clients when giving key stakes presentations, to throw away their notes. I learned the hard way, as I did my first TED talk with note cards in hand. I realized I would have been better off just being natural, instead of recounting every word exactly. Perfectionism keeps us from action. Men don’t tend to overthink it. Instead, for them issues are quite simple and hence they often communicate more clearly and succinctly from the boardroom to the bedroom.
- Confidence is an essential, elemental energy. Sharon Salzberg, author of Real Happiness at Work, says it best, “I think confidence is the way we meet our circumstances, whether they are wondrous and wonderful or really hard and difficult. It’s almost like a wholeheartedness, where we’re not holding back. We’re not fragmented. We’re not divided. We’re just going towards what’s happening. There’s an energy to it. I think that’s confidence. And it’s absolutely part of human fulfillment.” Her quote brings to mind one of the audience members who came up to speak in the sharing portion of one of my Happiness workshops. He said that once he was a noted introvert, often cloistering himself to work on his technical projects. He later learned to go “toward” people. And that has made all the difference.
About Grace Ueng
Grace is CEO of Savvy Growth, a leadership coaching and management consultancy founded in 2003. Her great passion to help leaders and the companies they run achieve their fullest potential combined with her empathy and ability to help leaders figure out their “why” are what clients value most.
Grace’s core offerings are one on one coaching for CEOs and their leadership teams, leading workshops on Personal Branding, Happiness and Speaking Success, and conducting strategic reviews for companies at a critical juncture.
A marketing strategist, Grace held leadership roles at five high growth technology ventures that successfully exited through acquisition or IPO. She started her career at Bain & Company and then worked in brand management at Clorox and General Mills. She is a graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School and holds a positive coaching certification from the Whole Being Institute.
Grace and her partner, Rich Chleboski, a cleantech veteran, develop and implement strategies to support the growth of impact focused companies and then coach their leaders in carrying out their strategic plans. Their expertise spans all phases of the business from evaluation through growth and liquidity.
