Most advice about how to be more confident at work lands somewhere around believing in yourself or faking it until you make it. That advice is not wrong. It is incomplete. Confidence does not come from thinking differently. It comes from doing something over and over until you have actual evidence you can do it. You cannot wait to feel ready. The feeling comes from the doing.

In this episode, I start with the paradox at the center of confidence: you want it before the action, but you can only get it through the action. I share what happened when I recently worked with a cohort of new managers — competent people who had earned their promotions and were still waiting for the confidence to arrive on its own. There is no fairy godmother with a confidence wand. The path to confidence runs through the reps, not around them.

I also share the arc of my own speaking career. Coming up on 17 years in business, my confidence on stage did not arrive at the start. It was built through smaller audiences, more opportunities, and incrementally higher stakes over time. Every rep added evidence, the evidence became confidence, and the confidence made the next rep easier. That is the whole cycle — and it is not exceptional. It is simply how the process works for anyone willing to do the work.

Research backs this up. Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura found that mastery experiences — actually doing the thing and building a record of having done it — are the single strongest predictor of confidence in any skill area. Not watching others do it, not being told you can, not mantras or affirmations. Doing it yourself, repeatedly. That finding has held the test of time across decades of research since the 1970s and 1980s.

The Reps Method is the three-step framework at the center of this episode. Name the Skill: get specific about what you want to build confidence in — not confidence in general, which is too broad to practice, but confidence speaking up in the weekly leadership team meeting, or confidence leading a difficult conversation. Start Small: find the lowest-stakes version of the thing and start there, just like starting at level one before you advance to harder levels. Do It Again: the rep is not the goal; the habit of seeking reps is. After each one, ask what worked and what you would do differently, then actively seek the next one. Confidence compounds, and at some point the evidence starts to outweigh the doubt.

Listen and catch the full episode here or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also watch it and replay it on my YouTube channel, JanelAndersonPhD.

LINKS RELATED TO THIS EPISODE:

Episode 289 — Your Boss Is Not a Mind Reader — if you want more reps, you may need to ask your boss for the opportunities. The Name It, Frame It, Say It framework from this episode is a natural companion.

Episode 287 — Stop Believing Everything You Think at Work — the Story Audit is useful when the inner critic starts narrating after a rep that did not go perfectly.

How do you get to be confident enough to do something that you've never done before, you don't. Well, at least not really, because the thing that would give you the confidence is experience, and you can't get the experience until you do the thing. It's a bit of a paradox. We want the confidence before the action, but confidence is typically the result of having taken action.

Let's imagine you want to learn a new skill. Maybe you want to play pickleball, learn to knit, bake a souffle. It would be silly for you to say, Well, I'm going to wait until I have the confidence to try this out. Absolutely silly.

But yet, at work, you wait to be ready for something that you lack confidence in, and what does that cost you? What if confidence isn't something you find, but something you build? Whether that's in leading people, or holding hard conversations, or public speaking, most advice is going to land somewhere around the lines of like, believe in yourself, or fake it until you make it, and that advice, my friends, is flat out wrong. Confidence doesn't come from thinking differently.

You can't think your way into being more confident. And even if you could, that's just a head game. True confidence comes from doing something over and over and over until you have actual evidence that you can do it and that you can do it well. Now you can't wait to feel ready.

The feeling comes from the doing. So most people have this sequence backwards. The sequence that they expect is feel confident and then act. But the sequence that actually works is act.

Maybe do it badly the first few times. Build some evidence by putting in the reps, and then the confidence follows. So, waiting to feel ready is a strategy that keeps people stuck, and I've seen it stall people's careers. I've seen it stall people building skills that they need for career advancement or for better visibility in their organization.

It's the same in roles. It's the same in again levels of visibility, and it's the same essentially risk that's costing you in your career. But putting in the reps is what creates the confidence, not the other way around. Now, I just finished working with a cohort of new managers.

They had all just been promoted in the corporation that they worked in, and I was there for new manager training. And there was a universal theme across the crew, and it was how do I feel more confident in this new leadership role? Now these were competent people. They were promoted because they had earned it.

They were smart managers, and they were waiting for the confidence to arrive on its own. Now I got to be in the fortunate or misfortunate, unfortunate position of telling them that no fairy godmother was going to come with a confidence wand and tap them on the shoulder or tap them on the head. So what they were waiting for is that feeling that comes after having done something a bunch of times. Now, why the strategy of waiting isn't working is because if you're waiting, that means you're not in action.

