How Confidence Affects Your Performance as a Cleaning Manager or Supervisor

Let's face the facts, serving as a manager or supervisor in a commercial cleaning business is hard, and not just physically. Being the “person in charge” for a cleaning crew or several means you bear the brunt of customer complaints, staffing and scheduling issues, budgets, and more.

Feeling like you're constantly being pushed in every direction, can damage the psyche and hit your confidence hard. Unfortunately, too much self-doubt can seriously damage the growth potential of your team, your company, and your career.

Everyone has bad days—even bad weeks. But when you allow your lack of confidence to affect your attitude and enthusiasm, it can quickly snowball. Your bad attitude can negatively affect staff morale, which will reflect in their work. Those problems then hurt the company's overall production and operations and, in turn, harm your professional standing in your company and in the industry as a whole.

Confidence improves performance -- here's how

How do you know if you're suffering from diminished self-confidence?

Here are a few signs:

• You listen to the naysayers. You know the ones. They frequently engage in excessive complaining, negative banter, and genuinely have poor attitudes about everything.
• You're overly dependent on the opinions of others and tend to seek their approval.
• You use the word "should" way too often.
• You employ black-and-white thinking (you're either perfect or you're awful) or tend to jump to worst-case scenarios (a client complained so surely you'll be fired or lose the account).
• You avoid trying new things because you're afraid they may not work.
• You regularly think about your shortcomings.
• You hesitate to make suggestions for procedural or equipment improvements to your boss or the owner.

Recognize yourself in any of those? Don't beat yourself up. Many people deal with self-doubt from time to time (or a lot of the time). Thankfully, there are ways to develop and gain self-confidence.

How to Develop Self-Confidence

• Start by keeping track of the small successes. We often forget just how many things we accomplish from day to day, no matter how small. As you begin to realize you're making progress, your confidence will grow.
• Develop goals and create a plan for accomplishing them (see the section on setting goals). With an action plan in place, you'll have a series of small tasks you can begin checking off. Your confidence will grow with each new accomplishment.
• Make a list of the areas where you know you lack confidence. Then make a list of solutions for each of these areas. For instance, if you get a complaint, how will you approach it so that you can confidently talk with the client to handle the situation?
• Push yourself to more regularly face your fears rather than hide from them. To quote William Jennings Bryan, "The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear."
• Make a list of people you feel are self-confident. Think about why they exude confidence, then figure out how to mirror those attributes and “fake it until you make it.”
• Pay attention to your positive inner voice and stop putting yourself down. Positive self-talk can slowly help you build your self-esteem and confidence.
• If your lack of confidence stems from inexperience, then commit to spending more time learning about your industry and becoming a better leader.
• Read books that boost your confidence, like

>The Self Confidence Workbook: A Guide to Overcoming Self-Doubt and Improving Self-Esteem
>The Art of Extraordinary Confidence
>The Confidence Gap: A Guide to Overcoming Fear and Self-Doubt

If you realize your lack of self-confidence is adversely affecting your professional growth, now is the time to uncover what exactly you fear and make a plan to move past it. Once you get started, your doubt will slowly subside as your confidence grows.

Here is an exercise you can do to start owning your leadership skills. Write your answers on a sheet of paper or on your computer and start practicing the 3 things you are going to do to improve your confidence level in the workplace.

*This is an excerpt from the Personal Development Training Program, an TJS Certified Training Program.

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