Competence, Authenticity and Connection - the 3 facets of Confidence with Dr. Anna Kane

Women In Confidence with Anna Kane

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podcasts.

This podcast discusses all things to do with confidence in life and in work. And this is a podcast for women

who want to learn what confidence

is, how to obtain it and how to maintain it and learn how confidence can help you grow and flourish.

Every week. I introduce you to amazing women who have interesting stories to tell about confidence through their stories, insights, hints, and tips. You realize that a lack of self-belief or low self-esteem is common and also very human, but by listening to them, you'll take away what they have

done to show up confidently on the inside, as well as on the outs.

If I told you that it was possible to take the complex concept of confidence and put

ieve me? Well, my guest this [: 00:01:00

One because it's an amazing achievement to complete a PhD and is not a small undertaking and two, because her PhD is in confidence. Which is why I jumped at the chance to get annual on the show. So Anna is an occupational psychologist and is the owner of assessed psychology, which is her business to address the complex issues facing people, businesses in today's workplace.

She's also a coach, a teacher, and a really strong advocate for diversity inclusion, fairness, and wellbeing. So Anna, hello and welcome to women in confidence. Thanks for joining

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[00:01:46] Vanessa: And I wonder if you could just tell everybody where you are at the moment.

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It's where all the young and trendy people hang out in the hipsters and it's very difficult to stand out of biotin for

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[00:02:22] Anna: But eight o'clock. Yeah, it's just gone eight o'clock this morning

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[00:02:29] Anna: bridge to a bridge that the weather is good.

Yeah, absolutely. We can't help but talk about it. And it's been school this week. So two hot, very true.

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[00:02:41] Anna: confidence or particularly competence because of Specialization. And one of the reasons why I have you on, in your experience and knowledge and your doctorate in confidence.

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[00:02:53] Anna: by asking you a question, which I ask everybody, and that is what does

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[00:02:58] Anna: you? That's a [00:03:00] great question. So confidence for me has become a life's work rather than just a kind of, oh, last I know what confidence feels like when I've got it.

So as you said, I've got a doctor. And I studied confidence during my doctorate. So I guess the theoretical answer, but it's also a real life answer is that confidence is actually a fairly complex, excuse me, a fairly complex phenomenon. So there are three components to confidence and you can have a certain type of mindset that.

Going on confidence. It's more complex than you think. But also some people kind of think that they've either got it or they haven't got it. And for me through my work, I've realized that actually we can master confidence. So whilst you may, you may identify as someone with without much confidence, you can actually seek to work on that and grow your confidence and become more competence.

confidence is something that [: 00:04:00

And, given to us at birth,

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the topic of this podcast. And

having you on is just amazing. But I want to talk about confidence about it not being static. Because I think you're right.

People do believe that you've either got it. Or you haven't and I really liked something you said to me when we last

spoke about this spiraling up and

down, I think of confidence.

You just talk about that, please. That'd be great. Yeah. So I'd probably just say a bit more about. What happens before you spiral up and down?

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So do you turn up to be yourself at work and do you live by your values at work? And do you know who you are? Do you do those kinds of personality questionnaires, or do you do journaling? Do you reflect on who you are? And then there's a social side. So the connectedness, and so that could be about getting and receiving support and engaging with other people in a way.

Has an impact on them that you want to have. And then also feeling like you belong so sense of belonging to either your organization or your profession. I said, when those, when those three components are in place and also interact, if you could feel like you can be yourself at work and you're more likely to want to engage with other people.

enticity might interact with [: 00:06:00

And find ourselves having a conflict performance at work, whereas if they're not in place and that might be something that you haven't managed to succeed for yourself, maybe haven't learned enough about what you're doing, or it might be that someone else comes along and does something and they might say, oh, we they're like, what are you doing here in a meeting?

