At some point in our lives, most of us will experience something either personally or professionally that will rock our world and undermine our self-confidence in ourselves.   A young leader that I am mentoring is going through this experience right now.  A personal crisis has led her to question everything that she thought to be true in her life.  Her confidence in herself has plummeted and she wonders if she will ever get her “mojo” back.  She understands that confident people inspire confidence in others and it is the confidence of others that can be a key to success.  Challenging situations can lead one to “negative self-talk” which further destroys self-confidence.  Three ways to regain your self-confidence include:

1.  Manage your mind by staying in the present

When our self-confidence is challenged, our mind can shift to the worst case scenarios by either ruminating about the past or worrying about the future.  By bringing ourselves into the present moment and away from thinking about the past or future, we can shift our relationship to stress. We can think of the present moment as a vacuum chamber and that stress, anxiety, and depression-generating thoughts require an oxygen rich atmosphere to thrive. By being in the present moment, we help ourselves to reduce our stress and anxiety concerning the what ifs.  Take it one day at a time, one hour at a time or even one minute at a time.  Remember that the way we feel about a situation comes from our perception of it which may or may not be accurate.  Don’t let one wrong turn or roadblock get in the way of turning your life around or achieving your dreams.

2. Look what you have already achieved

Think about your life so far.  We can and should draw on our past successes, no matter how big or small, to help us restore self-confidence. Instead of thinking about the battles you lost, celebrate yourself and think about every battle that you have won. You can actually use your past success to supercharge your confidence. When our confidence is down – it is so easy to lose sight of how much we have accomplished in our lives.

3.  Set some small goals and share your progress with others

Thomas Carlyle once wrote that “nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.” Believe that things will get better with each small step you take and goal that you achieve.  It can be very challenging to build your self-confidence back up without someone to be your cheerleader.  During challenging times, we can sometimes find it difficult to reach out to others particularly if we are known for our self-confidence.  Connecting with others can keep us from wallowing in our situation.  Set some small goals for yourself to get your back on track and then share them with a trusted friend.   To help you get started – ask yourself to list three things that you could do in the next 3 months that would make a big difference in what happens in the rest of the year.

As you advance in your career as a nurse leader, you may be asked to do presentations for professional groups or public audiences.  Does the thought of public speaking strike fear in your heart?  I find it does for many of our graduate students who tell me that doing presentations is an area of weakness.  I always give the same advice – public speaking is a learned skill and the more you do it the better you will get.  Leadership is all about communication.  An effective presentation can have a very positive impact in helping you as a leader to achieve your goals.

The 10 following tips will help you to give presentations like a pro:

1.  Begin with the end in mind

Prior to preparing your presentation, you should develop about 3-4 goals/objectives.  Most presenters either seek to inform or motivate an audience.  Ask yourself what you would like your audience to know as an outcome of your presentation.  A second key question is whether there is something you would like the audience to do differently as a result of your presentation.   Your goals should guide how you develop your presentation.  This guidance is important whether you are doing a 10 minute presentation to staff nurses, a one hour presentation to a professional group or a budget presentation to senior management.  When you state your goals at the beginning of your presentation, your audience has a clear idea about what to expect and it will guide how they listen to your content.

2.  Consider your target audience

One size does not fit all with presentations.  Understanding your target audience is very important.  Ask yourself how much background your audience has regarding your topic.  Should the presentation be a beginner level or more advanced.  Is your audience large or small.  What is their motivation for attending your presentation?

3.  Think carefully about how to present the content

The use of power point slides by speakers has become quite common.  Slides can be a very effective way of communicating, but they are not the only way.  For very short presentations ,where you have strict time limits, the use of technology can waste valuable time.  A short handout is often more effective.  If you do use slides, don’t cram too much material into your slides.  Use large fonts (30 points or more).  Choose the color of the background and content wisely so they can be read from a distance.

4.  Don’t read your slides – elaborate on them

The purpose of your slides should be to illustrate your key points.  Don’t be a slave to your slides.  Audiences lose interest when speakers stand up and read their slides verbatim.  If you are running out of time with your presentation, it is important to skip slides if needed to focus on your key points.  Always proof read your slides for spelling, grammar and content errors.

5.  Use story to illustrate a key point

The use of story can be very powerful to both engage the audience and to help you make key points.  Story is not appropriate in every situation.  If you are a nurse leader giving a budget presentation to senior management, your presentation will need to be less emotional and more factual.

6.  Get the audience involved

The most successful presenters find ways to involve their audience. People like opportunity to react to presentations and express their viewpoints.  A great way to do this is to ask questions of your audience during the presentation such as:  How many of you have experience with this?,  Have you found this to be true in your experience working with your patients?,  Does this resonate or do you have a different viewpoint about what we are discussing?   Using interactive case scenarios to help teach key points can be very effective especially with smaller groups.