So you have to be in action, putting in the reps in order to get the confidence again. It's a little counterintuitive. It kind of reminds me of somebody who might be frustrated because they can't get a job because they don't have any experience, but they can't get any experience because they can't get a job. So it's a little bit like that.

But if you find yourself in that position, you know what you need to do is you need to go volunteer. You need to get an internship. You need to get something under your belt so that you get some experience. So the same is true with building confidence.

Okay, so again, confidence comes through putting in the repetitions, building the muscle, and it does not come through osmosis from the environment around you. It does not come from your new title, and again, there is no fairy godmother that is going to come and zap you on the head with the confidence wand that is going to give you that confidence. Now, I know this firsthand from being a speaker, and I mean, I've been in business now between 16 and 17 years. I'm coming up on a 17th anniversary soon.

My speaking career did not start with confidence on the stage, at least not in this career. Okay, so think about everything that goes into being a speaker on stage. It's not just being on the stage speaking. It's all the business side of it that comes before that to land the speaking engagement, negotiate a contract, sign a contract, send an invoice-all these different things.

Okay, all of that was new to me, and so there was the learning the business side of it. And I mean, speaking on stage is something that comes quite natural to me. But every single time I'm working on new material, or every single time I'm customizing something for an audience, there is the opportunity for me to put in the reps, for me to get more confidence. That's where practice comes in in my business these days.

I mean, I know my con confidence is higher, or at least it seems higher to other people because I have put in so many reps again over 16, almost 17 years of doing this, I have put in the reps so that when I get up on stage, this is not my first rodeo, and I know what I'm doing. Again, because I've done it. Now I shudder to think what this would have been like, you know, 15, 1617, years ago when I was brand new at this. And in fact, some of you might be listening to this podcast, who saw me speak back then, and you might be like, Yeah, you know what?

She has grown in not only her competence but also her confidence over time. So back then, it was smaller opportunities, it was smaller audiences, and the stakes were incrementally getting higher over time, and I was putting in the repetitions over time. Now, I just did an event a couple weeks ago for a client who's now hired me four times in a row every year for this same event, and I tell you what, I had so much fun with that audience. And of course, it's different people every time, but same parent organization, but different people every time.

I love doing that material for that audience because I know generally what the audience is going to be like. I know my material inside and out, backward and forward, upside down, and inside out all the things, and it was just a blast. I was so confident. It was so I was so playful with the audience and all of that, but again, that doesn't come by accident, and that certainly does not come by waiting around for something to happen.

It comes from putting in the reps. Every single rep adds evidence, evidence to me that I know what I'm doing and that I do what I do well. That evidence becomes confidence, and that confidence makes the next rep easier, and that's the whole cycle. You put in the work, you get the evidence that you're able to do the thing, and then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It come, it becomes a positive cycle. Now, I'm not exceptional in this, and what I mean by that, well, of course, I am exceptional, and now I am exceptional on stage too because I've put in all the reps. But that's not what I meant by this isn't exceptional. What I mean by I'm not an exception to the rule.

I'm not a special unicorn here. This is how the process works for anyone who wants to develop confidence. You have to be willing to roll up your sleeves and put in the work and put in the reps because that's where the confidence comes from. Now, research backs me up on this.

Decades ago, Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura found that mastery experiences-that is, actually doing the thing over and over and over and building a track record of having done it-that is the single strongest predictor of confidence in any skill area, not watching other people do it, not being told you can do it, not doing a bunch of mantras about being able to do it, but actually doing it. So even though this research that led to these conclusions was conducted in the 1970s and 1980s, the results have held the test of time over all these decades. So, the key finding from Bandura's research is that mastery experiences, or that would be direct personal performance of the skill that you're trying to get the confidence in, mastery experiences. Again, doing it over and over and over until you have some level of mastery over it.

Those experiences are the most powerful source of self-efficacy. That is you knowing you're good at it, and that is stronger than vicarious experiences where you think your way through it. It is stronger than people trying to persuade you that you're good at it, or stronger than anything else, you doing the work and you seeing yourself do the work and go like, oh, look at this! Look at how good I have become at this.

Okay, so I have boiled this down into a method for you, so that if you are looking to build confidence in some area, some new skill, or some area of your work, I've got three steps for you to help build your confidence through experience. So I call this the reps method, and step one is to name the skill. So get really specific about what you want to be more confident in. So I just want to be more confident is way too broad in order to practice.

Confident at what? So I want to be more confident speaking up in our weekly leadership team meeting? Now that's something that you can actually do something about. So for you, what is it?

