For nonprofit leaders and virtually everyone else, building up confidence in some area normally takes time, while losing it—at least temporarily—can happen rapidly. Confidence in a new skill can also oscillate wildly, as I experienced this past week in Honduras with my intermediate Spanish.
As those who have followed my writings know, I advocate that everyone, and especially mission-driven leaders, be, at all times, engaged in learning at least one new skill—often a hobby—at which they are currently a novice. I have found that this practice helps keep me more humble, curious, and playful, and less self-important, in all areas of my work and life. For the time being, that new skill is mastering spoken Spanish.
At times during the past week, I felt a sense of resignation about my ability to conduct even simple business in Spanish. What resulted was the kind of negative self-talk that we all fall prey to at times. “You started too late! You can’t learn a new language in middle age! You aren’t good at languages!”
Fortunately, I was able to power through those discouraging moments (which were early in the week and occurred mostly late in the day), and go on to have some exhilarating moments of success and stretching myself later in the week.
Lately, I have also been contemplating those times in life when you are in a position to perform in an area you consider a strength, and things go poorly despite the stakes being significant. For example, I was recruited onto a board of directors because the organization recognized my competence in nonprofit governance. And what happened next? They proceeded to force me to resign from the board because they thought I was a detracting from the desired culture (or something like that—they never actually told me why I needed to go). I wrote about that experience at some length here, as part of my journey to process this painful episode, which involved having people I trusted betray me.
My Stanford Social Innovation Review article on nonprofit governance, which was also partly inspired by this conflict, is my most-read of all time and often leads to me being approached by people going through their own nonprofit board nightmares, including a new one this morning. (Advising people on their situations has been one of the things that helped me get my confidence back.)
Let me give three examples involving other people I know and admire where an area of strength seemed to evaporate at a critical moment, then what I think the key lesson is here.
A musician friend who is a great Southern storyteller with a terrific sense of humor once showed up to a gig and the manager said they normally had a comedian warm up the crowd before the band played, but the comedian had cancelled. My friend volunteered to stand in and deliver a routine. He bombed. It turns out that telling funny stories to a group of 5-10 friends is one skill, and entertaining hundreds of strangers is quite another. (An amateur comedian who is a friend of mine once told me that professional comedians today are expected to make the audience laugh every ten seconds or so—something I have confirmed watching live comedy and TV specials.)
My friend’s talent didn’t translate well to new context. He shrugged it off and went on to play bass and sing well with the band later that same day. He has also continued entertaining small groups with hilarious stories.
In another case, someone close to me took a job with an organization she thought she knew well. She was recruited for her technical expertise and for her reputation, but she had been known as a great mentor to young professionals since she had hit her mid-30s. In this new role, after falling out of favor with key leaders and confronting a certain degree of organizational dysfunction, she was told that she was not a good mentor to young staff. Momentarily, it devastated her. She wondered whether she had been kidding herself all along, thinking she was a good guide to the next generation when perhaps she was not. Later, she left that organization and resumed being an effective mentor. Gradually, she built her confidence back up in this area.
Finally, Mannan Talukdar, my research assistant for the book Small Loans, Big Dreams, had previously been one of the most effective Grameen Bank managers of all time. He was also one of the first to ascend to a manager position without a university degree, instead being promoted after serving as a bank worker (later called a center manager). Like my musician friend, he was a great storyteller. (He was also a decent magician.)
I spent many months at a branch that he had founded in the mid 1980s, and he was revered there. I also visited the third and final branch he managed, where he was also very well-regarded. One day, he took me aside and said that at the second branch managed, his approach didn’t really work. He shared this in a matter-of-fact way, as if to say, “I am a great manager, and my record at these other two branches speaks for itself. But for some reason I still don’t really understand, at one other location my skills didn’t translate and I didn’t succeed in the same way.”
I admired much about Mannan, who sadly died in his mid-60s a few years back. But his attitude regarding his failure to thrive in one context was one of the things he taught me that really stuck. Perhaps at the time he was struggling at the second branch, he briefly questioned his competence (though I somehow doubt it). But once had processed the experience, he simply came to the conclusion that his strong skills at managing a Grameen Bank branch often translated into particular contexts, but not always. Those exceptions didn’t nullify his skill. Rather, they revealed that those skills were somewhat context specific and didn’t always ensure success.
Ever since, I have been less prone to questioning my skills based on the fact that they didn’t translate into a particular context or environment (even if that failure to translate was embarrassing or had other negative consequences). That inability to translate might allow me to teach myself something or further enhance my skills, but it didn’t mean that I had been kidding myself about those capabilities all along.
Try to avoid negative self-talk when you see one of the things you do well fall flat here or there. It happens. Learn from it if you can, but don’t get discouraged. You are still good at that thing. Focus on getting better, not on being deflated. You’ll be both happier and more effective.