SELF-CONFIDENCE:
Self-confidence
can be boiled down to the belief that a person has it in their ability to succeed
at a task, based on whether or not they have been able to perform the task in
the past. However, there are actually two aspects of self-confidence. The first
is competence, whether or not you have the necessary skills and abilities to
complete a task. The second is self-assurance and whether or not you believe
that you have the ability to complete the task. Think about this for a moment;
you might have been trained in interview skills, but you might not feel
comfortable in interviews. In this case, you would have the competence but lack
the self-assurance. On the other hand, you could believe that you have the
ability to do something but not have the skills to actually carry it through.
In this case, you are very self-assured, but you don’t have the competence to do
the job. True self-confidence occurs when both competence and self-assurance
are in balance with each other. Self-confidence has been shown to be important
in the recovery from injury, overcoming setbacks, and moving through negative
experiences in life. Someone with self-confidence has a belief that they will
be able to recover, move past the negative, and again experience the positive.
In the business world, self-confidence functions in much the same way. It
enables an employee to recover from setbacks and challenges and continue to
move forward.
SELF-ESTEEM:
Self-esteem
is the capacity to respect and think well of yourself. It means that you
appreciate yourself as a unique individual with your own set of skills,
talents, and abilities. David Burns defines self-esteem as “the capacity to
experience maximal self-love and joy whether or not you are successful at any
point in your life.” Psychologist Maxine Elliott has researched self-esteem and
realized that people’s self-esteem will vary from individual to individual when
they are facing a setback. People who have a high level of self-esteem will be able
to respond to a damaging event by using their past experience and their coping
abilities and will not have much damage to their current level of self-esteem.
They will still see themselves as valuable and talented even if the current evidence
seems to indicate otherwise.
However,
most people will experience some loss of self-esteem when they face a negative situation
and unfortunately, those who already have low self-esteem will also experience
the largest reduction in what little self-esteem they have. In other words,
they will see their failure as further proof that they are incapable of being
successful. This type of negative cycle will perpetuate itself each time that a
person with low self-esteem faces failure, criticism or roadblocks.
SELF-EFFICACY:
Albert
Bandura is considered an expert on the concept of self-efficacy. He stated that
people perceive their own self-efficacy as “people’s judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain
designated types of performances. It is concerned not with the skills one has
but with the judgments of what one can do with whatever skills one possesses.”
In other words, self-efficacy is an individual’s evaluation of their own
ability to be successful in attaining a specific goal.
Bandura
stated that the amount of self-efficacy a person has is dependent on their
ability to apply coping behaviors, increase their level of effort, and how long
they will be able to retain their optimism when facing difficult obstacles and
experiences. In addition, he stated that the more a person is tested by facing
their fears and stepping outside of their comfort zones, the more they will
enhance their sense of self-efficacy. If a person does not have a base level of
self-efficacy, they will be unwilling to attempt a
new task or challenge, which could, of course, hold them back in the workplace.
The greater your self-efficacy, the more willing you will be to grow your
skills by attempting new challenges and
the less you will be affected if you don’t succeed.
