Confidence at Work Course: A Toolkit for Professionals

Organisational psychology. Equip your mind for business.

Are you ready to unlock your true potential? If low confidence, imposter syndrome or shyness have been holding you back, it's time to break free. Do you want to show more self-assurance when talking to colleagues and customers, participating in meetings, presenting ideas or building your career? This course will show you how to increase your confidence using tools from positive psychology. Learn how to challenge the thinking habits that drive self-doubt, fear of failure and self-consciousness. Discover how to manage your emotions and build a confident mindset, so you feel higher levels of personal power and self-belief.

Aims

This course aims to equip you with increased self-belief and confidence. You will leave with reliable tactics for boosting your wellbeing and reducing ‘learned helplessness’. This will help you on your journey to renewed self-assurance, confidence and personal power.

Outcomes

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• regulate your emotions to increase your personal power and confidence
• build a positive self-image so you can reduce self-consciousness and increase self-assurance
• cultivate an optimistic outlook by focusing on your strengths and using solution-focused thinking tools
• use ‘thought disputation’ to overcome feelings of helplessness or overwhelm
• reduce fear of failure, perfectionism and imposter syndrome by strengthening your self-compassion
• apply the strategies you have learned to a range of situations – including meetings, job interviews, performance appraisals, client interactions and when providing professional advice.

Content

Defining confidence

You can't build your confidence if you don't understand what it is. In this module, you will explore different forms of confidence and learn how to cultivate them. You will also discuss the difference between confidence, competence, assertiveness and high self-esteem. During this section of the course, you will pinpoint your specific learning objectives and get tips on how to achieve them.

Building emotional mastery

Confident people have high emotional intelligence. They are able to recognise and regulate their emotions rather than living in 'reactive mode'. In this session, you will experiment with simple mood regulation techniques. These include tracking your moods, working on your daily positivity ratio and learning to reframe emotions.

Enhancing your self-image

Self-perception is a key element of social confidence. After all, there are strong links between your self-image and what you believe others think about you. In this module, you'll explore ways that self-awareness can be distorted, leading to self-consciousness and even social anxiety. You'll also discover how the acronym CUBED can help you beat this kind of distorted thinking.

Leveraging your strengths

It's hard to be confident when you see the world as a threatening place. In this module, you will explore practical strategies for developing and empowering, optimistic mindset. First, you'll learn to leverage your personal strengths instead of dwelling on perceived limitations. Then you'll discover a new way to tackle setbacks, using solution-focused thinking tools.

Breaking free of limiting beliefs

As the old saying goes, ″whether you believe you can or believe you can't – you're right.″ So, what can you do if you have beliefs that hold you back? In this module, you'll get answers to that million-dollar question. You'll learn how to recognise the thinking patterns that generate limiting beliefs. Then you'll experiment with using the ABCD technique to challenge those patterns. Along the way, you'll learn about self-efficacy and how to boost it using ‘implementation intention statements’.

Moving from self-sabotage to self-compassion

Do you unconsciously sabotage your own success? It's time to stop being your own worst enemy. In this module you'll hear about a surprising link between shame and self-sabotage. Then you'll learn how to beat fear of failure, perfectionism and imposter syndrome using an evidence-based self-compassion model.

Intended audience

This introductory course is suitable for professionals who want to build their confidence levels or beat imposter syndrome.  

Delivery modes

• Face-to-face, presenter-taught workshop
• Online workshop via the platform Zoom

Delivery style

This course is interactive and based on experiential learning. You will be involved in group conversations, discussing case studies and completing written exercises. There will be several opportunities to ask the course facilitator questions or request tips for dealing with your real-life situations. You will get the most from this course if you are:

• willing to contribute to group discussions
• confident communicating verbally in English
• comfortable participating in role-play style activities
• using a computer with a working camera and microphone (if enrolling in an online session of the course).

Prerequisites

None

Materials

All course materials are provided electronically. Printing services are not provided.

Recommended reading

• Brown, B. (2022). The Gifts of Imperfection: 10th Anniversary Edition. Hazeldon Publishing. 
• Carr, A. (2020). Positive psychology and you: a self-development guide. Routledge.
• Dweck, C. S. (2017). Mindset. [Kindle iOS version]. 
• Linley, A., Willars, J., & Biswas-Diener, R. (2010). The Strengths Book: Be Confident, Be Successful and Enjoy Better Relationships by Realising the Best of You. CAPP Press. 
• Neff, K. (2015). Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself. London: HarperCollins.
• Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and well-being. Free Press.