7.  Practice your presentation prior to giving it

Rehearsing your presentation in advance will help you to gain confidence as a presenter.  If you have an important presentation, you might want to consider asking one or more professional colleagues to sit through a rehearsal and give you feedback.  If you are using slides, you will want to take the time to go through your slides at least three times.  This will help you to become very comfortable with the content, and you will be less likely to read your slides.

8.  Dress to give you confidence and for the audience

First impressions are very important.  If you want to present yourself as an authority, you need to look the part.  This will also boost your confidence in yourself.  As a general rule of thumb, you should dress slightly better than your audience.

9.  Less is More

For most presentations, you will have a limited time frame to present your ideas.  Many presenters overwhelm their audiences with too much information.  This is ineffective.  Stick to your key points and be sure to leave 5-10 minutes for audience reaction and questions.  Be respectful of the audience’s time and don’t exceed the time you have been given to do the presentation.

10. Debrief with an attendee after the presentation

Doing presentations like a pro is a learned skill. You can learn a great deal by watching effective speakers.  You can also learn from either having yourself taped, or by asking a trusted attendee for feedback.  Even the most experienced speakers can exhibit ticks and tendencies that interfere with their presentations.  It is important that you are aware of any habits that could interfere with effective communication during your presentation.   If attendees formally evaluate your presentation, ask for a summary of the evaluations.  This will help you to learn what you have done well and areas for improvement.

With preparation and practice, you can learn to do presentations like a pro.  I would urge you to watch TED talks for excellent examples of how speakers are able to deliver powerful messages to an engaged audience in less than 20 minutes.  Accept the challenge when you are given the opportunity to present.  You will grow as leader and become influential with your colleagues.

Do you know what your leadership values are and perhaps even more important – do you live them and what do you do if your core values are shaken at the core?  A senior nursing leader that I know well is experiencing a heart-wrenching decision about whether to leave her organization because an important decision that she made had been overruled by her CEO.  It had happened before to her in other contexts but in this case, it appears that it could be a deal breaker for her.  This is because what she has been asked to do is in direct conflict with her core values.

Clarifying Leadership Values

In their book, The Leadership Challenge, Kouzes and Posner identify clarifying one’s values as one of the five best practices in leadership.  By identifying those principles that matter most, you will gain tremendous clarity and focus that will allow you to make consistent decisions and take committed action.  From their research, the authors report that leaders who have clear leadership philosophies and values are rated 40% higher on their leadership skills than those who don’t have clear values.  Finding your voice as a leader better allows you to make choose a direction, act with determination and make the tough choices that come with leadership roles.  Values should constitute your personal “bottom line” and tell you when to say no and when to say yes.   The clearer that you are about your values, the easier it will be to stay on your chosen path and commit to it.

Some examples of Leadership Core Values

• A commitment to collaboration
• A belief in the need for teamwork
• A commitment to diversity
• A belief in the need to foster innovation
• A willingness to tolerate differences in opinions
• A commitment to customer service
• A belief in the need to develop staff at all levels of the organization
• A commitment to a caring-based approach to leadership
• A willingness to be vulnerable

Living Your Core Values

Being clear in expressing your values as a leader is important but staff will watch your behavior to see if you really live it.  In the case situation involving my friend, she has been asked to implement a leadership strategy that is clearly not in concert with her values. Her leadership knows it and she knows it.  When this happens, staff lose confidence in your leadership because the “talk” and the “walk” are incongruent.  Staff look to their leaders to clarify their values and want to share these values.  Shared values are very affirming on a team and can lead to exceptional outcomes.  Having a strong sense of your core values can also help you make decisions about whether a workplace culture is the right one for you.  All of us have had the experience of being on a team or walking into an environment where we have felt that we just didn’t belong.

Kouzes and Posner recommend that the first step on any leadership journey should be to clarify your values and beliefs that will guide your actions and decisions on path to success and significance.  In leadership roles, building shared values is also critical.  In times of crisis, nothing can help align an individual more regarding what decisions to make than a re-evaluation of one’s core values.

I recently spoke with a professional colleague who had worked for many years in one organization and then moved to a completely different health system to take a promotion.  At the time that we spoke, she had been in her new role for almost a year yet found herself struggling.  She had been very successful in her previous job but it was in an organization with a much different culture than her current employer.  She berated herself for not doing enough due diligence prior to taking the new role.  She told me she had made the assumption that her leadership skills and success in one setting were transferable to another.  She raised the interesting question as to whether you can lead successfully in every setting.

