How to Keep Your Confidence when you Lack Support

Say you put hours and hours into a project and it comes out great…but you receive no feedback from your boss. Or what if you were really appreciated by your former manager, but because of restructuring you have a new one you have to prove yourself to again. Or maybe your performance is stellar, but because everyone is moving at such a fast pace, your boss isn’t noticing. 

How do you keep your confidence when it feels like other people don’t notice your efforts? 

Here are 3 strategies that will help you: 

Distinguish Your Confidence vs Others’ Conduct

Your confidence is a feeling you have inside and you have control over it. It comes from your beliefs, self talk, and actions that build a sense of power in yourself. In contrast, not being noticed or being criticized is the behavior of others. You have a choice how to respond to it. For example, you can ask for feedback to know objectively where you can improve in your boss’s eyes. 

If you are not getting noticed or supported, it doesn’t mean that you are not worthy of it. It means that you are either not effectively influencing that person to notice you, or you are expecting to be noticed and reassured by someone who is unlikely or incapable of noticing you. Make the distinction between your confidence and others’ conduct. 

Give it to Yourself!

If you are not able to be validated by someone important to you, you might wonder how you can maintain your confidence. Answer: enjoy the ride! Feel stimulated by what you learned through your work project and get energized by the progress you made. Think of the value your efforts brought to your team members, clients, and community, and feel the reward that comes from knowing you helped other people. The value of your contributions does not come from your boss’s telling you that it was valuable. 

Create a Confidence Building World around You

Know that it’s perfectly normal to want to feel valued. You deserve to feel valued, and ideally you should feel that from your work environment. But the question is, what if you don’t right now? First make sure that you are informing your boss of your efforts so it’s not a question of him or her not knowing. Second, branch out and make great relationships with other stakeholders so that you are visible to people who might be more capable than your boss at appreciating you. Start moving toward a boss who will have the same view of you that you do! 

There are many factors that may wear down your confidence these days. With so many changes and restructuring going on in organizations, you may need to repeatedly ‘prove’ yourself with new managers and peers. Otherwise resentment may begin to build when you are consistently performing well but are not noticed for advancement due to factors beyond your control—it can wear you down.

So what can you do to stay confident, even if your boss (or spouse, or child, or family member…) doesn’t notice? 

--Sharon Melnick, PhD, January 2015 Career Coach