Confidence or a lack thereof is one of the top things executives and professionals struggle with during their careers. Not having confidence can cause you to miss out on new projects, opportunities, promotions, or jobs. Do you know how to focus on building confidence?
In this episode, you will learn more about the essentials of confidence and how it affects your career development. Our host and CEO Porschia, alongside our guest, Dr. Kyle Elliott, will also share their insight on the significance of having a Confidence Council or Career Support System.
They will discuss how to do your own Confidence 360, to learn more about how others view you. The conversation also includes more detail on defining confidence, understanding your confidence goals, and how long it can take to see results with your level of confidence.
Dr. Kyle Elliott is the founder and career coach behind CaffeinatedKyle.com. His goal is simple: to help people find jobs they LOVE. His expertise is in Silicon Valley and high-tech. He has been recognized as a Best Career Coach and Interview Coach and LinkedIn Top Voice (the platform’s highest honor).
What you’ll learn:
- Why confidence is important in the workplace (it affects more than you think) and why you need a Confidence Council
- The biggest challenges executives and professionals have with building confidence
- Tips on how to start building confidence at work
- Practical techniques you can use to help with your own level of confidence
- How to identify and own what makes you fabulous
As a thank you for listening to this episode of the Career 101 Podcast, we are sharing our FREE master class – Career 911: Solving the Top 5 Challenges Executives and Professionals Have! It’s a training based on solving the common problems our clients have experienced to reach their goals. You can get access to the master class here!
Resources:
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Episode Transcript
Porschia: [00:00:00] Today we are talking about building confidence with Dr. Kyle Elliott. Dr. Kyle Elliott is the founder and career coach behind caffeinatedkyle. com. His goal is simple, to help people find jobs they love. His expertise is in Silicon Valley and high tech. He has been recognized as a best career coach and interview coach and LinkedIn top voice.
The platform’s highest honor. [00:01:00] Hi, Kyle. How are you today?
Kyle: I am doing so well. It’s nice and sunny here in Santa Barbara and excited to be speaking with you in the audience.
Porschia: I love it. I love it. And Santa Barbara is lovely right off of the 101. I used to live off the 101 years ago in Sherman Oaks, California.
So not too far.
Kyle: How beautiful. How beautiful.
Porschia: I am excited to discuss building confidence with you, but first we want to know a little more about you. So tell me about seven year old Kyle.
Kyle: Oh my goodness. Seven year old Kyle loved teaching. Back then, I asked, I think it was fifth grade, I asked for a huge whiteboard for my bedroom so I could literally create lesson plans.
I wanted a paper lesson planner from Staples and office supplies. I would create worksheets for my parents and have parent teacher conferences. So even back then, I loved teaching and educating. I would line up my Beanie Babies. I had [00:02:00] hundreds of them and teach them. So Really, it was all about teaching.
I wanted to, back then, be an American Sign Language teacher, or maybe a veterinarian, or both. So I loved just teaching and learning and educating. That was, What you would find me doing all the time.
Porschia: I love it. Kyle. I love it. So my mom’s a retired teacher. So I’m a teacher’s kid and definitely appreciate the teachers and educators out there.
And it sounds like we definitely could have been friends because I had a beanie baby collection too, and it just breaks my heart that I think they got thrown away somewhere. And I know some of the other millennials. could appreciate the beanie babies and, all of that good stuff.
Kyle: Oh, yes.
Yeah. I had hundreds and I think at some point my niece and nephew were going through the attic with my parents and it got donated to them and they went through the whole, let’s look on eBay and see what they’re worth. Do we have the 10, [00:03:00] 000 one?
Porschia: Yes. And I had those conversations with my family members about which ones would be worth money and all that good stuff.
Did they find the 10, 000 one?
Kyle: They did not. I think each of them were worth about 7 or 8. So they were quite disappointed. They’re like, it’s the same price as shipping, Kyle.
Porschia: At least they can just enjoy the collection and look at it.
