Fay Wallis 00:00:

Hello, and welcome back to HR Coffee Time. It's wonderful to have you listening today. I'm your host, Fay Wallis, a career and executive coach with a background in HR. And I've made HR Coffee Time especially for you to help you have a successful and fulfilling HR or People career without working yourself into the ground.

And I need to start off today's episode with some heartfelt thank yous. First of all, a huge thank you to you for listening to the show, and if you've ever rated or reviewed it or recommended it to a friend, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your support. I found out recently that HR Coffee Time is now ranked in the top two percent of all three point three million podcasts that currently exist in the world. And I just can't quite believe it. It was such a shock when I found out. It's a really surreal feeling to know that this show that I record in my home office that doubles up as our spare bedroom is helping so many people. I could never have dreamt in a million years when I started it that HR Coffee Time would have this impact.

And I was so worried when I dropped the frequency that I release the episodes from weekly to fortnightly. So it's just incredible to know that you're still here listening and enjoying the episodes. Hooray! Thank you so much. I only recently discovered that the reviews shown to me on Apple Podcasts are only from the UK.

So if you have written a review for HR Coffee Time and I've never said thank you because you're outside of the UK, please forgive me, it will be because I've just never seen it. Hopefully one day Apple will change that so I can see all the reviews. or I'll figure out a way of accessing them all. But for the moment, please do let me know if you have ever reviewed the show for me.

You can always reach me on email. I'm on fay@brightskycareercoaching.co.Uk and Fay is spelt F A Y. I haven't got an E on the end of my name for some reason, or you can always find me on LinkedIn. The most recent review that I can see and that I don't think I've ever seen need to say thank you for is this.

The person, I don't know their name unfortunately because on Apple Podcasts you use a nickname when you're leaving a review, but their nickname is AllieDUG seventy one and they wrote, I'm not an HRBP but I'm in a senior leadership role within the NHS. I started listening to HR Coffee Time following some challenges at work that made me start to question my abilities and whether I was really cut out for the job that I do.

Although the podcasts are for those working in HR, without doubt the topics can be applied to my role. Listening to Fay and her guests has given me the green shoots of a renewed joie de vivre. Gosh, it's just so wonderful to read that and to know also that HR Coffee Time can be helpful for people who don't necessarily work in HR or the people profession.

So I'm just so pleased, Ali D U G seventy one, that HR Coffee Time has been helping you. But now let's move on to the main part of the show where we are going to be diving into confidence. I just released a playlist of HR Coffee Time episodes that is focused on building confidence, and you can find the playlist on my website, Bright Sky Career Coaching, and I'll also make sure that I pop a link to it in the show notes of this episode for you too, because now that we're more than 120 episodes into the show, I know that it might be a bit challenging to always find the episodes that are going to be most useful for you because there are just so many to scroll through now, so I thought that adding playlists to the HR Coffee Time page of my website could be a good idea.

I have 14 playlists planned so far and each of them is made up of a collection of episodes that all focus on the same theme or challenge. I've been working on them for a while and it's been a lot more work than I expected to get them onto the website because I've been writing some introductory text for each of the playlists, choosing relevant images to go on the page, Figuring out how to get the playlist to display properly, oh my goodness.

As is so often the case with any sort of project that you set for yourself, it seems to grow arms and legs and just go on forever. So it's a really good feeling to be able to tell you that the first one is finally available and I'm hoping it's not going to be too long before all the rest are ready for you too, because now that I've done one I think I'm going to be much faster at doing the rest.

In fact, while I'm on a roll with all of the thank yous today, I must say thank you to my sister Holly, who is a website designer and has been unbelievably patient and helpful while I've bombarded her with messages, calls, screenshots, videos, asking for help from her with how to do the playlist and how to get it exactly how I want it.

So if you or your company that you work for ever needs a website, please do look Holly up. I can't tell you how patient and wonderful she is. You'll find her on LinkedIn as Holly Christie and her website design business you can find on Google. That's called This Demanding Life. As the very first playlist available focuses on confidence, it made me realise when I was looking at all the episodes that are in that playlist that I haven't actually covered confidence properly on the show for a while, so it felt like it was a good time to revisit it.

And if you've been listening to HR Coffee Time for a long time, you'll know that I changed the question I try to ask every guest who comes on the show. Up until August 2023, I always asked them if they could share a non fiction book recommendation with us. But when a couple of the guests mentioned to me that they didn't really enjoy reading or get round to reading many books, so it felt like a challenge to recommend a book, I thought I should probably change that question slightly.

Because the episodes I've created about confidence have always been popular, for a long time the very first episode of the show, which was called How to Be More Confident at Work, was the most popular episode by far. It's not anymore. Weirdly, that is. Well, I don't know, weirdly or not weirdly, there's an episode on competency based interviewing, and that has been downloaded, I think, three times more than any other episode, so it's overtaken that confidence one.

