realisedevelopment.net

Just another WordPress site

Building Confidence and Self Belief

by

In my experience entrepreneurs fall into one of two types. Either they are excellent (perhaps too good) at building their own self belief and confidence – or they are weak in this area – full of self doubts and expectations of disaster.   Some communities are full of people with generally good levels of self belief and confidence. In others the opposite is the norm.  In these communities the ability to build relationships with clients that enable them to improve their confidence and self belief is key.

Many enterprise professionals act as if confidence and self belief are the same thing – interchangeable words and concepts – but to me there are important differences.  Confidence is a temporary thing, transient, malleable in the short term.

Self belief is a more fixed (but still developable) underlying trait or characteristic that may have been grooved for many years.  It is our levels of self belief that dicate whether setbacks are seen as part of a consistent pattern of failure (low self belief; generally low confidence) or as just a temporary setback.

Most entrepreneurs will experience a loss of confidence, but their generally high levels of self belief allow them to see this as just a temporary setback, a blip, a one off.  Not something to dwell on or let define their expectations of the future or their own self image.

Generally it is not too hard to identify people with low self belief.  Their language is full of self doubt and negativity.  “I doubt that this will work”, “I have got this idea – but I don’t think it is very good”.

It is much harder to know what to do about it.  There are no quick fixes.

My first observation would be that most enterprise professionals have very little opportunity to do much work in this area because they do not have the time to build really powerful helping relationships with clients.  The support that they offer is more transactional (think ‘inform, diagnose and broker’) than transformational (think ‘insight, develop and coach’).  Their focus is on developing the business plan not the entrepreneur.

For those that do form more transformational relationships then working with both self belief (in the long term) and confidence (in the short term) are central to their effectiveness.  So what sorts of things do they do?

  • They help clients to recognise their patterns of thinking and self talk and categorise them simply as ‘helpful’ or ‘hindering’
  • teach clients how to replace hindering thoughts and beliefs with helpful ones
  • help the client to develop and use affirmations to improve self belief and confidence ( a good example of an affirmation for would be entrepreneurs is ‘all setbacks are only temporary’)
  • help clients to recognise and take note of times when they succeed, when things go to plan and make sure that these are fully reflected in their self image
  • teach clients to visualise success, to see, taste and feel success in their imaginations before they start to pursue it in the real world
  • teach clients to focus on lots of small wins – what can we achieve in the next 30 minutes?  24 hours?  This helps to build a climate and expectation of progress – which makes it difficult to maintain low self belief.

I know many enterprise professionals choose to ignore this part of their role.  They see it as being counselling or psychology rather than enterprise development.  They prefer to focus on the ‘hard’ issues of business planning and finance. In doing so many of  them compound issues of self belief and confidence as they have little or no belief in the clients ability to succeed or little conception of their role in helping to develop an enterprising psychology in their clients.

Marketing Enterprise 5th December, London

by

A one day workshop looking at strategies and techniques for marketing enterprise projects.

Using both the Change Cycle of Prochaska and DiClemente and the Enterprise Coaching Model this one day workshop will help you to develop ways of marketing enterprise programmes.

The day will focus on marketing enterprise in communities with lower than usual levels of enterprise.

  • Developing Collateral (that might just work)
  • Working with Gatekeepers
  • Building Word of Mouth Strategies

Workshop costs £299 plus VAT.

Super output areas and other ‘deprived’ communities are dominated by a psychology of poverty.

  • Poverty of aspiration
  • Poverty of belief and
  • Poverty of opportunity.

Only by understanding the psychology of the groups and individuals with whom we want to work and by developing focused social marketing strategies are we likely to receive an invitation to do our work.

Marketing in poor communities is different.

It needs a different approach.

You Will Learn:

  • What is Social Marketing and Why it Matters to Enterprise Professionals
  • Developing Marketing Collateral that Might Just Work
  • Learning from Current Practice
  • Developing Market Segments that Work
  • Strangers, Prospects and Customers
  • How to Build a Word of Mouth Strategy
  • Using Gatekeepers to Reach the Market

Who Should Attend?

  • Enterprise coaches, advisers and other enterprise professionals seeking to work with ‘hard to reach’ communities
  • Marketeers and PR professionals charged with promoting enterprise services and project
  • Anyone who is seeking to ‘engage’ a community in enterprise

Segmenting the Enterprise Market

by

I am often horrified at just how poor many enterprise professionals are at segmenting the market for their services.  It is as if they believe that the ‘enterprise’ segment is already sufficiently well defined to enable them to engage efficiently and effectively.

In my experience there are great returnsto be had from spending some time in developing more effective ways of segmenting the  market. 