And it might be something as simple as that. And suddenly that makes you feel like you shouldn't belonging. You don't belong in that, in that meeting room or on site where something's being filmed or whatever your job is, and you might suddenly just spiral down and confidence and it's almost like you can feel it.

ow certainly when it happens [: 00:07:00

The more we know about our confidence. The more we can have probably maybe a bit more of a stable baseline, because we, cause as I was saying earlier, you can kind of master your confidence, but sometimes you can't stop that confidence spiraling down and you just have to ride the wave. You have to just go down that spot.

And some of the things you talked

about more short term spirals up or down. So if somebody's talking to you in a meeting or not talking to you or whatever, it's the same true in a more long-term. So if you have the competence, the authenticity and the connectedness on a more long-term scale, is it the same?

it is. And for example, say, [: 00:08:00

That was great. Or you're not having dramatic. Someone says something and you suddenly spiral down and you don't, you're not always aware as aware of it. And so just kind of incrementally your confidence can become lower and low and you can be, you can get, people can get stuck in downward spirals for.

Years and years in the same way, you can have an upward spiral of confidence for years and years. It's not to say that within that you don't have many spirals up and down, but yeah, absolutely. It's a, it's a bigger picture thing as well as the. Something that can happen in five minutes. I think

ttle graphs in the newspaper [: 00:09:00

And and you see a general trend, but in there, the

sort of ups and downs or these three components,

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[00:09:20] Anna: Yeah, but it's such an interesting thing, isn't it?

So my immediate answer is yes and no, because, because it is quite complex and there isn't a straightforward out and everyone's different. So the, yes. Is that. Some people will naturally rely on one part, one component more than another. A lot of people rely on that, their knowledge and skill. So they become an expert at work at what they do, and that gets them promoted and it makes them feel confident.

ne she'll tell you about it. [: 00:10:00

And so if we over rely on something for our confidence and then that gets taken away, or it no longer features in our world. Then we can be a bit done for, so a really common thing is that what I said earlier about people getting promoted, because they're an expert. So imagine you're a lawyer and you, you got promoted because you won lots of cases and you really good in one particular field.

kind of business development [: 00:11:00

It's actually that they're doing less than that. They're an expert and, and do more about supporting other, other lawyers doing more in the business and, maybe looking at how to manage staff as well. And then they've lots of had lost that expansive. In the legal world and actually started to become managers.

Then if they haven't built up the connectedness or the authenticity around how they do other bits of their work, then the confidence might take a nose dive when they get promoted, because they can't rely on being an expert. I actually worked with civil servants a lot. So civil servants find the same thing that the higher they go up the organization.

arbon neutral cars policy or [: 00:12:00

Connectedness for my, for my confidence. And so suddenly if you find yourself in a place where you can't reach out to the right people or the people that you could have worked with change, then suddenly that might be a problem because you're, you have, you can't rely on that. So the best way to have a stable sense of confidence is to.

Purposefully developed all three components and the healthy enhancing mindset. So that if one of them wobbles, then you've got the others to lean on and you're not suddenly stuck for where to go for your confidence. And so if you were to find

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[00:12:59] Anna: spiral

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In across or across all those three. So that's competence, authenticity and connectedness is to increase them all,

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So if it's, if, if someone said something that's, that's challenged or sense of belonging, then until you really get that back in place, it's going to be difficult to feel confident again, because especially if that's important to you, if your, if your sense of belonging is, is an important thing to you value it, then it's going to be difficult to, to raise all three, essentially.

It's the bits that missing that needs to get. Okay, nice. The,

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Do you find the people that you work with? They don't necessarily know themselves very well. And so don't know where

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And as that is part of confidence. So the author authenticity, but is knowing yourself. Then they may not necessarily realize that they don't know themselves, but once we've done a pad profiling process of this is what you need to be confident that comes to me for confidence. And then we might establish, okay, actually I've definitely know who I am if they might have at one point in that in their life, but they might not anymore.

not really readjusted their [: 00:15:00

It's not encouraged to think about yourself as encouraged to think about other people and save other people that never really invested in that development of knowing who they are, understanding their personality and values and what they enjoy. And so then it's a process of, okay, where should we start then?

