A Harvard business professor, best-selling author and internationally-acclaimed strategic consultant (among the "50 most influential business thinkers in the world," according to the "Times of London"), Kanter explores company decisions, policies and performance that lead to success or failure in her most recent book, "Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End."
Here, in an exclusive interview, Kanter analyzes the factors that build and restore business confidence, and how you can create a company environment that fosters success.
Q: What exactly do you mean by having confidence?
A: Confidence is not a mood or a feeling of pessimism or optimism. It is the expectation of positive outcomes. It's the belief that your ideas, work and efforts will become successful. Even when things are tough and there are bumps in the road, you have the confidence to hang in there and keep trying. You expect a favorable outcome.
Q: What is a winning streak in business?
A: It's easy to define that in sports, of course, because of tangible score results. In business, a winning streak is a set of continued successes, a series of unbroken wins. Even when there are minor setbacks, you bounce back and are continuing to achieve your goals. By contrast, a losing streak is going into a decline. Some losing streaks can accelerate so fast they become a death spiral.
Q: Are there differences in the confidence that men and women business owners have?
A: Women have just as much drive in business as men do, and women now believe in themselves more, which in itself is a confidence builder. There are growing numbers of organizations that mentor women in business, which is also helping.
If there is a difference, I think it's been the expectation of success. Men expect to succeed more readily than women do, which of course, has been the reality. That's now changing. In the past, men had natural access to cheerleaders, contacts and colleagues they could call on to help them. We are now seeing an acceleration of those networks and personal confidence for women. To build confidence, women need to surround themselves with other women who are interested in their success and with people who offer encouragement.
Q: What else can women do to build their confidence?
A: Often, women wait until they have the perfect plan and their punishment for failure is a lot more severe than it should be. They become discouraged by the first fumble and are then defined by that — that they keep losing. Women need to be tougher about difficult setbacks. They need to connect themselves to successful people and ignore discouraging voices around them. They need to learn to put in the effort, keep going and have the will and drive to succeed. Showing up is the first rule of success.
Q: How can women demonstrate their confidence to the outside world of financial backers and customers?
A: There are three things women entrepreneurs can do to overcome the residue of discrimination and prejudice they face. First, they need some early successes, so they can show bankers and venture capitalists that their business proposition will pay off. Next, they need to have big ambitions and not settle for a small niche. They should think in the largest possible terms, not just locally. Then they need to overcome the historical bias that women will drop out. They need to show they're in it for the long haul.
Q: How does a leader build confidence within her organization?
A: You need accountability. That means you have full command of the facts, and you face them squarely. You must take responsibility for promises you make and you must make only those promises you know you can keep. You need to include other people in the dialog so your staff and advisors are standing on firm ground, also facing facts and reinforcing responsibility without humiliation.
One of the difficulties women have is in micromanaging. They don't allow their people to be accountable. Certainly, you need to work to improve the details, just as athletes are always working on specific parts of their performance and practicing all the time. But you still must have honest feedback so you can look in the mirror and assess situations accurately.
Q: What else builds a climate for success?
A: The second part is collaboration. Everyone in the company must be pulling toward the same goal. You need a definition of success that everyone agrees with. And you need respect for each other. That means people's strengths are shared and known, not just their defects. Many enterprises are highly critical of people, but that's not the same thing as giving accurate feedback. You want to learn each other strengths, count on the each other and create teamwork. Small businesses especially need to pick people who have chemistry with each other, so you don't have to do it all yourself.
Q: How do you turn around a losing situation into a win?
A: Besides accountability and collaboration, you need initiative and innovation. For instance, Nelson Mandela created a culture of confidence in South Africa by not taking revenge when he came to power. South Africa went in a new direction because of his innovation.
You need to extend permission to speak up and create an environment where opinions are valued. There's always something you can do to feel like you're making progress, no matter how small. When everything's stacked against you and feeling negative, you need to take small steps. That allows you to go from feeling passive to feeling active.
Q: What's your best advice to business owners who are struggling with the insecurities of business, day to day?
A: Everything can look like failure in the middle. Assuming your original idea still makes sense out there in the world, and the environment, thought changes, still has a market for what you're doing, you need to keep up your efforts. Believing in it will make it possible
Creating a mood in which success is possible does make a difference.
Article Resource: http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/
