- The environment in which you work, well,
that can actually have a massive impact on your confidence.
Today, we're gonna look at how to build your confidence
at work by looking at your surroundings
in three very different ways.
And I got to tell you, this will advance your career
by getting you to think about, essentially,
how each setting affects your confidence
differently every day that you're at work.
And if you stay till the end,
you're gonna hear how a new multi-million pound
state-of-the-art building I visited a few years ago (laughs)
got it so wrong in one simple layout aspect,
and how an easy 10 pound fix could have remedied
the whole darn thing (laughs).
So before we start, subscribe to our channel
if you want weekly videos that are gonna help you
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I'm Dr. Suzanne Doyle-Morris, founder of Inclusiq,
and as a speaker and someone who's done over 2,500 hours
of executive coaching with my clients,
I have talked to literally hundreds and thousands of women.
Now you may be like one of my clients,
in that you originally think a lack of confidence
is like a personal feeling, but it isn't.
Yet lacking confidence is often blamed
on the person themselves for not getting ahead.
And that's when we ignore the context of where they work.
So instead of leaders blaming someone
for not having enough confidence or being ambitious enough,
we need leaders to start asking,
what is it in our system, our company culture,
and as we're addressing here,
even our physical environment
that means this person feels like an outsider,
an intruder, or an imposter,
someone who may not progress here?
So let's start with the widest of the physical environments
you're gonna be expected to traverse to get ahead,
and that includes any external meetings
that you need to attend outside the office.
So for example, many of my clients work long hours,
either in their own or even in client's offices.
If this is you, does your employer offer a
free taxi service for people to use after hours,
or hotel stays if you're expected to work
really late into the night?
- what are your employer's expectations around that,
and how does that affect your confidence?
For example, do you need to travel at the weekends
in order to be in the far-flung office bright and early
on a Monday morning or attend conferences
that straddle weekends for example?
Now this is a big one, particularly for parents,
carers or those with disabilities, for example.
However, the importance of accessibility
goes far beyond the basics of having wheelchair access
in a office or a loop for the hearing impaired.
It's also down to the expectations employees are judged by.
Now this came out when I was talking with Toby Mildon
for my latest book, "The Con Job".
Toby is a D&I professional,
and author of "Inclusive Growth",
and he's also a quadriplegic.
In our interview he talked me through
how traveling for meetings
is actually a physical expectation that most jobs
he's ever had, but it can be pretty exhausting.
He said to me, if two professional go on a train journey,
the person who has a physical disability
is always going to find every aspect much harder,
'cause they have to get through turnstiles,
get a ramp on board, make sure there's accessible toilets
nearby and are indeed working,
all before they even get to the station.
All this puts an additional mental load on them.
There is just so much more for them
to think about at every stage,
not to mention more strangers upon whom they must rely.
So in terms of your own confidence at work,
particularly if you travel for your job,
the tip here is to have discussions
with your colleagues and employers,
not just about your desk, or your office,
or even your building that you're in,
but all the other places where you're expected to visit.
This is important for all of us to address.
Ask a question like, what are the assumptions about things,
like safety, transport, accessibility,
weekend working, travel time,
even childcare provision that we are making
when we send people to work in other locations?
Don't get me wrong, these can be great opportunities,
but write down a list of all the ways you think your boss
would answer that last question,
and if you can live with those answers.
Before then talking with your boss
about what their answers actually are,
check out those assumptions with other colleagues
who have also travel for work,
and see how accurate your assumptions actually are
according to them.
So moving on to a setting a bit closer to home,
and that's the office buildings,
and the surrounding environment
where you work on a day-to-day basis.
This may be the campus on which you work,
and it's how well is it set up for people like you.
Now I recall working a few years ago
with a woman named Janet, and she was confident in herself,
but not hugely confident in her employer,
which is a big distinction that we don't talk enough about.
Now in our coaching session,
she shared what she initially saw as a small annoyance,
but is a reality for many employees, and in my experience,
particularly problematic for working women.
Janet said to me, "I'm expected to work late,
"and actually I don't mind it all,
" because it actually gives me time
"to get my kids off to school in the morning."
she sighed, and said, "What bothers me
"is that it's always dark when I leave,
"and when I asked my boss why the car park wasn't lit,
"he said it wasn't a priority,
"none of the other guys with whom I worked had ever asked."
So for Janet, this was more annoying after her boss
then installed a few months later,
a really vintage video game.
His rationale?
Well that was that he wanted to make the office
homely and inviting.
When we faced this challenge,
but before the video game machine came in,
I advised her to talk to her boss
about what a car park would do that was well-lit.
It might attract more women to the company,
and make it safer for everyone,
so she did, and she spoke with her boss,
and that conversation was illuminating.
It's quite ironic actually (laughs), anyway.
His response showed that it was a low priority,
it wasn't big for him, and it signaled to her
that he'd never listen to her as much as he did
to the guys around him,
and that her confidence probably wouldn't flourish there.
And that was surprising,
because that's a point worth remembering,
conversations don't always have to go your way
to be very valuable.
In fact, her boss's reaction or lack thereof,
was part of the impetus for her to eventually go.
Janet left about six months later,
and while that clearly wasn't the main reason she left,
the environment did play a part.
The third tip around your environment
is to look at the layout in the building itself,
and maybe even your office specifically,
and what it says about who succeeds there.
We all know stories about uncommunicative senior people
that are not helped by moving their offices
to the loftiest of floors,
and they can never speak to anybody,
or how open plan offices sometimes can be distracting
for introverts, but there's other hints often
about the expectations around who will succeed.
A few years ago,
I got a tour of this swanky new riverside offices
at a European client's before anyone had moved in.
Now, on the tour,
they talked about how they'd future proofed the building
for security, connectivity,
and all other eventual possibilities.
So we took in the views of the river
from the new CEO's office,
but in doing so, noticed that the CEO's toilet
had the ubiquitous men's toilet sign.
Clearly, the designers had future-proofed the building,
but in making this very small choice,
they had sent a subconscious message
that they were future-proofing
against the expectation that they'd ever have a female CEO,
or someone from a transgender background.
So obviously, a 10 pound door sign
would have been all it took,
maybe even removing gender completely,
but their choice sent a message as to who they expected
to literally and figuratively,
be seated on that throne (laughs),
and who they didn't expect to be there.
An easy tip for leaders when you're looking
at new office space is to ask an objective outsider
to look at the space, the environment,
and say, "Who do you think would actually
"do really well here?"
Ultimately, look at your existing office environment.
What does it tell you?
Is it a setting in which you can see yourself progressing?
And if you're building your career,
or want to develop your career faster,
"The Con Job" was so written for you.
In a society where we rate confidence too highly,
competent people, the kind who sometimes
notice their environment the most, are often overlooked.
They risk being overtaken by their over-confident,
but less competent colleagues.
If you want to stand up to the status quo,
and help me put an end to the over-importance
we put on confidence, and it's really competence
that should matter, then this is the book on that topic.
And keep up to date with the activity around the book launch
following #morecompetence on Twitter and Instagram.
And share it with your friends and colleagues,
'cause I got to be honest,
you probably won't be the only person feeling this way.
And subscribe to our channel,
so that you're the first to see the rest of this videos
in this series as they're released every week.
Thanks for watching, go back and check out
our other Competence versus Confidence playlist,
'cause there are tons more that complements this book.
And I'd also love you to check out
our Imposter Syndrome video
which helps you embrace your self-doubt.