And get you getting to know yourself. It's a really it's a really interesting place to be as a psychologist. I find that hard to imagine, not knowing yourself because I can't count the amount of personality tools that I've done on myself. As part of my training, I always come out as a rule breaker and I always come out as there's a certain personality traits that pop up every time that's not, other people's lives.

really different to our own. [: 00:16:00

[00:16:01] Vanessa: coaching around confidence and women in particular, because that's the area of focus is how many. And I was really caught. I was quite surprised by this how few women really do know themselves.

And I think, you're

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[00:16:15] Vanessa: to think who are actually, am I, or, you mentioned parenting and you

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[00:16:21] Vanessa: I'm a test that, but I, but I'm always surprised how little people know about themselves and it, to me.

It's the starting place for confidence, the inside bit. Be confident in words before you can be confident outwardly.

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And if we, if you do that confidently, then the world tends to accept that version of yourself. Obviously there is bias and discrimination and people have, yeah. Can be, can judge people based on their protective characteristics or all sorts of things, but in the, on the whole, if you. Authentically to the world.

And you believe in that true sense of who you are, then those around you tend to accept it as well, because, because you're not questioning it or dancing. Others tend to do that last too. It's hard to say that without sounding like I'm generalizing, because I'm sure there'll be people listening to this new say, when I present my true version of myself, then you know, people react and judge me and I know that does happen and we have to find it.

Sometimes it's a [: 00:18:00

And so actually they decided to move and, you kind of think, well, why should they move? But actually you can't change the whole organization and that its values and its way of, it's culture. You want single handedly. So sometimes it's best to find a culture that suits. Yeah, I totally agree with

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And I've seen people who have left companies and they all have in my line of work, I have to make people redundant, et cetera. And they are actually relieved because they are able to move from the culture where they couldn't be themselves for a whole host of reasons. And they actually start to shine in the next company.

think don't want people to. [: 00:19:00

[00:19:00] Anna: that we're fine. And we it's easy for us to say no yourself, but

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[00:19:09] Anna: lots of efforts.

Yeah. Yeah, no, you have to put the work in and sometimes, people don't want to have to kind of do that on. Reflection upon themselves for me, I like, I I've done a lot of work on understanding who I am. Obviously I'd mentioned Douglas personality questionnaires for me. They're not, they're not actually what brings the personal insight.

It's the. I do a lot of meditation. I've done a lot of journaling. I've done a lot of, I do a lot of, I have a lot, even now I have a lot supervision where I reflect upon who I am as a coach and how I interact with people and my values and my ethics. So I'm constantly investing in, in reflecting upon myself.

end thinking about yourself? [: 00:20:00

If they're engaging with people on a day by day basis, if they don't know who they are. They never really understand fully how, how they impact other people so that if you're a manager or, or you have, you have a lot of relationships at work where you're having to deal with stakeholders or clients or customers, then the better, yourself, the better equipped you are to relate to other people in a way that gets the best out of that relationship.

Yeah. I used

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[00:20:52] Anna: beast we

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[00:21:01] Anna: yourself and your organization on helping our managers really understand

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And most importantly, the impact they were having. So it's having the knowledge and that's great, but actually what impact is that having on other people, but I want to ask you, so you've got your model.

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[00:21:17] Vanessa: To have this model. Tell me about your journey to

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Yeah. Well, it's quite a long journey. I wouldn't tell them would be. So for me, the, the journey started back as a kid really. I always kind of, I always kind of viewed myself as a psychologist. Before I was able to study psychology and I'm not sure at which point I kind of realized that about myself.

t in the breads, that's that [: 00:22:00

Different people and the impact they had and all of those kinds of psychology things. And then I was like, yeah, brilliant. I get to study psychology a level. And I, it was actually quite a weird experience because, because I've got a whole lot of theories in my head about how people work or what drives them and motivates them.

