Darren Bent and the World Economy…

We thought you might like to read this piece by Alan Hansen on the BBC Website about the remarkable transformation in the football player Darren Bent. It struck us that if only Harry Redknapp could be let loose on the world economy, he might have a similar impact on global confidence levels. Hansen’s bottom line view is that talent is nothing without confidence – you might have all of the abilities in the world, but without confidence, you won’t be the fully potent force you might be.

Think of all of the talent that is currently being forgotten because of a dearth of confidence. If you read some of our earlier stuff on confidence, you’ll see we believe confidence to be something that should always come from within and shouldn’t rely on external influences to determine it. However, we know the reality is that people struggle to have the very self-defined confidence, so we would suggest the following. Instead of focusing on lack of confidence in the current world around you;

1. Ask yourself whether you can be the best performer going in an atmosphere that’s lacking confidence – can you still deliver better than others right now because of the talents that you have?
2. If confidence was never going to come back, what would you start to look to in order to get a sense of surviving and performing in that very different world?
3. Despite confidence being lacking, what factors are constant around you that let you know there is still a performance to be delivered and key processes to go through, all of which are in your control to deliver to a greater or lesser level of effectiveness?

Let us know what answers you come up with and if this starts to get you thinking differently about how confidence might work for you.