Welcome to episode 27! One thing many high-achieving women in Direct Sales tell me they want is even more confidence in their leadership skills. Even with all the success, a personal growth journey includes the drive and desire of continuous self-improvement. It’s admirable. Really.
Personal Growth Journey as a High-Achieving Leader in Direct Sales
And it doesn’t have to feel like you’ll never reach it. To always strive for better simply means there is always room to grow and develop. It doesn’t mean you haven’t grown or haven’t developed.
And this is certainly obvious when you take a moment to reflect on where you started. More so, who you were when you first started your Direct Sales journey and who you’ve become along the path of hard work, dedication, persistence, and true grit, to accomplish all that you have.
Because the leader you’ve been is not the leader you need to become to get where you want to go is so important, the difference between courage and confidence is a key concept to embrace.
You see, confidence only comes when you’ve exercised courage, time and time again, to put yourself out there. To pursue the relationships you have pursued. You’ve exercised the courage to rise to the occasion. To be a servant leader. To put people before everything else.
You’ve been courageous every time you’ve worked when you didn’t want to or didn’t think you had it in you to keep going. To sacrifice all that you have. To work as a businesswoman, not as a hobbyist. All of this took courage. And with each milestone that you met with courage, the outcome included an increase in confidence.
Why You Want Courage Over Confidence as a Direct Sales Leader
Confidence doesn’t come only from experiencing success. In fact, I would argue, it comes every time you’ve mustered the courage to keep going, especially after disappointments, hard days, or relationships that didn’t last.
Confidence comes from situations you had to find courage for like women who have chosen to pursue this business, but did so with someone else, after you invested in them, or chose to pursue a different company.
A longtime customer that fell away. A backward step in rank for your personal business. The team member that threw in the towel when you know how amazing she is and how her business could be if she just stuck with it.
All of these situations required you to have the courage to keep going. And with that courage came even more confidence. You can’t build confidence without having the courage to take yourself from one step to the very next step.
Asking for more confidence as a leader means you have to be willing to be open to the situations in your business that will grow and foster your courage. We simply can’t build one without the other. We can’t build and grow confidence without demonstrating courage.
I think this example demonstrates it best. My husband is in the military. He’s had a long 28+ year career and he’s still on active duty.
The military is dedicated to the Core Values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment. It’s not Honor, Confidence, and Commitment. It’s Honor, Courage, and Commitment. These Core Values build the foundation of trust and leadership for our military.
In fact, it sounds a bit funny even if it were Honor, Confidence and Commitment. Yet I meet very few military members who lack confidence. I believe, because they have the Core Values of Honor, Courage and Commitment guiding them, their confidence has come with the important focus on these Core Values.
So, how can you welcome and embrace the growth situations you must encounter in order to build and grow your courage? How will you see these milestones in a different light so that your confidence, as a result, may soar, after you’ve navigated these growth scenarios?
The first step, is to change your language. Instead of saying to yourself, or anyone else, I wish I had more confidence as a leader for my team.
A New Mantra to Build Your Courage and Confidence as a Direct Sales Leader
Try on for size, “I am open to the situations that will build my courage as a high achieving Direct Sales leader.”
After all, the same goes for your team members. They will need courage above all else, if they wish to have their business confidence increase. What better way to help them change their language and to be a humble example for them as you navigate your courage together. And celebrate the confidence that’s built along the way as a result.
The best is yet to come. Always.
