Lacking Confidence

I was recently holding office hours for my Inner Circle members.

One of my members asked me what to do about a lack of confidence in his financial modeling skills.

He was concerned that his insecurity around this area would hold him back.

I asked him a simple question.

“Are you good at financial modeling in Microsoft Excel?”

He said, “No.”

I said, “You don’t have a confidence problem. You have a competence problem.

What you see as a self-confidence issue, I see as accurate thinking.

You aren’t supposed to be confident until after you’ve developed competence.

Now, if you become competent in financial modeling and still feel insecure about your ability, then you have a confidence problem.

Until then, forget about reading a book on self-confidence. Instead, go get a book on financial modeling in Excel.”

This exchange is an excellent example of working through an emotional intelligence situation.

To oversimplify a bit, emotional intelligence involves several steps.

The first step involves noticing your feelings. The second involves figuring out what those feelings are telling you to do.

Emotions provide guidance in our lives and careers. They give us an important message that can be problematic if ignored or interpreted incorrectly.

In the case of this member, he was emotionally adept enough to recognize that he was feeling insecure about his Excel skills.

His original thinking was that maybe there was something wrong with his psyche, confidence, or self-esteem. After our conversation, he realized he simply needed to study finance and Excel modeling more.

Developing emotional intelligence will help you make better decisions for yourself.

It provides you the ability to recognize, interpret, and act on your own emotions appropriately. It also helps you immensely in recognizing, interpreting, and understanding someone else’s emotions.

If you feel more confident in your intellectual intelligence than your emotional intelligence, I invite you to learn more about my program on How to Develop Your Emotional Intelligence (EQ) to Advance Your Career. It will be released for a short time next month. To be notified when it’s available, submit the form below.