4 Steps to Staying Confident Throughout Difficult Situations

Do you know who you are? How would you react if people you worked with ganged up on you? That is the experience Belinda had. Her success somehow was seen as a threat to others from her boss to his boss to her colleagues. She was marginalized, excluded from meetings, gossiped about. Here is what she did to empower herself and hold onto her confidence: 

She struggled with her fears and disappointment…
Difficult things happen to competent people and the “invitation” from those that are threatened by your success is to have you feel less than, to feel as if you are a persona non grata – an unwelcome person.  Being “cast out” was a very painful and upsetting experience for Belinda. She struggled with the pain she was feeling and the disappointment in how she was being “punished” rather than rewarded for producing good results.  

She kept on her path, and she found an ally…
She kept doing her job, producing results, and looked for someone who might “be safe” to discuss her dilemma with and advise her. She took the risk of taking this person into her confidence and told them what was happening. They helped her strategize some options – including going to her boss’s, boss’s, boss – someone not in the game of punishing her for her results. She asked for time to meet with him, told him what had happened, she shared the conversations she’d had with their clients and the results she had been able to produce. She asked what he would advise her to do.

She wasn’t arrogant in her approach…
As Belinda shared her approach with clients and how she’d come to produce her results with them, there was no arrogance in her voice or her words. Her love of her work, her regard for their clients, her desire to serve them well came through to upper management. It was the confidence that comes from dedication and efforts well intended that hit the mark. Her genuine struggle with what she had been dealing with as a result of her success, struck him as an inequitable injustice.  He took steps to insure that she was “reinstated” and adequately rewarded for her efforts and results.

She found out that sometimes things that seem hopeless can, in time, turn out well…
Four months later Belinda had her review with her boss. To her surprise the spin on her results was no longer one that was born of his and other’s resentment, that instead her efforts were being regarded with respect. She was rated as exceeding results. She was described as someone who was a valuable asset to the organization and someone who was a consummate professional. 

In spite of the ordeal she had gone through, her confidence in why her work mattered had remained intact – it hadn’t been “undone” by the situation. She was able to not allow the painful resentment of others take away the importance and value of her work. 

When the situation began Belinda could not have foretold this outcome. But even through the pain she was feeling, she kept working from that genuine place of commitment to the clients she served. While that is its own reward, her efforts to keep going resulted in the rewards of recognition.

 

 

 

 

 

Jane Firth, M.Sc., career coach and founder and President of Firth Leadership Partners