Tuesday 18 February 2014

“You can do it!” - why encouragements can fail

Managers have more than other people the power and tools to influence people’s lives. Employees look up to their managers for examples and for feedback. They try to learn and find those qualities who could also make them successful.
Self confidence is a quality that can be trained and that needs to be feed with constant reassurement so that it will stay at a high level. Even the people who have generally a high level of self confidence go through moments of uncertainty when they need someone to tell them “You can do it!”
It happens quite a lot to hear encouragements from our managers but somehow only a few of these incentives have an impact on us. Why? Maybe because we don’t appreciate those persons, because we think they are just saying it to make us feel good or because they don’t know us good enough to be able to estimate if we can do what we want or not.

I was asked many times who is the person who influenced my professional life and whom I appreciate as a professional. My thoughts go always to one of my first managers because he encouraged me to pursue my dream. He said I have all it takes to achieve what I want and he is convinced I can do it. For me it meant so much, specially because I was at the beginning of my career and I was not sure if I had chosen the right area to work in. His words had such an impact on me and motivated me to work very hard for what I wanted professionally.
Thinking back, I realize that this specific encouragement had such a positive impact on me because I had a great respect for that person, I was impressed by his career and we worked together for enough time so that he could see my performance and potential. And there was something else. There was something in the way he talk to me. I had the feeling he is honest.

The risk of encouraging someone is to be perceived as fake and therefore cause more damage than good.
We shouldn't say “You can do it!” to someone if:
  • we don’t know the other person good enough to tell what are his\her skills and abilities
  • we think the person can’t do what she\he wants but we say it anyway because we find nothing better to say and we think it can’t hurt
  • we don’t have enough information about what the other person wants to do
  • we don’t have any examples and arguments to support our encouragement.

For some people it is natural to make positive and effective encouragements, however most of us need to learn this ability and to refine it in time. I find this to be an essential ability for every manager because this will help to build up and maintain an increased employee motivation. Employee who have a high level of self confidence can also have a great performance and do whatever it takes to reach the goals of the company.