When chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen was 13 years old, he squared off against chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, one of the world’s top-rated players. As Carlsen sat down to spar, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he couldn’t possibly win against such a formidable opponent. Now 27 years old, Carlsen says giving in to that belief was his biggest mistake.
“In that particular game if I [had] believed very seriously that I could [have] beat Kasparov, then I probably could have managed,” he says. In other words, the skill will only take you so far; confidence was the missing piece he needed to beat his opponent.
In business, too, there are plenty of ways in which you might face similar crises of confidence, whether it’s making a pitch to investors or trying to win an account with a big customer. Here are three tips from Carlsen on how to manage these moments and build self-confidence:
1. Trust yourself, no matter the consequences.
Confidence comes from trusting yourself to make a decision and being OK with the results, even if you fail. This explains why so many successful entrepreneurs count failures on their lists of achievements. For Carlsen, this meant trusting his gut and making a fast decision — and then not looking back. “It’s better to trust your gut and be burned sometimes than to always second-guess yourself,” he says.
2. Be willing to put in the work.
By the time Carlsen was 17, he was playing the best chess players in the world — and for the first time, he says, he started to feel confident in his abilities. “When I was 10 or 12 years old, I would often give away draws to presumably stronger opponents because I didn’t believe that I could beat them and I was happy with a draw,” he says. Of course, he had many matches during those intervening years, which helped him improve his skillset, and thereby his confidence.
This kind of self-doubt is often referred to as imposter syndrome — a psychological pattern in which you doubt your accomplishments or believe that you don’t deserve them. To overcome this, as Carlsen did, you must first recognize the condition and then work diligently to overcome it. As Carlsen says: “Within a few years I was completely convinced, rightly or not, that I was the man, I was the best.”
3. Look for an immediate win after you lose.
Carlsen’s approach to losing is also instructive. When he loses, he says he doesn’t dwell on it because bad results can linger. Instead, he looks for a win — as soon as possible. “For me, I just… need to somehow be able to strike back,” he says.
He also notes that he’s never been a good loser and that instead of working on ways to handle losses more gracefully, he focuses on a different problem: “I should be better at not losing.”
In 1999, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates was well on his way toward fulfilling his vision of putting a computer in every home, running Microsoft software.
That year, Gates also wrote Business @ the Speed of Thought, in which he accurately predicted the way the internet would change business.
But the uncanny leadership insights captured by then 44-year-old Gates, however, is almost prophetic at a time when people are begging for transparent and honest leadership during immensely uncertain times.
I say this because many executives in times of crisis will deflect bad news and try to paint a rosy picture of reality, which backfires when employees and customers see right through the disingenuousness.
Gates’s description of leadership in bad times
In the book, Gates explains that a company’s ability to respond to unplanned events, good or bad — and I can’t think of something more unplanned than a global pandemic — is a strong indicator of competitive advantage.
Why?
At the 30,000 ft. level, a CEO’s central role, writes Gates, is to do something rare: look for bad news and empower people to respond to it. He says leaders must model safety and encourage employees to share bad news as much as good news.
Easier said than done — especially if employees are trapped in a command-and-control environment. To Gates’s point, however: The flatter the corporate hierarchy, the more likely it is that employees will communicate bad news and act upon it.
“A change in corporate attitude, encouraging and listening to bad news, has to come from the top,” writes Gates.
He offers several tips applicable to today’s leader caught in making tough decisions daily:
Take the initiative to create an environment that fosters open discussion
Reward failure and allow experimentation
Embrace bad news to learn where you need the most improvement
Communicate bad news quickly
Make informed decisions with reliable data
Then, free up virtual teams to work on solutions quickly
You’ll recall the book was written in 1999 — before Slack, Zoom, and social media. Texting was just surfacing as a business tool, so email was king. Notice the way Gates describes the good practices of shared leadership and authentic communication between teams — things we desperately need right now:
“These independent explorations led to dozens and dozens of great ideas. Quickly, over e-mail, people offered their opinions, fleshed out the issues, considered the options. The amount of e-mail was just fantastic. E-mail discussions led to many small group meetings — often loud, informal ones in the hallways — to hammer out recommendations.”
At a time when people at all levels — including and especially those on the frontlines — need the information to make decisions quickly, great leaders will take off their masks, communicate what they’re feeling and seeing, and push the bad news to the forefront. They do this because they trust in the ability of those who they hired to come up with the answers to problems.
