Recently I had two separate leaders from completely different organizations tell me they didn’t think their team could be successful around accomplishing the challenge at hand.

And they’re right.

Because if the leader has a crisis of confidence, then the team questions their own competence. An insecure, apprehensive team will struggle to be successful.

Often in our work we talk about creating an empowering context for your team. And what we can tell you is one of the key ingredients is confidence in your team.

Studies have shown that high expectations lead to high performance. We take someone else’s belief in our ability as proof of our capability—and we want to prove them right.

So as a leader, you have to believe in the potential of your people to:

• be innovative
• tackle the most difficult of challenges
• overcome hurt feelings
• do what’s best for the organization

Because if you don’t believe they can, neither will they.

And let’s say you feel you have good reason for having a crisis of confidence in your team's ability to be successful with the challenges ahead. What do you do?

1. Ask yourself: What’s in the way? What’s missing?

Chances are it’s not about the team. It’s likely about a process, an individual, an unresolved issue, or a resource gap. All of these are challenges that can be addressed and overcome (rather than an overarching, pit-of-your-stomach, nebulous, unsolvable uncertainty).

2. Then ask the team to help you tackle and overcome the obstacle.

“Because we’re a group of smart, committed people. And yes, this isn’t easy. And I know that together we can accomplish just about anything we set our minds to. We’ve got this.”

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