…where you can win all the:

    • – influence,
    • – budget,
    • – time,
    • – opportunities, and
    • – justifiable confidence…

…you need, as an IC Manager or IC Director.  So you and your team can do your jobs exactly the way you want.  For good.

Truth be told, it’s all about the Justifiable Confidence: having it yourself, and being able to infuse it into the lives of everyone you and your team work with.  Everything else you want will flow from that. 

But what is ‘Shared Justifiable Confidence’, exactly?  Why does it matter?  Who’s going to need it, if you’re to have everything you desire, for good?  And how easily can you secure it for all those people?  

If you’d like to know the answers, we’ve provided them below.  You can gain this learning in about five minutes.

Confidence

Everybody wants to feel confident at work (and outside it too, come to that).  Of course they do.  Or do they?  Is it merely a ‘want’ or would it be more truthful to say that, in many aspects of life, it’s something we all need?  Imagine how stuck you could be in certain situations if your confidence suddenly left you.  Is it not the case that, oftentimes, your ability to feel confident (or at least confident enough) may be all that stands between you and the Fight/Flight/Freeze response? 

Far from being a nice-to-have, then, confidence can actually be about as primal as needs get.  It’s so essential, in fact, that many people (eg perhaps some of your clients) may be driven to convincing themselves they have it – often without any credible justification.  And many of these ‘false flag’ types of confidence risk being unhealthy.  They may be ‘justified’ when it comes to fulfilling that primal emotional need, but not justifiable when you look at what that confidence is built on.

And that can lead to all sorts of problems when it affects people’s Internal Communication practices.

Justifiable Confidence in Internal Communication

Perhaps the easiest way to explain what Justifiable Confidence looks like is to start by showing you what it isn’t.  There tend to be three main types of false flag:

  1. Sometimes people latch onto ‘unwarranted confidence’ (or overconfidence) – convincing themselves their abilities are greater than they really are (hence the now famous Dunning Kruger effect).

Some line managers may suffer from this when it comes to their Internal Communication abilities (which tends to make them pretty lousy clients if you have to work with them).  Unwarranted confidence can often result in defensiveness, a refusal to seek out or listen to advice, and can sometimes lead to antagonistic attitudes.

  1. Often (especially if their confidence involves a reliance on others) individuals or groups can resort to ‘cross-your-fingers-and-hope confidence’. Nervous flyers often do this any time they get on a plane. 

When it comes to IC, these cross-your-fingers people are likely to be more amenable clients than their overconfident counterparts.  But will it always occur to them to ask for help, in good time?  And they may set the bar at an unhealthily low level for themselves and others – as long as it’s just that teeny bit higher than it was before. 

So there’s a risk they may settle for ‘less-than’ when it comes to what they could be delivering for their audiences.

  1. And then there’s perhaps the most famous of all the confidence false flags: “Fake it ‘til you make it” confidence. (Impostor syndrome, anyone?)

Needless to say, when it comes to Internal Communication, none of these ersatz versions of confidence is healthy – for the psychological well-being of the individuals, or the organisations for whom they work.  Surely what everyone needs and deserves is Justifiable Confidence, wouldn’t you say?  If only  knew how.

What makes confidence justifiable?

This arises when people’s confidence is rooted in ‘sufficient credible evidence’.  It sounds simple enough, but immediately raises a number of questions.  When it comes to Internal Communication:

  1. Who needs to share in justifiable confidence?
  2. In what, exactly, do these people need to share justifiable confidence?
  3. What types of evidence, and how much of it, will be necessary to deliver that quality of confidence?

Question 1: Who needs to share in Justifiable Confidence?

This first question is crucial, because it determines how you answer the second and the third.  So, as far as your work is concerned, when it comes to the question of ‘who?’ we’ve identified seven potential groups.  Obviously you need to have justifiable confidence in yourself and your team.  But the more these other groups can share in that confidence, the more your influence, opportunities, budget, etc, can soar:

  1. Your leadership team – (coz you’ll need them to back you up when it comes to doing thins your way)
  2. Your clients – who’ll need to fall in step with your working practices
  3. Other line managers – who would need to have justifiable confidence in any practices you make available for them to follow
  4. Approval Group members
  5. Your organisation’s employees
  6. External stakeholders who’ll be affected by the way those employees perform
  7. Independent observers (regulators, potential investors, journalists etc)

The last two groups may seem a bit odd.  But would the well-being of your organisation be better off if any of these groups were unable to have justifiable confidence in the way everyone’s communicating internally?  Hardly. 

And just imagine what it would be like if they did all share that confidence.  Seriously, give yourself a moment to sit with that.

Question 2: In what, specifically, would these people need to share that Justifiable Confidence?

We need to tackle this question in two parts. 

First off, they would need to have justifiable confidence in every one of your organisation’s IC practices and systems.  These would include things like your:

  • Language standards
  • Channel Mix
  • Briefing Process
  • Campaign Planning procedures
  • Approvals & Sign-off process
  • Message Calendar
  • Feedback systems

Second, they would need to share that confidence in:

  • how each of those practices and systems is designed, and
  • how they’re being applied.

What if all those groups we listed above could share in that confidence?  Currently that may seem like a stretch.  But think of the prize.  In fact, prizes…

What’s in it for you – and everyone else?

If (or perhaps when) you can deliver this Shared Justifiable Confidence (SJC) you’ll be all but certain to have all the influence, opportunities, time and budget you want, for the rest of your career – wherever it takes you in the future.  Not to mention being able to save yourself shed loads of time, and being able to properly switch off at the end of each and every working day. 

Then there’s your contribution to others: significantly denting, or even eliminating Impostor Syndrome from the lives of goodness knows how many people around your organisation; leading to their increased well-being, productivity and loyalty (and the lower recruitment and training overheads which would inevitably follow). 

And there’s the improved results for your organisation’s external stakeholders, along with lower operating costs and higher brand value.  The list just goes on and on.

But what would it take to get here? 

Question 3: What types of credible evidence, and how much of it, would you need?…

…for everybody’s confidence in all your working practices and systems to be justifiable?

This question takes longer to answer than we have space for here. 

The good news is that, if you’re curious about how you can establish SJC in your organisation, we can share the answers with you in a FREE 90 minute masterclass.  

If Shared Justifiable Confidence sounds like it might support or enhance your goals (or even help you define or refine them) you can find out more here.