And then when I started studying animal psychology, I was really shocked because I was. Some of these studies just don't actually make any sense and that that they're using like animals to understand something about humans or, they've created this like really contrived scenario to test.

d it just re actually really [: 00:23:00

And I wasn't actually that good at studying psychology because I got rubbish results that my A-level exams. It didn't do brilliant at my degree either because it was all about learning names of psychologists and dates that they did studies and the precise mechanism by which they did their, their psychology.

jobs thing, doing equipment [: 00:24:00

So I studied that and did again, lots of the theory and didn't necessarily feel that connected to it, but got a job. Afterwards doing recruitment. He didn't didn't even, he wants to be doing recruitment. This story doesn't sound that fun. So these things that I'm not enjoying, but he likes recruitment. I know lots of, but eventually I found myself doing the stuff that I love and what I love is coaching people and developing people.

or not, we'd have a session [: 00:25:00

And time and time again, I was hearing people saying what I'm, I know you've just promoted me, but I still don't feel like I've got the confidence to do that. Or if they didn't get through, they'd be like, yeah, well, I just don't have the confidence. So I was hearing that time and time again, and it reminded me of when I was back at a levels, doing a level of psychology and I'd started.

And I, I was like muscling around in all the textbooks full of things. W if it interested me that I just thinking about before I started A-level psychology and one of them was confidence and I was looking in the back of the textbooks kind of going, wait, wait. It's definition of self-confidence.

lked about self-efficacy. So [: 00:26:00

So do we like ourselves and align with our values? But I, for me self-confidence was, was something that was something else. And the conversations I was having with these people, who'd gone through this equipment process. They were kind of saying the same thing and I was like, okay. For 20 years, I've never understood what self conferences or I've understood it, but there's not been a definition of it.

And the people that I'm coaching were saying the same thing, they were like, I've been told, I need to be more confident, which is the most worst. Just be more confident. Oh, okay. Sorry. I didn't think of that. I'll get on with it then, but either they were telling themselves or other people were having to be more confident now.

t on it. And so that's what, [: 00:27:00

So I looked at all of the research literature. In a systematic way, which is really tough that a systematic literature review, if anyone out there has ever done one they'll know just the pain that goes into the one, but essentially it's a really thorough systematic look at the literature. And what I discovered was that I was right as a 17 year old, there was no definition of self-confidence.

ut developing the model. And [: 00:28:00

So I made sure that when I did my, my primary research, I interviewed people who from a whole cross section of backgrounds so that we weren't just. Developing a construct of confidence for one part of society, which was really important to me and, and plays out in my work now. And how did you come up with

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[00:28:50] Anna: components?

researcher and we interviewed[: 00:29:00

I was, I was really clear that confidence. It's not just about what you believe in, because if you like, if you look at the history of CYA, went off on a tangent, you look at the history of leadership in Western society. Predominantly it's been white middle-class men in leadership positions, and only in the last kind of, couple of decades of women really started to feature.

ed it and realized that, the [: 00:30:00

And the world's moved on, but not all very theoretical constructs have is my opinion. And it's not just about leaders. A lot of the researchers in psychology used to be. Is that white men doing experiments and looking at. At themselves essentially to understand constructs for the whole of society.

So wherever I got to, yeah. So about the three components. So basically we interviewed just under 30 people. We asked them about moment of high confidence, moment of low confidence. And I wanted to do an embodied way of working with people. So we did a body awareness practice before they started the interview.

more the workplace. So with [: 00:31:00

And and that from that emerged, this model where you've got three components. So more than just competence, knowledge, skills, feedback, it's the authenticity piece. And it's the connectedness and the actually confidence. Isn't just, it's not, there's not, I call it. It's not a social vacuum, which means it's not, it's not like someone without any social interactions at work.

And because we, cause we took that approach to interviewing where, where we really opened up to a range of different people. They started talking about why, I had a great boss in this situation where I was feeling confident. And so we started to notice, okay, there's a connectedness parts. But you need to know what you're doing in order to do your job, but then also you need to be yourself.

e. We interviewed cis-gender [: 00:32:00

From the gender they're assigned at birth. And then we also interviewed nonbinary people. So people who don't identify with gender in a kind of binary way, and there's many ways in which you can be non binary, but it's it's breaking away from that traditional binary perspective of gender male, female.

