Confidence: How Winning and Losing Streaks Begin and End

by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Leaders who guide their teams toward success espouse the value of accountability, collaboration, and initiative in their messages to others, model those qualities in their own behavior, and create formal programs and structural mechanisms to embed them in institutions.

culture of confidence

Leadership is not about the leader, it is about how he or she builds the confidence of everyone else.

“Leadership is plural,” Mike Krzyzewski,

Confidence and the high self-esteem associated with it rest on real accomplishments, not self-delusion.

Leaders keep the mirror of accountability polished and clear.

leaders should set people up to succeed. “If a guy’s a fastball hitter, I’m not going to put him up there against a guy throwing curveballs, because I’d be setting him up to fail,” the Chicago Cub’s Dusty Baker said.

Dialogue across positions, departments, or groups is a common theme in every winning streak, and it is often an early step in a turnaround from losing to winning cycles.

Confidence is enhanced when it is clear that people are empowered to take action, to solve problems, to voice their ideas, to create innovations.

Awakening initiative starts with encouraging people to work on projects that they value, that involve factors they can control, that are connected to key tasks, and that serve as demonstration projects to stimulate more ideas.

The ultimate work of leaders lies in the connection between their groups and the wider network that provides support, loyalty, revenues, or capital.

On a September 2000 Business Week/Harris poll, more than 80 percent of Americans agreed that “business has gained too much power over too many aspects of American life.”

Leaders who guide winning streaks make a different set of choices, toward positive, inclusive, empowering actions that build confidence.

the secret of winning should be clear: Try not to lose twice in a row.

Confidence motivates people to put in extra effort, to stretch beyond their previous limits, to rebound from setbacks, or to play through injuries anyway.

a win for one does not have to be at the expense of another.

broader way I think about winning streaks and losing streaks—they are shorthands for repeated success or failure at achieving goals.

My teenaged friend Robert was on a personal losing streak, a classic downward spiral, as his performance in math got worse and worse. He had started at a new school in his junior year of high school and was surprised at how different and how much harder the math classes were. He received a failing grade on the first math test. He started to lose confidence, and he slid into losers’ behavior. The first failing grade was embarrassing, so he didn’t talk to his parents about it. He couldn’t wait to leave math class, and he didn’t want to see the teacher, either. He shut the door at home. He said he was studying math, but it began to seem too overwhelming. When his parents discovered halfway through the school year that he was failing math, Robert blamed the teacher for unfair treatment of kids like himself who came from a different background. The teacher gave him extra homework to help him catch up, but that just made Robert feel more ashamed and made math more distasteful. He began to think of himself as someone who couldn’t do math and brooded over whether he should go to college. He withdrew from his friends, because they all seemed to be adjusting well and making college plans. He lost energy and started sleeping longer, so his parents told him he wasn’t trying hard enough. That made him feel that no one understood him, and he began to neglect his other subjects. Robert’s response to his first small failure was making significant failure seem inevitable.

For Robert, it was his parents. I had given them a summary of my conclusions about the dangers of losing streaks, and they decided to discuss the pattern with their son. They presented him with their analysis in a matter-of-fact way that avoided blame, and they ended what Robert felt was punishment. They pointed to his talents (writing and organizing community service) and interests (history and politics). They bought him clothes, an investment that increased his pride in his appearance, but insisted on regular room cleaning and daily extra math drills. They asked his teacher for drills that Robert could practice whenever he had free time, but not too much to feel onerous. Robert set his own goals for small steps he could take to improve his math performance and also act on his other interests.

Confidence is an expectation of a positive outcome, but what happens when outcomes are negative? The dividing line between winning streaks and losing streaks is the choice of behavior in response to setbacks.

That decision to build rather than retreat, to rally rather than get discouraged, involves viewing setbacks through an optimistic lens, as an opportunity to learn and move on.

winners focus on whatever they can control—how prepared they are, how hard they work, how many steps they can take.

Small steps, small accomplishments, a hurdle at a time, can have big impact. Small wins can improve the odds of achieving the next big success.

If people look positively at themselves and the hidden value of their assets, they are more likely to discover strengths that they can cultivate. If people look positively at others, those people are more likely to come through for them. And if people look positively at the opportunities any situation provides to take even a small step, they are more likely to find that their actions make a difference.