Kyle: Exactly.
Porschia: So what was your first job, Kyle?
Kyle: My first job was in elementary school.
It was like an unofficial job. I worked the snack bar. So back then, I was at the snack bar. And I have always loved working. And making money. My first like official job, I was 14 though, I learned I could get a worker’s permit through school. So I went to the local businesses downtown, or at least that was my goal.
And the very first one I walked into was a diner, a 50s diner. And I said, Hey, I want to learn if I can get a job here. And the server turned around, talked to the [00:04:00] cook, who is the owner and said, Hey, Al, this kid wants a job. And they said, come in on Friday. And I started. And I worked there for a few years, and then after that I ended up going to Denny’s and being a server full time, while also being in high school, so I would work 30 40 hours a week at Denny’s.
on top of high school. So I’ve always loved not just learning and teaching, but also just working. I loved working as an ethic I’ve had since being a young kid.
Porschia: Yeah. I can definitely hear that work ethic, Kyle. Wow. Working almost full time or full time in high school. That is very commendable.
I was a server in college at Outback Steakhouse and that was a lot of fun. Work while being an undergrad. So tell us about some highlights or pivotal moments in your career before you started your business.
Kyle: I would say that Denny’s one is part of it. It was early on. Most of the people there were 30s, 40s, 50s.
[00:05:00] They were parents of kids at my high school. So it’s interesting being 16 years old and being a server at Denny’s. I would go to school until 2 or 3 o’clock and then from 4 to 10 or 11 o’clock, I would go work at Denny’s. So I think that was really helpful in just accelerating my career. Another moment was my last job before I left to run my business full time.
I had never managed a team and something I really wanted was that. So I ended up managing three residence halls at a team of 23 direct reports. So going from managing no one to 23 resident assistants. And learning how to be responsible for work that I didn’t get to directly do was really interesting and really introduced me to the work of career coaching that I do today and saying, Hey, here’s something I want done.
But how do I empower and lead and delegate through this team? was really interesting. There was a lot of highs and also lows, like having to terminate employees, having to deal with people who had performance issues or who weren’t [00:06:00] doing well academically and were at risk of losing their employment because they had to have a certain GPA.
So that was really interesting and doing that with some of them were older than me and my employees who reported to me. So it was a really interesting experience. That then translated to then when I’m working with employees now, and managers now, saying, Hey, I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to have to go through these really difficult conversations.
Yeah,
Porschia: you touched on a lot of great points there, Kyle, and one thing that we talked to some of our clients about our individual clients and also our organizational and business clients is just that dynamic of preparing managers to lead people who might be older than them or in different generations than they are in, and there are a lot of dynamics there at play that sometimes people don’t think about until they’re in those experiences.
Yeah.
Kyle: Yeah, it was super interesting just having a very diverse team in regard to so many [00:07:00] different aspects and identities and learning to adapt to that and realizing the way that I’m motivated. I work really young. I was just motivated by work and recognizing not everyone’s motivated in the same way really introduced me to that coaching and saying, Hey, I need to figure out what motivates each person and that it’s going to be different for each of them.
And it’s not good or bad that someone’s motivated differently. It’s just unlocking that And discovering that, and then realizing that, and helping open them up. And some of them, their one on ones were ten minutes. They just wanted a quick check in. Others, it was an hour and a half. They wanted to talk for a while, and they wanted to go get a Coke.
Walk around, and really just realizing that each person is different and how they need to be led and managed and coached. It was a really eye opening experience.
Porschia: Absolutely. And you have a very interesting background and I want to stay along those lines. How did you discover the field of coaching?
Kyle: It was completely by accident. That last job before I went full time was a residence hall. I was planning to go into marketing and fundraising and [00:08:00] nonprofits. My master’s was a master’s of public administration and philanthropy, nonprofit. I love it. management. So I thought I was going to go down that route, maybe run a hospital, maybe do marketing and fundraising for a huge non profit.
