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Daily activities to build your confidence as a leader will keep you in good stead as part of your developmental processes. Your job in your leadership role is to influence others in a positive way to achieve the goals you have set for your organization.

Now, confidence is very possibly the single most appealing quality! Not only in a potential romantic partner, but also in a leader or boss.

It comes from a variety of different sources. Whether you are doing things that push you to your limits or overcoming some type of challenge. All of these various different experiences can increase your confidence.

People like to follow someone who is confident. After all, a confident person appears to have a sense of direction and purpose, and that’s something we all want. Confidence leads us to believe that someone’s skills and knowledge are up for whatever task they plan to tackle. Someone who appears to know what they’re doing is always going to be someone we want to follow.

But confidence doesn’t always come easy! Most of us aren’t born with massive measures of confidence naturally instilled within our minds. It takes work to develop that sense of self-assurance and confidence that makes people want to follow us.

If you want to be a good leader, here are a few things you can do every day to build your confidence:

Own Your Weaknesses

You’re going to make mistakes—big and small—on a near-daily basis. Or, even if you don’t mess up, you’ll still find yourself confronted by situations where you feel incapable, helpless, or insufficient. When that happens, don’t run from the problem—face them head on and embrace them!

There is a certain sense of peace that comes from owning up to your weaknesses and failings. Not letting yourself be okay with being a failure or incapable, but recognizing your human limitations. You can still work on strengthening yourself in those areas, but at least you own the truth of who you are and what you can do. That can bring you peace of mind, and it will help you to seek out people who are capable in the areas where you’re weak.

Finally, have the strength of character to make apologies where and when necessary.

Play to Your Strengths

Nothing builds confidence like being really, really good at something! Especially something that everyone else wants to be good at.

You see people like Floyd Mayweather or George St. Pierre, and you can see the confidence that fills every fiber of their being because they know they are damned good at one specific skill or task.

That’s what you need! You need to find the things you are good at and play to those strengths. It doesn’t matter what they are—people skills, long-term vision, planning and organization, intuition, or delegation—all that matters is that you lean on those strengths every day to build your confidence.

Express Yourself

People who are shy, withdrawn, or hesitant to express themselves tend to lack confidence. After all, if you can’t even bring yourself to put your thoughts and feelings into words, how could you possibly expect anyone to hear or care what you have to say?

So don’t let your shyness or hesitance stop you! Get past your natural reluctance to speak and start speaking up. Tell people what you think or how you feel. The more you do, the more you’ll find they respond to you—often positively. You’ll find that the more you speak, the easier it will become.

And people love following others who aren’t afraid to speak their mind and let their feelings be known. After all, it indicates a certain degree of honesty and integrity, and those are both traits that everyone wants to follow.

Take the Right Actions

People who work just to keep working are rarely good, confident leaders. Leaders are the ones who work their asses off not just pushing the ball forward, but making sure that “forward” is the right direction.

You can spend hours every day spinning your wheels and working in all directions, but you’re never really going to make as much progress as you could if you were pushing in a specific, correct direction. That takes a bit more research and planning before you start pushing. You’ve got to know which actions are the “right” ones, the actions that will push you in the direction you want to go. But once you’ve done the research and you’re organized, it’s time to hunker down and get working hard.

Use and Accept Compliments

Compliments are an excellent tool to inspire others and to build their self-confidence, but did you know that they can do wonders for your own confidence as well? 

When you give others compliments, it has the psychological effect of building your own sense of well-being. And when you receive compliments—genuine compliments that you accept graciously—it builds up the self-image that you have of yourself.

Silence that Negative Self-Talk

Easier said than done, right?

We’ve all got that little voice in our heads, the one that fills our minds with doubt, criticism, and negativity. It’s the voice that tells us we’re not good enough, people don’t respect us, or we simply don’t have the skills to achieve whatever goal we’re pushing toward.

That voice can cripple you with doubt and shatter your confidence. In order to build up your confidence, it’s time to shut off or simply ignore that voice.

The truth is that negative self-talk can seriously hamper your confidence. After all, if you’re always thinking negatively about yourself, how could you possibly do anything positive?

But if you can switch off that voice or push it to the back of your mind, you’ll be able to push through the negativity and find the positivity in your life. It’s crucial for building up your confidence!

Be Kind to Yourself

Unrealistic expectations are precisely that: unrealistic. You can never write a book overnight, become CEO in a week, or shatter the world record as you get out of bed. Anyone trying to do too much too quickly is going to burn out, and that sense of “failure” can shatter your confidence.

So don’t set unrealistic goals. Make sure that your expectations are realistic, and that you can actually achieve whatever objectives you’ve set for yourself. In some cases, you may even want to set easier goals, as you’ll feel a huge confidence boost when you can achieve them.