Personal Confidence Mini Series Part 3. Being Authoritative
“Being authoritative is the difference between knowing your shit and knowing your shit.” Anon
Welcome to the third of four blogs helping people become more confident. If you have read the previous two then you will be familiar with assertiveness and with assuredness, in this bog we will look at the important component of confidence that is authoritative behaviour.
What does being Authoritative mean?
From our previous blogs we know that trust is important, and being authoritative is about being trusted by demonstrating knowledge of something or having a skill or an experience that is accurate, true and reliable. People who demonstrate this behaviour can be described as self confident, they are self assured, that have a strong sense of self belief and this results in a commanding delivery style and one that is most likely to be respected. In short they can develop skills to become influential. Quite a big leap for those lacking confidence so what are the first steps?
Building Authoritative Skills to become more Influential and Confident
The first place to start in becoming more authoritative is looking at our skills. Ask yourself how your skills can be improved and how can you look to apply them more effectively. By having the experience in applying these skills you will then be able to discuss them confidently as someone who has actually done it rather than those who just talk about it. This lends greater credibility and builds trust and people can be influenced to a more effective outcome.
The second area to building authoritative skills is to improve the knowledge we have. Once we have experience in something we can read around the subject, get different points of view from other experienced people, research different options and choices and look to apply them. The people who are authoritative are described as being influential and an authority on a subject, are open to different methods and approaches; they have a tendency to see improvement coming from other areas and are non judgemental in there viewpoints, choosing to consider rather than react. This behaviour leads to them feeling confident and assertive due in no small part to creating choice.
Back to Choice Again and the Element of Insight
In the first blog, we discussed the element of creating choice, as it helps us to determine a direction a resulting behaviour and a positive feeling of being in control. Being authoritative is about using our skills, knowledge and experience and widening them to create different points of view and developing not just an opinion but trusted insight. This trust that people have in you helps you to feel more confident in yourself and your insight. Others will see your behaviour as positive and influential.
A quick word on insight, it is different to opinion. Insight is based on fact and substantiation and it can be backed up. Insight can be enriched with evidence based experience and specific skills and moves the giver of insight into a stronger and more confident position. This position can be perceived as being less of a novice and more of the influential trusted expert. Confident people therefore are assertive and offer options and choices, they are assured as they create and build strong levels of belief and trust and they are authoritative because they can demonstrate knowledge and true understanding.
In our final blog we will look at how important it is to stay true to yourself, confident people are authentic.
Thank you for reading, if you have not read the other blogs please do so and share them, and if you or your team needs help with building confidence then get in touch with me Simon@serialtrainer7.com
