Confidence Is Confidence, Whether You're Facing a Horse or a Hard Conversation

If you've been following my recent posts, you'll know I'm currently in Cambridge looking after my sister's three labradoodles and two horses while she's away with her family. It's given me a brilliant training ground for the very techniques I teach my clients on accessing confidence in high-stakes situations.

Don’t believe me? Here’s how.

Confidence is confidence. It's the same emotion, whatever the situation. It's the same feeling you need whether you're driving your car, speaking up in an interview, delivering a keynote, walking three large dogs, or asserting your authority over a 500kg horse. The dialogue, the environment, the stakes on paper, all completely different. But the emotion you need to access to handle each one well is identical.

To be confident, you need self-belief and self-trust. You need to know you belong in the space, and that you have the authority and the skill to be there. The moment you doubt yourself, everyone notices and that's the moment things can get dangerous, either for you or for the people around you.

In business, "dangerous" looks like losing your team's trust, being turned down by a funder, or your mind going blank in interview. It affects you, and it ripples out to affect others too, directly or indirectly.

For me this week, looking after the dogs and horses, "dangerous" means something more literal: loss of control, and the risk of injury to me, to a bystander, or to the animals themselves. Horses in particular are big, heavy, and can be spooked, or just plain naughty. Things can go wrong very quickly with an animal that size. I know what I'm doing; my sister and I both grew up riding, but it's been years since I was in the saddle and I don't know her horses that well.

When she asked if I could help while she was away, I said yes immediately. Not because my horsemanship was razor-sharp, but because I had inner trust in my ability to do the job safely. More than my slightly rusty horsemanship, I trusted my ability to assert myself with confidence when it mattered. And here's the thing; animals feel and respond to that confidence far more than they respond to any words that come with it... and humans aren't so different in that respect.

Looking after dogs and horses, really does call on exactly the same skill set as speaking with confidence in a high-stakes meeting. Here are some of the ‘situations and standoffs’ I've had this week:

• Getting Buzz to step back before I open the gate, so I don't get trampled

• Persuading Blaze to move out of Buzz's stable and into her own before feeding

• Stopping a play fight between the dogs before it escalates

• Calling the dogs back when they're off the lead across open fields

• Not conceding to earlier meal times, however hard those puppy-dog eyes beg

Accessing confidence

To access confidence, you first need to know what it actually feels like to you. Then you need to know how to call on it at will, even when part of you is doubting your ability, whether that's because pony club was forty years ago, or your leadership training was four years ago.

It's rarely just about proficiency. We don't need to be perfectly skilled all the time, we need to believe we can do the thing in front of us. When we doubt, we hesitate. And in that moment of hesitation, other people's belief in us wavers too, and the more opportunistic characters in the room; canine, equine, or corporate… take advantage.

Whether it's a dog, a horse, or a difficult senior stakeholder, people respond to who we are on the inside and how we hold ourselves; not to how "perfectly" we perform.

Because true confidence isn't a skill you learn. It's an emotion you access.

If you find yourself shrinking in high pressure situations and you’d like to learn how to access self confidence at will, we should talk. Dm me to arrange a consultation call.