Courage isn’t a destination but a muscle that requires training and practice, says Juan Bendaña, keynote speaker at the Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents National Summit on Education, October 15-17.
If an assistant principal is set to present at a superintendents’ meeting for the first time and wants to project confidence, she should start by pouring energy into the preparation, Bendaña says, emphasizing his confidence cycle of energy, courage, action, and proof.
“Once you have enough energy poured into that thing, it facilitates courage,” says Bendaña, who’s also the author of Confident by Choice: The Three Small Decisions That Build Everyday Courage.
Bendaña, who has researched confidence across high performers from CEOs to Olympians, spoke in schools early in his career. He started at assemblies for high school and college students, which led to leadership development for parents, school faculties, and school boards.
Education leaders can influence students’ lives for decades, Bendaña says, noting that he hopes to help those at the ALAS summit “inspire confidence in the next generation, but also give them the mindset, the tools, the resources to be able to be successful in that new version of what the future holds.”
Confidence Cycle
Bendaña’s confidence cycle framework has four steps that starts with energy, or a spark that sets off the cycle. The most difficult thing about running can be tying your shoes, he says. Or for the assistant principal, it could be getting ready for the presentation to the superintendents. If you don’t shy away from the discomfort or self-doubt, the energy you exert can facilitate the next step: courage.
A decision to improve something is the courage piece of the framework, which comes after you’ve tied your shoes or prepared for the presentation. Bendaña cites a study in which participants had to go to the gym for 30 days but could stay only five minutes. Eighty percent kept going to the gym when the study ended.
“Why? Because the hardest part was the initial inertia, the energy at the beginning to get themselves to make the decision, take the courageous decision to get into the gym,” Bendaña says.
Going for the run, finishing the gym workout, or delivering the presentation are the action steps.
“Then what happens after?” Bendaña asks. “There is a result, either in success or failure. Either it goes well, or you get tomatoes thrown at you.”
If it goes well, you get a little boost of energy, another spark, the proof that starts another revolution of the cycle. If it doesn’t go well, it’s a different form of proof, indicating an area in which you can grow. In either case, it sparks another round of the process.
Put It To Work
Bendaña encourages leaders to go beyond sharing the ideas that they think people want to hear.
“That’s not the one that I’m talking about,” Bendaña says. “I’m talking about the one that you actually think, that you’re nervous to share because you’re afraid of the impact or the result of you sharing that thing.”
In addition, educators who reach a certain level of success could be lulled into complacency and no longer train the courage muscle. He suggests that to keep practicing, do something a little scary and make the bold ask that makes you nervous.
Every time leaders complete a revolution of the confidence cycle, it becomes more ingrained in their identities as something they are, rather than something they do. After enough rounds of the cycle, leaders could reach a point when they ask how much more they can achieve, or how long they can sustain their success.
Bendaña urges such high performers to compare themselves not to others but to who they were six months or a year ago. “You can check in with your growth trajectory every single month, and then every few months, and be like, ‘At least I’m becoming the kind of person that I said I was going to be.”