The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo[1] in the late 1980s. The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. Each interval is known as a Pomodoro, from the Italian word for ‘tomato’, after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer that Cirillo used as a university student.[3][4]
The technique has been widely popularized by dozens of apps and websites providing timers and instructions. Closely related to concepts such as timeboxing and iterative and incremental development used in software design, the method has been adopted in pair programming contexts.[5]
There are six steps in the original technique:
Decide on the task to be done.
Set the Pomodoro timer (traditionally to 25 minutes).
Work on the task.
End work when the timer rings and put a checkmark on a piece of paper.[6]
If you have fewer than four checkmarks, take a short break (3–5 minutes), then go to step 2.
After four pomodoros, take a longer break (15–30 minutes), reset your checkmark count to zero, then go to step 1
For the technique, a Pomodoro is the interval of time spent working.
After task completion, any time remaining in the Pomodoro is devoted to overlearning.
Regular breaks are taken, aiding assimilation. A short (3–5 minutes) rest separates consecutive pomodoros. Four pomodoros form a set. A longer (15–30 minute) rest is taken between sets.
A goal of the technique is to reduce the impact of internal and external interruptions on focus and flow. A Pomodoro is indivisible; when interrupted during a Pomodoro, either the other activity must be recorded and postponed (using the inform – negotiate – schedule – call back strategy[8]) or the Pomodoro must be abandoned.
The stages of planning, tracking, recording, processing and visualizing are fundamental to the technique.[citation needed] In the planning phase, tasks are prioritized by recording them in a “To Do Today” list. This enables users to estimate the effort tasks require. As pomodoros are completed, they are recorded, adding to a sense of accomplishment and providing raw data for subsequent self-observation and improvement.
Could you be the object of jealousy or envy from your business partners, colleagues, or even your friends? If you’re focused on working toward your own goals, you might not notice if others around you are going green when they look at your status and achievements. But if you look for them, there are signs that can tell you when someone is feeling envious of you. It’s smart to pay attention to these signs so you can handle your friend or colleague’s jealousy wisely–before it grows into something that could damage your working relationship, or worse.
You’ve just made a huge sale, gotten a plum assignment, or won an industry award. You tell your friend, business partner, or colleague your good news. But your colleague or friend doesn’t react the way you expected and something about that person’s response seems off. Could he or she be envious of your success? Here are some signs to watch for.
Downplaying your success.
Whatever plum job or deal you’ve gotten, your friend will find a reason why it’s not so great. This happened to me years ago when I won a contract to write a book for a business book series. A friend of mine who was also a business writer tried to talk me out of signing the contract, arguing that I should be getting a better deal. She even posted a message to a professional group we both belonged to, saying that I was “starry-eyed” about the deal I’d gotten and inviting others to help her talk me out of it. (No one did.)
Questioning how you got there.
This can be subtle since whenever you announce a big win to your friends or colleagues, they’ll naturally want you to tell them how you made it happen. But if you pay attention, you may notice that some of these questions have a subtext: Why you and not me? For example, someone may wonder out loud if you had a special advantage, such as a family connection or an existing friendship that helped you get where you are.
Responding to your good news by talking about their own accomplishments.
This too can be subtle, because most people like to talk about themselves and would likely rather tell you what they’ve been up to than listen to you talk about yourself. But if someone changes the subject to something he or she is doing as soon as you’ve shared your good news, that’s a likely indication of feeling envious.
What should you do about it?
Correctly handling other people’s jealousy is very tricky. It’s natural enough to feel angry at someone who’s acting jealous of you, but do your best to let that go. I’m willing to bet that at some time or another, you’ve felt envious of someone else’s achievements. And if you think back to that time, you’ll remember how awful it felt. There’s no point in trying to punish people who are acting jealous of you–they’re already punishing themselves more than you ever could.
Instead, be compassionate. If they’re downplaying your achievement or reminding you of past failures, don’t take the bait and defend yourself. Instead, laugh at yourself, agree with their assessment, or just say nothing at all. If you’re feeling angry, keep in mind that your non-response is likely to frustrate an envious person more than anything else you could do.
And if they switch the conversation over to their own accomplishments, be gracious about it. Ask questions about whatever they’ve achieved and give them genuine praise. Doing this could help defuse their envy and make for a better relationship, and that benefits everyone. Meantime, don’t forget to give yourself a pat on the back. If your accomplishments make your friends and co-workers jealous, you must be doing something right.
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