And then along the way, while I was an undergrad in college and then graduate in school, I went on Fiverr. And you could do a gig, for those who aren’t familiar, who are listening, where you literally charge 5 to do a task. My task was to review a resume, so for 5 I would review someone’s resume and give them feedback, or on LinkedIn, that about section, that intro section, I would write a few paragraphs for them.
And this started taking off. I had a lot of clients on Fiverr, I also went on Craigslist back then, was really popular for services and got clients, and then classmates at San Francisco State University of Washington. And based on my dad’s advice, each time I had a wait list, I would double my prices. He doesn’t remember giving this advice, but my mom does.
And it was so helpful, and I [00:09:00] went from 5 to 10, 10 to 20. But because I was in San Francisco and Seattle, a lot of my clients ended up getting jobs in tech, at Amazon, at Netflix, at Google, at Amazon. Twitter, now X. So I developed this accidental niche for tech coaching and it bolstered into a full time job.
So I ended up leaving managing those three residence halls almost seven years ago now to run this business. Full time.
Porschia: Wow. Wow. That is great. That is great. So it sounds like you started with the resume reviews and when it comes to coaching, there are a lot of different angles that you can coach on.
How did you decide to focus on career coaching?
Kyle: That was by accident as well. What happened was I was supporting people with their resumes and they said oh gosh I don’t even know where to start with the resume because I don’t know what on it what I want to do for a living Can you help me Kyle or on the flip side?
I would help with their resume and then they would get an interview and say Now what, Kyle? I actually got the interview at Facebook, or now Metta, [00:10:00] can you support me? Or, oh, now I’m in the job, how do I ramp up on my first 30, 60, 90 days? Or, I want a promotion. So it just naturally evolved, and instead of making huge transitions, where I said, today I’m not writing resumes, today I’m 100 percent coaching, I really got inspired by my clients who are working on the iPhone, Mac, these different things, and saying, what are little software updates I could give you?
Make to my own business. So can I start introducing one coaching session to a client or two coaching sessions and making little pivots to then be moving more toward coaching and this kind of holistic approach to people’s careers instead of just reviewing a career document.
Porschia: I love it. I love it. So we’ve discussed confidence on the podcast before back in episode 50 when we talked about confidence at work.
So why do you think confidence at work is important? Kyle
Kyle: confidence plays a part in nearly everything you do at work and in your life. [00:11:00] Whether you apply for a role, whether you ask for promotion or a salary increase, how you show up in meetings, how you display your work and communicate, confidence is really underlying or underpinning all of that.
So it’s important that people are able to recognize that they’re struggling with their confidence and okay, is this something I need to work on and improve?
Porschia: Yeah, many executives and professionals tell me that they want to build their confidence. What are some tips you can share to help someone start building their confidence?
Kyle: I would start by figuring out what they even mean by confidence. I think that’s a really important starting point. Whenever someone comes to me with a goal, they might say, I want to work on executive presence, Kyle. I want to work on communication. I want to work on confidence. I ask people, what do you mean by confidence?
What does a confident person look like? What does someone who’s struggling with confidence look like? And starting there and getting really clear on what do you even mean by confidence? How will you know once you feel more [00:12:00] confident? And then what does that journey look like? What are some steps to take, that you can take to get there?
I often have some ideas of what it looks like to be confident and steps based on working with lots of clients. But having you, if you’re listening to this, Pause the recording and saying, Hey, here’s what confidence means to me. Here’s some things that confident people do can be a really helpful first step.
So you have a clear idea of even the goal that you’re working toward.
Porschia: Yeah I think that’s really important because you’re right. Confidence means different things to different people. To someone, confidence might be giving a presentation in front of 200 people and to someone else, confidence just might mean A small meeting, but bringing an issue up that needs to be brought up, right?
And that has not been addressed directly. So I love that. So when someone outlines what confidence means to them, what’s the next step that they can take?
