If you are good at your job, chances are you’ve been promoted. Well done you.  

The thing is in many vocations the higher you get up the corporate ladder, the less it becomes about the actual job itself; there’s a new set of skills you need.  

Most people lack confidence in one situation or another. It’s normal.  

Are you someone who sometimes lacks confidence at work? For example, in interviews or standing up in front of people and giving a presentation. Maybe it’s not something you've paid attention to because it hasn’t affected you too much. Perhaps you’ve grown with the company, maybe you’ve been promoted without going through a full interview process or you’ve benefitted from being an internal candidate. Perhaps the presentations you give have been good enough because everybody knows what a great job you do.

A situation that used to make me feel nervous was doing something unknown. Presenting to a group of people I haven’t met before, or going to a job interview where I didn’t know what to expect.   

But then I started to realise how visualisation could help. It's something that lots of hugely successful athletes like the swimmer Michael Phelps use. They create a picture in their mind of what the race or event will look like. They picture themselves right there in the moment. Most importantly what performing well will look and feel like. 

Confidence. As you read that word, I’m sure you have your own picture in mind about what that looks like.  

But can you spot in in yourself? Or more importantly do you recognise when a lack of it may be holding you back from what you want? 

As a coach, I often talk to people who are burnt out, stressed or just done with their job. This is not only bad for the person but also not great for the employer; the company now either has someone not performing well or will need to be replaced when they want to leave.

You don’t need to be an expert in analysis to see that companies are finding it incredibly hard to recruit and then retain good people right now. There’s a new dynamic evolving where candidates and employees hold more of the power.