My friend is not alone in failing to think through how environment can contribute to role success.  Tony Mayo a leadership expert has observed that “there is far too much focus on individual characteristics of leadership and far too little focus on the situational context.”  He suggests that we can easily fall prey to believing that any individual who is successful in one setting will naturally be successful in a new setting.  Some individuals do have incredible adaptive capacity or the ability to change one’s style and approach to fit the culture, context, or condition of an organization.  But not every leader is able to do this in every situation.

The Role of Organizational Culture in Leadership Success

There are many aspects of how organizations function that are driven by their culture.  Getting a clear read on an organization’s culture is often not easy when leaders interview for new positions but understanding the values is important. Peter Drucker, the father of modern organizational management has suggested that organizational values should be the ultimate litmus test on whether a job is the right one for you or not.  Does the organization’s culture, mission and strategic direction align with what you believe about your work?  Leaders who have primarily worked in non-profit environments and then seek roles in for-profit environments sometimes become conflicted about the focus on budget and stock shareholder value.  My colleague had enjoyed leading in an academic medical center where there was a strong learning culture.  She did not find this culture in her community hospital and there was little interest in creating a learning culture.

Context-Centered Leadership

Figuring out where you really belong in the world, and what type of work you are meant to do as a leader can be a challenge. Understanding the organizational culture, the context of your environment and the impact that other team members have on your performance is important.  Working with a great team can provide a strong sense of belonging and enable you to do good work as leader.  Context-centered leadership is even more complex in today’s changing health-care environment.  Povah and Sobczak, two experts in this area, suggest that not only the internal environment but the external environment can play a big role in leadership success.  Today’s nursing leaders need to have more of a strategic focus and be willing to reconsider “sacred cows”.  This requires learning agility and a willingness to be ready to change.  The right leader five years ago might not be the right type of leader for today’s environment.

Job fit in the work place matters. You will feel well-placed as a leader and gratified when the demands of the job fit with your best talents. Acknowledging when a leadership role or work setting is not the right one for you takes courage and insight.

I was recently presenting to a group of nurse leaders and asked the question about whether they had ever lost control of their emotions in front of their staff.  Many in attendance had but one leader’s response really surprised me.  She saw nothing wrong with displaying her anger because “this is who I am and people have to get used to it.”  Her opinion was not shared by the group and certainly most leadership experts would say that ultimately this could be a significant career derailer for this manager.  It is widely recognized today that EI or emotional intelligence may be a more important for leadership success than intelligence itself.

Although the concept of emotional intelligence has been written about since the early 1960s, it was popularized in 1995 by Daniel Goleman with the publication of his best selling book Emotional Intelligence.   Emotional intelligence (EQ) is usually defined as self-mastery or the ability to understand and control what we feel (our emotions) and the way we act (our response to these emotions).  It is about self-awareness, self-management, social-awareness and relationship management. These 4 components of EI can be define,  as follows:

• Self-awareness– You recognize your own emotions and how they affect your thoughts and behavior, know your strengths and weaknesses, and have self-confidence.
• Self-management– You’re able to control impulsive feelings and behaviors, manage your emotions in healthy ways, take initiative, follow through on commitments, and adapt to changing circumstances.
• Social awareness– You can understand the emotions, needs, and concerns of other people, pick up on emotional cues, feel comfortable socially, and recognize the power dynamics in a group or organization.
• Relationship management– You know how to develop and maintain good relationships, communicate clearly, inspire and influence others, work well in a team, and manage conflict.

The unfiltered response that this manager had to the question that was posed indicates that she lacked self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and an understanding of how her behavior impacts relationships.  She is not alone in the need to strengthen her own emotional intelligence.  Unfortunately, the management behaviors of nurse leaders who lack emotional intelligence can result in higher staff turnover, reduced engagement, poor relationships with other departments and an unhealthy work environment.

Developing our Emotional Intelligence

Although there are tools out there to assess your emotional intelligence, there are also ways that leaders can do this on their own.  Here are 6 suggestions:

1. Seek Feedback on your behavior – this is hard to do at times but there is research to suggest that many of us do not have good barometers of how we are being received by others.
2. Evaluate all negative feedback and reactions to your behavior to look for evidence of where you may have problems with EI.
3. Self-reflect on how you have managed your emotions in highly charged situations with conflict– is there room for improvement?
4. Assess how you manage your stress level and whether this interferes with relationships with others.
5. Determine your EI strengths and weaknesses and develop a personal action plan.
6. Do cognitive rehearsals when confronted with difficult situations – assess in advance how you will manage if you are losing control of the situation.

To develop your emotional intelligence takes intentionality.  Saying “this is just who I am” will not lead to growth.  Instead when you do make mistake, step back and ask yourself what you will do differently in future situations.  Remember – your leadership success is highly dependent on your level of emotional intelligence.