Kyle: I find it’s really important not to go at it alone, so making sure that [00:13:00] you’re getting help along the way and getting feedback, because oftentimes professionals, managers, executives have an idea of how they’re displaying, and they say, hey, here’s how I’m showing up in meetings or in emails with my colleagues.
And then how you’re actually showing up might be different. So I would think of it as a confidence council or a confidence board of directors and compiling that and saying, Who are the people around you that can support you? Is it a mentor who’s above you or a few mentors who are more confident that you can look to?
Are there some colleagues you can go to and ask for feedback after meetings and say, Hey, I’m trying to work on my confidence. How have you seen or what changes have you seen over the last few weeks and months as I’ve worked on this? Can you go to your boss? So finding some people around you support you and give you some insights can be really powerful because we can think we’re showing up on way, but getting some insights and learning the perceptions of people around you can be super powerful along the journey.
Porschia: I agree. I love your [00:14:00] idea about the confidence council or board of directors. One way, I guess a similar idea that I talked to our clients about is having a career support system. That’s different than just your family member and your friends. We love them, but having some other people in that support system.
So I love that. So Kyle. You talk about identifying and owning what makes you fabulous. Tell us more about how to do that.
Kyle: [00:15:00] Yeah, so a lot of people struggle to articulate what sets them apart. And I would turn to this Confidence Council, this Board of Directors, people around you, if you struggle to identify what’s unique about you.
A lot of us haven’t learned to figure out what’s unique about us, or our backgrounds and cultures told us to blend in, to be the same as other people and not stand out because you don’t want to come off. is someone who’s conceited. So I would go to those people around you and ask for some insights. Hey, what sets me apart from other product managers?
Hey, I’m a sales director. What do you notice is distinct or unique or different about me compared to other sales directors? And ask 5, 10, 20 people from your current workplace, from former workplaces, friends, family, and get some insights. And then I loved you asked about the seven year old Kyle earlier.
I would have listeners go back to their five, ten, seven year old selves and see what themes showed up [00:16:00] there as well. Because when I have done this, I found for clients, the overlap between those two, how people see them now, And how they were as a child before they had the mask of society and all the pressures, the intersection of that or the overlap is often what makes them fabulous.
So for me, when I was seven, it was that teaching, that educating, that coaching, even from a young age. And now when I do this Confidence 360 of people around me, it’s that exact same thing that people are giving feedback on that stuck with me through all these years.
Porschia: Yeah, I definitely think to your point that you mentioned earlier, people should go back and listen to this episode again or pause it and take notes because that overlap that you were talking about identifying what some of those Unique things are, I sometimes call them points of distinction or things that said art from other people.
So important. And then I really liked your [00:17:00] idea of doing a confidence 360. I know some people are familiar with a 360 assessment because they might work in an organization or a company that utilizes 360 assessments. But. If you don’t, you can definitely just get that feedback like Kyle was mentioning.
So I love that idea.
Kyle: Yes. And it can be informal too. It doesn’t have to be a formal assessment. It can literally be a text message. Hey, I’m listening to a podcast. They’re talking about confidence. What makes me fabulous? What’s unique about me? What are my points of distinction? As you mentioned, and just text a few friends and ask them, and that can really be powerful and that in and of itself can bolster and build your confidence as well.
Porschia: Great. So on the flip side, Kyle, what do you think stops people from feeling confident?
Kyle: Oh gosh, there’s so many things that stop people from feeling confident. I think one of the biggest ones is people not taking risks. What happens is we’re not feeling confident, we don’t [00:18:00] take a risk, and then we have the self fulfilling prophecy of Oh, I didn’t do well.
And then it’s just the cycle, this downward spiral of, Oh, I’m not able to do this. Then I don’t do it. And then it’s, Oh, look, I’m not able to succeed at work. Oh, I can’t speak up in meetings. I don’t speak up in a meeting and then therefore you have that self fulfilling prophecy and the way to get out of that spiral is to then catch yourself in that loop and do that upward spiral instead.
