Leadership in Economic Development: Why Confidence Matters

Facing Facts and Reinforcing Responsibility

Grooming a culture of increased confidence often involves admitting to errors of the past. It takes courage to face facts that have long been covered up, to voice truths that have been unspoken, or to apologize for past wrongs, writes Kanter. It builds confidence in leaders when they name problems that everyone knows are there and put facts on the table for everyone to see.

According to Kanter, leaders who build confident teams are optimists who expect positive outcomes and engage in regular dialogue and widespread communication. Repeatedly sharing goals, priorities, and standards with everyone is important for encouraging accountability.

Cultivating Collaboration

Confidence blossoms when people feel connected rather than isolated, when they are willing to engage and commit to one another, when they can act together to solve problems and produce results, ignoring boundaries between them, says Kanter. Kanter identifies four kinds of actions essential for building confidence within a team: getting connected in new ways through new conversations; carrying out important work jointly; communicating respect; and demonstrating inclusion.

Mutual confidence for working together begins with firsthand knowledge of one another and the chance to discover human connections, says Kanter. When people are given tasks with big consequences, they are more likely to forget their differences and bury the slights of the past, real or imaginary.

Inspiring Initiative and Innovation

When leaders believe in other people, confidence grows, and winning becomes more attainable. Successful leaders expect success, encourage people to work on projects that have meaning for them, stay positive and ignore negative background noise, make initiative a cultural norm, and start with achieving and celebrating small wins.

A series of small wins restores external confidence that winning is possible, says Kanter. In other words, confidence breeds success, and success, in turn, breeds greater confidence. The ultimate sign of confidence is a virtually self-organizing system in which people feel empowered to seize the initiative, to solve problems, and to seed innovations without even being told to do it.

In Closing

According to Kanter, it is not enough to have confidence in one's self; one must have confidence in others. Instilling team confidence is particularly important in economic development. The issues affecting communities are broad in nature and rife with unknowns, and they need leaders with the expertise and confidence to carry out the courageous actions to address them. Confidence provides motivation to keep up the effort. It is a source of resilience to overcome adversity, to choose to work hard to solve problems.