But I think that's because a recruitment company has started sharing it with all of its candidates and saying, you should listen to this before you have your interview. So I think that's skewing the results slightly, and I'm still Fairly confident that you would like to often feel more confident and that there are times that your confidence might take a hit And it's not a very nice feeling So when I was thinking about what I could ask the guests if they didn't have a nonfiction book to share with us I thought it could be a nice touch to ask them if they'd like to share a confidence building tip And most guests still do choose to share a book, but we have had a few now who've decided to share a confidence building tip instead.

So for this episode, I thought I'd try something a little bit different to normal. I've compiled my favourite confidence building tips that the guests have shared so far into this one episode. There are five in total, and as I was re listening to them to make the episode, it struck me how varied they are.

It really made me realise how, as an HR or people professional, there are so many different skills to develop, or situations where your confidence might wobble slightly, or a lot. In fact, it's probably the same for most people, no matter what work we do. If we want to grow and develop and succeed at work, we're going to be faced with doing new things, or being in new environments, or facing challenging situations, and because we're humans, we're not robots.

It's impossible to have rock solid confidence all of the time. If you've already heard these confidence tips from the guests before, I hope you're going to enjoy hearing them again. I'm going to start off with one that really resonated with me. Here it is. You're about to hear from Pete Hykin, who joined me as a guest for episode 105, which was called Brilliant, not boring -

unlocking financial well being with pensions at work. But it's not a confidence tip about pensions, it's a more general confidence tip for you and it's one that I really like.

Pete Hykin 00:09:

I've got a, I've got a confidence tip that is, that I got from a non fiction book that I recommend. Can I do that?

Fay Wallis 00:09:

I like it. I like it.

It's combining the two into one. Let's go for it.

Pete Hykin 00:09:

So that's a really, what a great question. And so, so Michelle Obama wrote a fantastic book, Becoming. I think it was the first book she wrote after, after they left the White House. And it's just her, essentially her autobiography. But there's this fantastic line in it that is, I have been in rooms with the US cabinet, with presidents, with world leaders, with the most senior business people in the world, and I promise you, and I'm telling you now, there is no special order of people that are better than you, and know how to make decisions that you don't.

Everyone is just an ordinary human being. And I think that's so powerful. And I think what really holds most people back is they think, um, Oh no, that's not me. You know that you need some huge special expertise to go for that job or start a business or take that risk or do this project or change our pension provider.

You need to be an expert. We need to know this. And Michelle Obama is sitting there with the most powerful and successful people in the room. And, you know, I've not been in the rooms that Michelle Obama is in, but I've been in rooms with, you know, people that work in, you know, very, very senior in finance.

I've been in rooms with millionaires and billionaires and big company owners and corporates. And I agree, there is no, there is no different class of people running the world that are just smarter than the rest of us, or better than the rest of us, so, I think, A, read that book, because it's great, it's a really, it's an absolutely fascinating book, and I think she's got an amazing story, um, I think there's probably other great confidence building quotes in her, because, I mean, she's focused on, you know, advice for, I think, and she's not focused on that, I mean, a lot of her career now is focused on advice for people.

young women from underprivileged backgrounds in America and building their confidence. So there's probably other great confidence building quotes in that book as well. So read that book and then remember that it's, you know, you can do it. There's not some special group of magic people that are different for us that should be doing the things that you want to do.

Fay Wallis 00:11:

Now we're going to move on to hearing another general confidence building tip from Antoinette Dale Henderson. Antoinette was a guest on the show back in episode 104 and that episode was called how to improve your gravitas to make an impact throughout your HR career.

Antoinette Dale Henderson 00:11:

When it comes to confidence, it's about knowing that It's little steps every single day, little things that you can do along the way, which collectively will help you to build your confidence.

It's not something that, you know, swings from either you have it or you don't. It doesn't work like that. The more we take steps to be brave and to put into practice some of the things that I've been talking about today, and the more we get our voice out there. The more we then get a warm response and we're received favorably the more we then build our confidence.

So it's little things that you can do every single day and to challenge yourself really to find ways of being brave as often as you possibly can in a safe environment and just to then reflect back on how far you've come. I think a lot of us are so Intent on getting to where we need to be. We don't think about where we've come from.

So it's really valuable to think, actually, hang on a minute, you know, look at how far I've come since. So it's just last year. Look at what's different and to take confidence from that.

Fay Wallis 00:12:

Up next is a more specific confidence building tip. If you've listened to the full episode with Antoinette, you'd have heard her talk about the impact that planning can make before you walk into a room or attend a meeting.

So I thought it was interesting when planning showed up again in this tip from the next guest you're about to meet. He is called Simon Duncan, and he joined us for episode one hundred and fifteen which was called, why negotiation skills can help your HR career and how to develop them. Here he is talking about building confidence when you need to negotiate.