And it's what you were assigned at birth. And so we also interviewed people from a range of ethnicities ages. Socioeconomic backgrounds. And so that gave the whole element of needing to feel authentic in order to be confident, which probably would have been missed in previous research because it would have just been.

ho already was allowed to be [: 00:33:00

So you need to, you need to kind of connect in with that authenticity piece. So that's how the three components emerged.

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[00:33:31] Anna: diverse. Was it the first of its

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[00:33:42] Anna: Yeah, I think so. There will be other researchers out there who've I would hope that other researchers out there have gone to a diverse pool of research participants, but certainly for what I was doing, I wasn't seeing it anywhere in any of the literature I was looking at. [00:34:00] And it, when I was publishing my papers, which is another painful process to go through, I went to two.

It's a, basically a peer review process. So you submit your paper and you have a couple of experts. Look at your work and come back with some feedback. And I had to justify having transgender people in, in my, in my participant pool, which absolutely shocked me. Basically, they wanted to justification for having a diverse range of people to this day.

I still don't really understand how they can ask that question because it, it confuses me as to how you wouldn't want a diverse range of people. If you're looking to understand the construct from a global perspective, If you're, if you're looking just to understand something for a particular part of society, and finally you just ask that particular part of society.

But if you're looking to [: 00:35:00

Thinking about the makeup of society and how we need to actively include all different types of people in our research to make sure that the researchers have robust. And I'm glad you pushed on and did

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And when, when having gone through this process of interviewing people, what did you notice about yourself and your confidence?

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[00:35:52] Vanessa: other people were saying about

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[00:35:55] Vanessa: so turn the lens on yourself and go, okay.

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I was working out. That was like the world of publishing that I just want to correct that because actually the people who reviewed my work within the university that I studied at when we mazing and they were already good and they were. Ahead of the curve. So I don't want anyone to, to, not that anyone would kind of look it up, but I just need to say that.

? Will this, well, will this [: 00:37:00

Oh, look, and it obviously hasn't got any confidence because she wants to study it because everyone says, whatever you study is actually. Cool. Part of who you are. And I was like, okay well, there are times when I don't have confidence, so I can't deny that the allegation isn't true. So then I was like, so what does that mean?

And how do I feel about that? Am I ashamed about that? Well, that I think there is a part of me that's a bit ashamed about not being as confident as maybe I could. And I was like, okay, so what does that mean then that, then that means that there's some kind of a taboo around confidence. And so if that's going to stop me from studying it, then that in itself is not a good thing.

And one of the things I did [: 00:38:00

I think it's such a, it's an impressive thing to be able to turn around and say, but for me, Yeah, I did really look at my confidence and I looked back on the times that when I really lost my confidence and funnily enough, I had a really horrible experience with one project once at work. And it really, it really took the wind down my confidence sales.

So yeah, I had a big nose done. And actually that, I think that was the turning point at which I decided to really from then on be truly authentic in the work that I do and only take on pieces of work that I really believe in and that I re properly aligned with my values. And then from there actually, Got the opportunity.

Well, around that [: 00:39:00

Generally these days, I feel pretty confident and I work on stuff that I enjoy and that aligns with my values, not to say that I don't have confidence decks. I do. And when they happen, I'm so very, very aware of them. You're aware of them. Yeah. He was saying about, you,

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And I probably have felt it that actually many people. Whatever gender you identify with, people

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[00:40:02] Vanessa: asking themselves who they are and asking all those questions. And it frustrates me that we have to, it's almost like we have to go through that.

To get to the other side and say, okay, well, I'm not going to tolerate that anymore. And I know myself more and I'm going to show up who I actually am. And I do think there's a question in that. I think it's more of a statement and a frustration that we

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And so there'll be happy now, plot along with their, with their work and their relationships. And if they're lucky, they won't have any big catastrophes happen in their life. But essentially we can't even, even if we try to just keep this kind of steady path, keep a hand on the tiller and keep, keep ourselves going and in a straight direction.[00:41:00]

It's not that we can't prevent the bad things in life happening to us. You can't prevent someone, getting cancer or you can't prevent, like the company you work for. Going into receivership and you losing your job or you can't, no matter how much you try and keep life steady and on track, you can't find those really difficult things from happening.

