The Four C’s Approach to building confidence
The 4 C's approach to building confidence, was developed by Dan Sullivan, who is an experienced professional strategic coach. The idea is that, there is a fundamental key process, that is made up of four stages, that we have to move through in order to build confidence.
This offers a new way for you to think about cultivating your own confidence, and can be a useful framework to work out a practical way forward.
It starts with COMMITMENT
This stage is about making a firm decision and committing yourself doing something, that you don’t yet feel totally capable or confident in doing. It involves setting a clear intention and making a promise to yourself that you will take action. E.g. You want to build your confidence in public speaking. So you speak to your manager, and decide that at the next team meeting you will deliver the presentation. You’ve actually made that commitment to do something.
The next stage is COURAGE
Courage to do the thing that you made the commitment to. Courage is a willingness to go forward in spite of not yet feeling confident. It might involve trying new things, taking risks, or challenging yourself in situations that make you nervous. It will probably feel scary, and uncomfortable. But this stage is a really important part to move through to move towards confidence. Example: Courage in delivering the presentation, despite feeling nervous or discomfort.
Then from the courage comes CAPABILITY
You’ve pushed yourself through the discomfort in order to build a new skill or a new level of capability that you didn’t have before. This stage involves actively acquiring new skills, seeking out learning opportunities, and gaining new experience, practicing and learning. It's about building your competence and becoming more capable in those specific areas that you want to work on. E.g. From delivering the presentations, you learnt how to do it better next time, you do it again, you might do a training workshop on public speaking, or do practice session with a peer.
From capability comes CONFIDENCE
Confidence is how you feel as a result of obtaining this new capability. So at this point, you’ve got a stronger belief in your abilities, and you feel more comfortable in this new area of capability that you’ve developed. E.g. you feel confident in delivering presentations to people now.
Then in turn that confidence fills you with the capacity to make a further commitment…
This framework can be used across a range of situations where confidence needs to be developed, confidence in gaining technical skills, building confidence in sharing your opinion in meetings, having confidence in dealing with difficult phone conversations, having confidence in saying no, it can really be applied to any area you like.
LOOKING BACK
With this framework in mind, I’ll invite you to think of a time in the past, it could be recent, or a long time ago, where you went through this process, and developed your confidence in something. And you can identify each of these stages by asking yourself these questions…
What did I commit to?
Why did this take courage?
What was the new capability that emerged?
What was the higher level of confidence that grew?
LOOKING Forwards
With this framework in mind, I’ll invite you to think about what you would like to build more confidence in specifically? Get as precise as you can.
Now you can ask yourself, in order to build this new area of confidence…
What will I commit to?
Why will this take courage?
What will be the new capability that will emerge?
What will be the higher level of confidence that grows?