And having those people around you who can support and uplift you can be really powerful to say, Hey, I’m going to hold you accountable. Did you speak up in any meetings this week like you said you would?
Porschia: I love it. I love it. To your point about catching yourself in that kind of downward spiral and self fulfilling prophecies, that can happen a lot at work.
And I find with clients, sometimes they get an idea in their head and then they might have a [00:19:00] negative interpretation of that idea, and then that plays out for weeks, months, or even years on the job. Definitely stop and catch yourself, like Kyle was saying there. From your perspective, Kyle, what are some of the other big challenges that you’ve seen executives and professionals have with building their confidence?
Kyle: I find a lot of people are trying to go at it alone. They don’t have someone there to support them and they feel like, oh, I’m the only one that struggles with this. They say, I’ve been an executive for 10 years, 20 years. I’m on the C suite or I’m a VP. I should know how to do this. And they feel like they’re alone.
Yeah, I’ve worked with over a thousand clients and almost every single one has mentioned confidence as an issue. And it’s either the presenting issue they come with, or oftentimes it’s. It’s underneath the, I struggle with communication or I struggle to speak up. So to know you’re not alone and then find people around you that can help you can be really powerful.[00:20:00]
And it takes really an act of courage to speak up and say, Hey, I’m struggling with confidence. Can we talk about this with people around you? And what you’ll realize if you do that is other people will say, Oh my gosh, me too. I feel the exact same way. Even if you’re an executive, I promise you other people will have similar experiences around struggling with confidence.
Porschia: I agree. I agree. And one thing I see with a lot of our clients, Kyle, and I would guess you might see a lot of this too, is they are ambitious. They’re high achievers. They feel like they have to have it all together all the time that they can’t slip up or have someone think that they don’t know what they’re doing.
So they’re carrying a lot of this pressure. And they think that Maybe saying that they don’t feel confident might be like a sign of weakness. I definitely echo your sentiments about, not going at it alone.
Kyle: Yeah. And I, [00:21:00] it can feel scary to speak up. And then once you do though, it can be like, Oh gosh, that weight is off.
Now I can actually have these open conversations and that can actually bolster your confidence, speaking about that lack of confidence and addressing it head on and then having some actions that you could take to start building it up again.
Porschia: So how long do you think it would take for an executive or professional to build their confidence if they start, implementing some of your recommendations?
Kyle: I think what’s powerful is if you start identifying what’s happening here, you find some people around you, you can start seeing the results right away. If you say, hey, what’s underpinning this? Is it a fear of failure, of regret, of rejection? Whatever the common reason is that you have this Lack of confidence, and then you find people around you to support you.
I’ve seen people right away, right after talking about it, have an improvement in their confidence. So it doesn’t take forever. Even though you’ve been feeling this way, perhaps, for a [00:22:00] long time, doesn’t mean it’s going to take forever to improve how you’re feeling.
Porschia: Yeah. And I asked you that because a lot of people ask me that, how long does this take, and I think on the career coaching side, a lot of people think in terms of timelines, because they’re trying to get anywhere.
We’re trying to, reach some goal that’s very time bound. But yeah, to your point it’s not always going to be super set in stone, I think, for people.
Kyle: Yeah, and it’s all ongoing thing. You might see results right away, but I think it’s like the gym. It’s like any muscle confidence is a muscle you can work on, and you’re gonna have to keep working on it if you want to keep strengthening it and maintaining that muscle.
If you don’t keep working on it, if you don’t keep asking for feedback, if you don’t keep talking about where you might be feeling insecure, it’s gonna then get weak again if you don’t keep working on it.
Porschia: Yeah, so let’s all work our confidence muscles like Kyle is saying. So Kyle, tell us more about your [00:23:00] business.