Simon Duncan 00:13:

Well, I think I will probably share a confidence tip with you. The confidence tip, I would say, is to plan. Ensure you make the time to really understand what and how you want to achieve, what your goals are, and also their mindsets. And then put them into practice. And the more you practice, The more confident you'll become and effectively knowledge with practice equals confidence.

Confidence with a little bit of bravery equals control. Planning is the essential part of the process. And in fact, statistically, well not statistically, but you know, with what I've done with negotiation, 85 percent of your time should be spent on planning because the more you plan, the more you'll understand and have the facts and the confidence to the degree, if you've planned your moves, et cetera, you're probably going to know what the outcome of the negotiation is before you've actually even, you entered the room.

Fay Wallis 00:14:

If negotiation skills are something you'd like to work on, there's something that are not my strength and I found it incredibly helpful meeting Simon and having him on the show, I would definitely recommend hopping back and listening to the full episode with Simon, because he has a great methodology that he shares for planning.

It's not just planning for the sake of planning, there are very specific steps to it. And actually it's the same with Antoinette's episode, she has a brilliant framework that she shares in the episode, which is her OPRAHS framework, and it's one that I've been trying to use more since I've learned about it from her.

But now let's move on to our next confidence building tip from a different expert. This is one to help you if you're looking for a new job. I know that when we're job hunting it's often a time when our confidence can dip a little or even a lot, so I absolutely loved this tip that Roisin Williams shared.

It is from episode one hundred and thirteen, The Trustee Advantage. Enhance your HR leadership and make a difference.

Roisin Williams 00:15:

And I'm going to share a mantra that I tell very nearly every client who crosses my path. And it's just three little words that I think are really important. And that is take a punt. And I think that applies whether you are going for a paid role or even going for a trustee role like we've talked about today.

Put your hat in the ring because actually you've got very little to lose. And I think In HR, particularly, because quite often we are, uh, we can be quite behind the scenes in, in HR. We aren't often the people who are on the front line, we're not the people who are necessarily dealing with our customers or bringing home the big contracts.

We kind of get quite, quite used to sort of being in our little space. And we, we're not always, in my experience, very good putting ourselves forward. And what I find with my clients is, and I say this would be true if you were looking at the job spec to be a charity trustee, it's very easy to read through that job spec and go, Oh, I can't, I haven't done that.

Oh, I wouldn't know where to start with that. And ignore the 50 percent of the things that they're asking for. That you can do and that you have done. And we're very good, I think, at talking ourselves out of something. And what I'm encouraging you to do by taking a pont is, if you come across a role,

any role, and it ignites something in you, it, you read it and think, oh, that sounds, that sounds great. If you can do 50 percent of the things they're asking for, take a pont. Because the worst that happens is, you just don't get it. selected through to the next stage. You've got nothing to lose. There's no shame. There's no embarrassment. No one needs to know that you've applied for it, but you just never know where that one application that you took a punt on might take you.

And I think that's really important. If we all embrace that, we would all do much, much better in our job search.

Fay Wallis 00:17:

That brings us to the final confidence building tips for today, and I've purposefully saved this one to the end because it ties in so well with what I say. At the beginning of the podcast every week when I always mentioned that HR Coffee Time is here to help you have a successful and fulfilling HR or People career without working yourself into the ground.

I think it's so easy for us all to neglect our well being when we're busy at work, but this is a great reminder about how important it is to look after ourselves. It's shared by guest Louise Kennedy who appeared on the show in episode one hundred and twenty, which was called Crafting Culture, Unearthing and Shaping the Heart of Your Business.

Louise Kennedy 00:18:

I think I'll go for the confidence building tip. I think one big thing for me during the course of last year was about looking after yourself. I think very much around from a well being point of view, such a big area of conversation that's taking place in all of our businesses. But from my own personal experience, I was able to focus on my well being and that being from everything from, you know, starting yoga classes, to losing weight, to kind of having your mind in the right space.

And actually, ultimately, all of those things give you more confidence in. day to day side of things, but also in my business. It's made a massive impact on the business because I'm in the right head space because you feel comfortable and confident yourself

to be able to make a difference to the team that I'm working with, but also to the business as well.

So it's been so many benefits and definitely a confidence top tip really.

Fay Wallis 00:19:

I really hope you enjoyed listening to the confidence tips from our five HR coffee time guests, and I would love to know if any of them resonated with you or if you're going to try them out. You can always reach me on LinkedIn to tell me I'm there as Fay Wallis.

That is Wallis spelled with an IS on the end instead of an ACE and if you'd like to take a deep dive into any of the episodes mentioned today, I've popped links to all of them, along with links to the guests LinkedIn profiles and their websites. They're all in the show notes for you so you can easily track them down.

Take care and I am looking forward to being back again with the next episode for you very soon.