Perfecting Your Confidence with Situation Awareness!

Now you are aware about the Me and You fac­tors to improve con­fi­dence.  But there are still tremors in your feet.  You still lack of con­fi­dence when fac­ing a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion.  You feel the world is tum­bling down when you need to present the work progress in front of the man­age­ment.  You feel shaky when you need to engage mul­ti­ple par­ties to push an ini­tia­tive.  A VIP is vis­it­ing the work­place next week, and you feel that you could just take urgent leave from work… What’s going on?  Didn’t we say the Me and You fac­tor and we should be able to man­age any sit­u­a­tion sufficiently?

Yes, it’s true.  With the Me fac­tor alone, we are com­fort­able with any sit­u­a­tion by being aware of our­selves.  We know what we can con­trol and what we can’t.  With the You fac­tor, we are able to under­stand some­one else’s need and thoughts.  We stand a higher chance of nego­ti­a­tion and influ­ence with the other party.  With the final fac­tor, Sit­u­a­tion fac­tor, we com­plete the equa­tion of per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity with the aware­ness of sit­u­a­tional demands and bound­aries.  Aware­ness of the Sit­u­a­tion fac­tor allows see­ing what is really needed at that point of time and con­text.  Thus guid­ing us to take the cor­rect action and gain con­fi­dence.  Remem­ber, aware­ness is always the fun­da­men­tal block of confidence!

We can con­sider Me fac­tor as the first layer, You fac­tor as the sec­ond layer and Sit­u­a­tion fac­tor as the third layer.  Each addi­tional layer allows us to achieve a higher per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity, which inher­ently ties to indi­vid­ual con­fi­dence.  We must agree that each sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent with dif­fer­ent objec­tives and his­tory.  Fur­ther­more, there are dif­fer­ent demands and bound­aries in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions.  We won’t be able to use the same tech­niques to boost con­fi­dence and per­sonal productivity.

How do we boost con­fi­dence and per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity? We want to know as much as pos­si­ble of the sit­u­a­tion.  Let’s take the pre­sen­ta­tion as an exam­ple.  What are we pre­sent­ing?  Why are we pre­sent­ing? What’s the objec­tive of this pre­sen­ta­tion?  What’s the key mes­sage you want to drive the point across?  Who are we pre­sent­ing to? Where will the pre­sen­ta­tion be?  What do you want to be in the slides?  Are you suf­fi­ciently pre­pared for FAQ?  Do you need addi­tional experts to be in the pre­sen­ta­tion to take questions?

Hav­ing asked the ques­tions, you have built an aware­ness of the sit­u­a­tion (Sit­u­a­tion fac­tor).  You know what to expect in the sit­u­a­tion.  Now you address each ques­tion on the sit­u­a­tion.  Which are the ones that you can con­trol (Me fac­tor)? – Key mes­sage, con­tent of slides, FAQ and addi­tional experts.  What are the things that you can influ­ence (You fac­tor)?  — Key mes­sage, man­age­ment and addi­tional experts.  Which areas are still not addressed? – You iden­ti­fied the miss­ing gaps and fill them accord­ingly.  Your con­fi­dence even­tu­ally builds up in han­dling the situation.

What’s next?  You want to be well-prepared for the pre­sen­ta­tion. A “well-prepared” pre­sen­ta­tion is the posi­tion you want to be in before the sit­u­a­tion arises.  Essen­tially, you want to enter into a posi­tion that is advan­ta­geous to you and does not jeop­ar­dize you in any­way.  By doing nec­es­sary prepa­ra­tion of the pre­sen­ta­tion, you are enter­ing a valid posi­tion for the sit­u­a­tion.  With every­thing addressed (at your best knowl­edge), you will feel com­fort­able and con­fi­dent for the situation.

In sum­mary, lack of con­fi­dence in a sit­u­a­tion is attrib­uted to the lack of aware­ness of the Sit­u­a­tion fac­tor.  By under­stand­ing the Sit­u­a­tional fac­tor, with the assis­tance of aware­ness of the Me and You fac­tor, you are able to boost a higher level of con­fi­dence in han­dling them.  Re-look our pre­sen­ta­tion exam­ple.  An under­stand­ing of the pre­sen­ta­tion needs, demands, scope and con­text allows the pre­sen­ter to be more pre­pared for it – essen­tially the con­fi­dence level for pre­sen­ta­tion.  Keep in mind that con­fi­dence is about aware­ness.  We hope you will develop a higher sense of aware­ness, thus boost­ing the con­fi­dence in han­dling situations.

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