And then when they happen, even though it's no fault of your own, that you've lost your job through redundancy. A lot of people when they go through redundancy, because it does make them do that self searching and that looking at themselves, they come out the other side and they go, you know what, actually really that happy in that job, it just paid the mortgage.

I opened that. I love those [: 00:42:00

And so whilst I think the problem is that society tells us that the difficult times are bad and that we shouldn't really have them. We should always be happy. We should always be smiling and we should always be okay. And, and that makes us fear difficult times. And it makes us fair looking at ourselves and, and finding something that we don't like.

'cause then we're going to have to kind of take some, some steps to changing that. So I think society doesn't help with this. And actually, if you learn how to look at a look at the tricky, difficult stuff, it's usually not as bad as you, you expect, the fear of it is usually worse than the reality of it.

their best for their lives. [: 00:43:00

There might be some stuff that they might want to maybe shift or change. But ultimately my belief is that we'll repeat. And sometimes going through a difficult phase in our lives could do us a favor if we're prepared to turn towards it. People who get stuck with low confidence sometimes it's because they're not prepared to go through that downward spiral.

But the problem is unless we go further down the spiral, we can't come out the other side. So it's a kind of paradox thinking. I don't want to go through this downward spiral. It's going to be too horrible. I can't face it. So I'm just going to try and prevent that from happening. You actually get stuck in the downward spiral.

es and not give ourselves an [: 00:44:00

When we're going through it, or we might even have found some more confidence from going through that process. And you said

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[00:44:17] Anna: W one way, which people get stuck with sometimes at work it's about reaching out for support.

So I guess it's, being compassionate to yourself as realizing that you don't have to. Be everything. You don't have to do everything. And that kind of perfectionist tendency that people often have, especially people low in confidence. Like I'd love to run a study on it sometimes to sometime to see if there is a correlation between people who are generally lower in confidence and perfectionist tendencies.

gate or rely on other people [: 00:45:00

Because they're unrealistic. And so then they will find ways to procrastinate and that's kind of like, it is better not to do that job at all and to do it 80%, but actually learning when good enough is, is a great form of compassion, but often learning when good enough is, is realizing that you can't do everything and that you need help from other people.

I'm only going to get so far.[: 00:46:00

If I sit and talk to someone else, who's got a different perspective to me. Then we can bounce some ideas around and come up with some even more innovative ideas. And I would just by myself, if you've got other people around working with you to support each other, that's a form of self-compassion because you're not just overloading yourself.

I am the martyr. I'll take this on actually, no, don't be a martyr get, get out of there. What was the team of people or find someone who can kind of give you some kind of emotional support, even if they can't help deliver what you're, what you're doing at work, you can at least have a chat with a mentor or a colleague.

Suddenly you don't feel like you're the only one who's struggling to do something at work or having a hard time. Everyone has a hard time, maybe in different ways, but everyone's got their figure life. That's tough. This is why you do what

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[00:46:58] Anna: to stop unpacking some of that [00:47:00] internal challenge.

And I suppose really starting to know each other. We haven't really talked about zest psychology. You're talking

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[00:47:17] Anna: Yeah well, my website is S psychology.com. I'm on LinkedIn's. I, I'm not a big fan of LinkedIn, particularly, but I do writing blogs. They're not very long. I'm not, I'm not a great lengthy blog writer. But I like kind of chatting about the stuff that I'm using about in my head, either on LinkedIn or my website.

Well, Anna, thank you so much for joining women in confidence

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[00:47:42] Anna: much for your time and all your experience. You totally are experience me. So my competence

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[00:47:52] Anna: Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for letting me. Go off on many, a [00:48:00] tangent.

It's been a lovely way to start the morning.

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That's contact at Vanessa hyphen Murphy. Until next time.