What specifically do you want to build confidence in? Maybe it's speaking up in meetings. Maybe it's holding difficult conversations. Maybe it is presenting your ideas to larger groups of people.

Get really specific. What specifically do you want to build confidence in? And the more precise the answer, the more intentional your practice around it can become. Okay, so that is step one.

Name the skill. Step two is start small. Don't start at the biggest challenge. If you want to speak in front of groups of people, don't start in a town hall full of you know 500 people who work for your organization.

No, no, no. You want to start small. Find a low stakes version of the thing and do there. So maybe it's a lunch and learn for your team.

Maybe it is joining a Toastmasters club where you practice public speaking in a very very low stakes environment. So you want to put the volume of the level of difficulty at the right level, and that is the mechanism. Again, and video games are and any sort of word puzzles that sort of thing are great at this. You start on level one.

You start the really easy level, and you don't move to level two until you have mastered level one. So that's what we're talking about here in terms of start small. So you want to start at the lowest level, the lowest increment that you can. And you know, so again, maybe that's a lunch and learn if you want to do public speaking.

Maybe that's Toastmasters. Maybe then eventually you speak up and you present something at a department meeting, and then at a smaller external conference in your field. Okay, so you start small, you put in the reps, and you're building over time. It's just like going to the gym and lifting weights to get stronger.

You don't start with really, really, really heavy weights. In fact, you're going to hurt yourself if you do that. You might hurt your professional reputation if you start with a rep that's at too high of a level. So you want to start with a low level, build the confidence there, and then you gradually build up to that heavier weight or to a higher stakes situation.

Again, you want to lead a difficult conversation. Have some lower stakes versions of that with peers or with people in your personal life before you go to your boss or to somebody that where the stakes are much higher. Okay, each step you take, each repetition you put in is incrementally moving you towards that level of mastery that is going to give you the confidence that you so desire. And I'm sorry to tell you there are no shortcuts.

Okay, so again, step one was to name specifically the thing that you want to become more confident in. Step two is to start small, and step three is to do it again, do it again and again and again. A single rep is not the goal. A habit of seeking out the experiences where you get a chance to build more reps is what we're what we're going for.

That is the goal. And after each rep, ask yourself what worked. What would I do differently? And then actively seek the next opportunity and put into play what you learned from the previous rep.

Confidence, my friends, compounds. You're not waiting for a breakthrough. You're building a body of evidence that says that you are good at this one rep at a time, and at some point the evidence starts to outweigh the doubt, and that, my friends, is when you feel confident. Okay, so as we wrap this episode up, let me just give you a few quick reminders.

Confidence is not a prerequisite to action; it is a byproduct of it. Confidence comes after you have put in the reps. Research supports it. Mastery experiences where you know you have mastered the task-that is what we're going for.

That is the single strongest source of confidence in any skill, not self-talk, not affirmations, actual experience and mastery of you doing it. Okay, next, get specific about what you want to build. So here, this is your takeaway tool. Number one, get specific about what you want to build the confidence in, and again, be more confident is not a plan.

Speak up in the weekly leadership meeting is a plan. Then number two, start small. You want to again dial the volume down. You want to start at level one of that video game.

Do the easy reps first, and then build the confidence, build the momentum to do the the more challenging situations. So it's not one big leap; it's small incremental moves over time. And then number three, each rep leads to more evidence, and that evidence is going to be the thing that gives you the confidence because confidence is what happens when your evidence starts to outweigh your doubt. Okay, put it to work this week, my friends.

Name one thing that you want to be more confident in doing, and it could be something in your personal life, it could be something in your professional life, and be specific. Then identify the smallest version of that thing that you could do in the next two weeks-not a high-level top ladder rung item, but the next small thing, and then do it, and then find the next one, and then do that, and then do that, and then do that. Okay, that is the rep's method, one rep at a time. Building confidence in communication and in leadership, and in the skills that matter the most in your role and in your career is the kind of work that I do with leaders and emerging leaders when I coach them and when I train them.

And if this is a conversation worth having with your team or with your organization, if I might be somebody who could come in and be an agent of change and facilitate some of that, by all means, reach out to me at dranelAnderson.com. We'll set up some time to talk to see if I might be a good facilitator of helping your team learn the skill and then put the reps in so that they become more confident in it. All right, my friends, if this episode was meaningful to you, please bookmark it so that you can come back to it the next time you need a booster shot of confidence, or share it with somebody else who might benefit from this from this conversation as well. All right, my friends, be well, and I will catch you next week here on the Working Conversations podcast.