Kyle: So I’m a career coach. I primarily support senior leaders in tech, Silicon Valley, and really what sets me apart from a lot of coaches is it’s not just, hey, I’m a product director at Meta, I want to be a product director at Amazon, but it’s people navigating some sort of transition. Maybe they’re breaking into tech, maybe they’ve been an entrepreneur for 20 plus years and it’s their first time going in house, and then confidence is often a big issue that comes up with these people.
Maybe. It’s the presenting issue, as we said, or it’s underneath, and they don’t even realize they struggle with confidence. That’s the reason they’re hesitating to apply for jobs, or the reason they’ve landed 10 or 20 interviews, but none of them convert. So it’s something that comes up a lot with the people I work with.
Porschia: Yeah, and you just had me think about this as you were talking there, but the confidence that you need in the interview is so important as well. What are some tips you might be able to share [00:24:00] about, confidence and having that confidence during an interview?
Kyle: There’s two things that come up here.
One is knowing that you’ve made it at least 95 percent of the way if you’re getting the interview. There’s probably a hundred, if not a thousand, people that applied for that role. So if you made it to those final five or ten people they’re interviewing, know you made it at least 95 percent of the way.
In the U. S. a 95 percent is an A. So know that you already have an A and your job is just to convert out of those final five. So that can be really helpful. And then when you’re in that interview, recognize it’s really a meeting, and you’ve likely had a lot of meetings by the time you got to that interview, so to try and convert it to that, your mindset, convert it to a meeting, and if you’re not sure what to say, what would you do in a meeting?
I need a moment to think. Or, can I follow up with you after that? Or, ooh I have a really great example by just, it’s not coming to my mind. So really treating it like a meeting can help bolster your confidence and know that [00:25:00] you’ve probably had hundreds if not thousands of meetings. And you probably did well on that one.
Can be really helpful.
Porschia: Great. We will be providing a link to your website and other social channels in our show notes so people can find you online. But what is the best way for someone to get in touch with you?
Kyle: Yes, LinkedIn. I spend a lot of time on there. Kyle Elliott with two L’s and two T’s.
And then my website, KefNativeKyle. com.
Porschia: Great. So Kyle, I love to ask other coaches this question. What is your definition of career success?
Kyle: Oh, I love that. I think career success, at least in part, is knowing and living your values. Saying, here’s my values, and then am I living them at work? And then more broadly in life, because we spend so much time at work.
So if we’re living them at work, we’re likely living them in life as well. Great.
Porschia: And this is the last question that I ask all of our guests. [00:26:00] How do you think executives or professionals can get a positive edge in their career?
Kyle: I would say mentorship. If I had to narrow it down to one thing, I find mentorship is critical.
And it’s really a shortcut to getting ahead, finding people who are where you want to be five, 10, 20 years from now. And saying, Hey, I want to learn more about your path and the role here. The goal here isn’t to duplicate it, but instead learn and say, Hey, here’s something that went well. And here’s something maybe I want to avoid or change for my own path.
Porschia: I love it, Kyle. And I love how you’ve said the goal is not necessarily to duplicate it. I think so many people think. Oh, let me just find a mentor and then this mentor is going to tell me everything and I will follow this paint by numbers. And it’s really to your point about looking at what worked for that person, seeing how some of it could apply to you, but also really making it your own.[00:27:00]
With a lot of mentors, you’ve got to think that they sometimes are older. They were in a different time period. So some of the technology, some of the strategies don’t necessarily apply. And then also, that’s a completely different person than you are. They have a different personality. They might have a different background.
To Kyle’s point, it’s about, taking what works, but also putting your own spin on it. So thank you so much, Kyle. You’ve had a lot of gems for us today. Thank you for having me
Kyle: on such amazing questions.
Porschia: Yes, Kyle. Like I said, you’ve shared a lot of gems and I think some great insights with us today, and I’m sure that our listeners can use it to be more confident in their careers.
We appreciate you being with us.
Kyle: Thank you. [00:28:00]