One of my favourites, and one of the most powerful models, segments the market place according to ‘Technical Competence’ and ‘Psychological Competence’.  Technical Competence refers to the degree to which the client has the technical skills that they need to develop their enterprise idea.  Psychological Competence refers to the degree of commitment, motivation, self confidence and self belief of the client.

In this segmentation clients may have a high or low degree of Technical Competence and a high or low degree of Psychological Competence.  This gives us four different market segments for our services:

  1. Low Technical Competence – Low Psychological Competence – Lets call this Type E1
  2. Low Technical Competence – High Psychological Competence – Lets call this Type E2
  3. High Technical Competence – Low Psychological Competence – Lets call this Type E3
  4. High Technical Competence – High Psychological Competence – Lets call this Type E4

The E1 client lacks both the psychological and the technical skills to realise their enterprise ideas.   Engaging E1 clients takes care and patience as it can be hard for them to take the risk of trying to make progress.  They need a lot of support with the technical aspects of developing their enterprise ideas and the work needs to be broken down into achievable steps.

The E2 client may be madly enthusiastic and quick to act – but lacking technical skills are prone to making all sorts of mistakes.  They need lots of technical assistance and a lot of emotional support too if the mistakes are not to undermine their commitment and motivation transforming them into an E1 client.  The E2 client may have been motivated to consider enterprise through clever marketing (my guess is that Enterprise Week will have flushed out a good few E2ers), they love the ‘Dragons Den’ type competitions. E2 clients require a lot of careful support over a long time period if they are to succeed.  They are likely to require frequent (if short) meetings with enterprise professionalsto keep them on track and to support them while they go on a very steep and sometimes challenging learning curve.  Their ideal enterprise professional will have both good technical skills and a good grasp of human growth psychology and its application.

The E3 client is a frequently overlooked market segment. They have good technical skills in enterprise – but they are not particularly motivated or committed. They may have been in business for decades, having started off as E2 or even E4, but never making much money in return for hours of hard work they no longer believe that enterprise is going to help them realise their dreams.  It has become just another piece of drudgery.  These clients are everywhere – but they don’t respond well to the ‘Have you got a brilliant business idea’ or ‘Dragon’s Den’ type marketing stunts so beloved of enterprise organisations and policy makers.  I believe this market segment could make a significant contribution to economic development in most communities – if only we could find a way to engage them and help them to get back in touch with their inspiration.  Community based enterprise projects that build a reputation over a number of years can start to engagethis kind of E3 client and produce remarkable results.

E4 clients are in some ways the holy grail.  Much of the effective enterprise professionals work is about helping clients move towards this E4 position.  Although high in both technical and psychological competence these clients still require help and support. They maybe ideal for referral to a good mentor or may benefit from access to a business support service on an ‘on demand’ basis.

Using this type of market segmentation can really help you to think through both your marketing/engagement strategy, the way you design your services and how you train your enterprise professionals.

Nourishing Enterprise

by

Britain is facing a “new kind of poverty” with many parents unable to nourish their own families – not through lack of money but lack of knowledge, according to Jamie Oliver.

“This isn’t about fresh trainers or mobile phones or Sky dishes or plasma TV screens – they’ve got all that. It is a poverty of being able to nourish their family, in any class.”

So what is Mr Oliver saying?  This is not a crisis of material need; people have ways of getting these met?  Most of us have learned the skills of achieving material possessions.  But I don’t believe that the problem lies in a lack of culinary skill – I think this is a symptom of a deeper psychological need rather than a root cause of this new kind of poverty.

It is about a poverty of psychological need and ambition. 

It is about poverty of self-esteem. 

It is about poverty of belief.

And once enterprise professionals recognise the power of enterprise to nourish these very human qualities we will have a powerful antidote to this ‘new form’ of poverty.

However it will require policy makers and funders to recognise that enterprise is not all about start rates and VAT registrations, but is about developing an enterprising psychology driving enterprising behaviours.

Psychological and Technical Aspects of Developing Enterprise

by

The vast majority of time and effort that goes into ‘supporting enterprise and entrepreneurship’ is focused on developing the technical skills involved.  You know the kind of stuff:

  • cash flow forecasting for dummies
  • how to develop a marketing strategy
  • making money from your hobby using e-bay etc etc

On the other hand very few providers think seriously about how they help people to learn to be more enterprising in the way they think, in the attitudes and beliefs that they hold, an din how they develop the resilience that enterprise demands.

Wepromote the technical aspects of enterprise ahead of the psychological aspects – just about every time.

But it comes down to this:

You train someone who does not think like an entrepreneur the technical aspects of business development and you have achieved next to nothing.

You train someone how to ‘think’ like and entrepreneur and you have one!  Bingo!

So let’s start to think hard about the way that enterprising people think, the belies that they hold and the assumptions that they carry – and lets learn how to help more people to develop and share this enterprising psychology.