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Increase Your Self-Efficacy To Achieve More!
Self-efficacy is the belief about what you can and cannot make happen in your life. It does not refer to the actual skills you have, but what you believe you can accomplish with those skills. It is about believing you have the ability to pull together your social, physical, thinking and behavioral skills to accomplish bigger, bolder goals than you originally thought possible.People with a strong sense of self-efficacy generally perform at much higher levels partly because they see setbacks and obstacles as challenges to be overcome. During the Barcelona Games, Australian swimmer Kieren Perkins (who was expected to take many golds and break several world records) was not swimming particularly well in the heats. Australia and much of the world had all but written Kieren off. The day before the final both he and Daniel Kozlowski (another Australian swimmer who had always played second fiddle to Kieren) were interviewed. Daniel said something along the lines of: 'even though Kieren isn't swimming well, if I can just keep up with him I will finish in the top few.' Kieren was recorded as saying "Look, I haven't been feeling the best, but I'm on the mend and tomorrow I will come out and win that race well". And he did - he won Gold!
A person with high self-efficacy tends to set very high goals and remains motivated despite the threat of failure. A person with low self-efficacy will set much smaller goals, and at the first sign of setback will give up on the goal or the dream. Click here for a simple five step process on how to bounce back quickly after failure If you find yourself setting a big goal and becoming intimidated by it - that's okay - we all feel intimidated at times. What is not okay is to stay intimidated. Unfortunately, often times when we are intimidated by a goal or a dream we tend to say the goal is a dumb goal, it was a dumb idea, and we talk ourselves out of going after it. We make the goal or the dream smaller to fit our level of efficacy. Build your efficacy by consciously looking for opportunities to apply each of four steps listed above. As you change the way you think you will change the way you act. As you change the way you act, you will change the results you achieve! Group Efficacy Not only do individuals have a high and low efficacy, but so too do groups. If you have a group of people with low efficacy - they believe they are not capable of causing things to happen- then watch out. They will talk down/ridicule any new vision/goal, because they don't believe they are able to bring it off. They begin to focus on negative creativity (how to get the goal to go away) vs positive creativity (how are we going to get this goal and then go one better). As a Leader one of your most critical tasks is ensuring that your team has a high collective efficacy, so that as new goals, problems, opportunities come your way, you are able to rally the team around and get the team to gang up on them. Help your team to know that they are more than capable of achieving whatever it is you need to achieve. You do this by building opportunities for each of the four factors above to occur in your daily interactions. The good news is that you can grow your own efficacy, and as a leader you can grow the efficacy of the individuals/group you are working with. You simply apply the four steps listed above. Click here for a story of how I worked with a team member to help him improve his self-efficacy. A Growth Opportunity:
Go to Articles Directory from Self-Efficacy  Steps of Positive Thinking Affirmations and Visualization Optimism vs Pessimism Self-talk Locus of Control Self-Esteem in the Workplace Sense of Acceptance and Belongingpersonal mission development.
Albert Bandura and Self Efficacy
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In 10 fast minutes each month you'll access tips, ideas and resources that will speed up your success and create more fulfillment in your life!  How to Build Self-Esteem Steps of Positive Thinking Affirmations and Visualization Optimism vs Pessimism Self-talk Locus of Control Self-Esteem in the Workplace Sense of Acceptance and Belonging  |
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