Start With A Win - How to Build Confidence with Dr. Ivan Joseph

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

At times do you feel you have Imposter Syndrome?  Do you lack self-confidence? In this episode, Dr. Ivan Joseph dives into the importance of self-confidence, its impact on success, and how to overcome self-doubt. He shares his personal journey of building self-confidence, and we explore how it applies to both high-performance athletes and business leaders. Emphasizing the significance of mindset, purpose, cohesion in teams, and the value of learning from mistakes.Whether you're an athlete, an entrepreneur, or just someone looking to boost your self-confidence and achieve your goals, you won't want to miss this insightful conversation. Join us as we uncover the keys to self-confidence and personal success.Dr. Joseph is the Vice President, Student Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University. In this senior role, he heads the university’s effort to promote interconnectedness and belonging among a diverse student body.  He is also an internationally renowned speaker, author, performance coach, consultant, and educator, and His TEDx talk, “The Skill of Self-Confidence,” has over 26 million views and was named by Forbes as one of the 10 Best TED Talks.  Ivan has focused his research and leadership on understanding how self-confidence and cohesion drive performance. 01:09 Success begins and ends with…03:43 Why are we afraid to swing at the plate?05:09 Is self-confidence and humility the same?08:19 When you have doubt, you are doing this!09:37 Increase your self-confidence.13:34 What do you need for team-building?16:27 No negativity, do this instead… 18:04 Get to the next reflection, don’t stop at the first!  Connect with Adam http://www.startwithawin.comhttps://www.facebook.com/AdamContosCEO https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamcontos/ https://www.instagram.com/adamcontosceo/ https://www.youtube.com/@LeadershipFactoryhttp://twitter.com/AdamContosCEO  Listen, rate, and subscribe! Apple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle Podcasts

What's a key skill that successful people have? Today, we find out and how you can develop it on Start With A Win. Welcome to Start With A Win, where we talk franchising, leadership, and business growth. Let's go. And coming to you from Area 15 Ventures, it's Adam Kantos with Start With A Win. This is an exciting episode because today we have Dr. Ivan Joseph. Dr. Joseph is a vice president of student affairs at Wilford Laurier University. He's also an internationally renowned speaker, author, performance coach, consultant, and educator. And his TEDx talk, The Skill of Self-Confidence, has, I think

it's like in the 30s of something million views now on YouTube. And it was named by Forbes as one of the top 10 best TED Talks. Dr. Joseph, welcome to Start With a Win. Thanks, Adam. Please call me Ivan. Only the people I don't like call me Dr. Joseph. Oh, I like that. All right, Ivan. Great to have you on the show here. You say that success begins and ends with self-confidence here. And it's so cool. I listened to your TED Talk. How did you get into talking about self-confidence and what led to this discovery? You know what? I think it was a moment when I was, you know, people see me as the professor right now, the PhD, but what they don't know is I failed out of university. I flunked out. And then when I tried to be a varsity athlete, they see me as a high performance coach

who's coached at the Olympics or the World Cup, the qualifiers. But what they don't know is I got cut from my team when I was trying out. And it really impacted my belief and my performance. And my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, said, hey, I just came and saw your practice. You look terrible. This coach here, he told me, you told me, he's not very good. He doesn't have the same qualifications.

Why are you letting his perception of your skill and your ability influence your performance? And that's when I realized that what people thought of me, I took on and it impacted what my belief was about myself. And this self-defeating cycle started. That's when I was like, oh, there's something about mindset and your genuine belief in yourself. That's when I started thinking about confidence. That's pretty amazing. Let me ask you a question then about being a high-performing athlete and self-confidence. I mean, does it seem like we,

through our self-confidence or lack thereof, set our own limits? Is that the reality here? I will say this, right? When you think about confidence, this genuine belief in your ability to accomplish the task at hand, you're going to not put your hand up if you're afraid or if you think that failure is equal to your performance. Or if you allow doubt to come into your ability to believe that you can do something. So you won't take risks. You won't put your hand up. You won't say, yeah, I think I can do that. And what happens? You don't get the promotion if people don't see you taking opportunities. If you're not standing acquisition of talent or skill, but really that mindset starts the process before and beyond what skill gives you. I think you just, you made this very

profound statement a second ago, which is you'll never get to hit it out of the park if you won't get to the plate and take the swing. Why are we so afraid to get to the plate and take the swing? Well, you know, there's a couple of reasons. And I'll say for me, you know, when I I'm a dad of daughters. Right. And my daughters who are valedictorians like top of their class, they don't want to look bad. They don't want to be embarrassed. They don't mind doing something, but they better be immediately good at it. Well, nobody gets to be immediately excellent.

So one of the reasons we're afraid is we don't want to strike out. We don't want, we're worried as a public about what the person over there is going to think about us or say about us. We get in our own head, that ego, that pride, that shame stops us from being willing to take risks. That's number one. Okay. It's fascinating because if you're never willing

to start, you're never going to succeed. Amen. So, you know, and you always talk about how success begins with self-confidence and ends with self-confidence as well. You know, I guess there's some humility in there also. So explain that to us. Why is that? Why is self-confidence so important when it comes to all of our listeners reflecting? Because this is a bunch of leaders and entrepreneurs here, and they wake up with this same self-doubt that we all have when we start getting in our own heads. Explain to us why is attempting to begin and attempting to end with self-confidence so important? Yeah. And you said a good word in there too earlier, which is about humility.

And I think, let me start with that part is recognize that self-confidence and humility are the same thing. People are like, what? Like self-confidence is what you tell yourself. Ego is what you tell others, right? Hey, look how great I am, you, Bob. Bob, I'm number one. No. When we get into someplace that's novel and new, we have doubt. Imposter syndrome. We've all had that promotion. I remember getting this new job. I'm like, oh my God, I don't even know how to delegate. I don't know what the, like, what does this budget mean? They're asking me about stakeholder consultant. I don't know how to write a briefing note. Self-doubt, fear of failure, that comes for us. And so when I say it begins with self-confidence, like, no, I can do this. I can do this. It's okay. Or you know what? I'm

going to ask somebody for help. That's self-confidence. That's humility, right? Because being willing to say, I don't know everything. That's what starts your performance going in the right direction. And at the end of the day, recognizing I didn't do this by myself. Let me give praise to the people that helped me get here. Another part of confidence, meaning I'm going to share the love in this and this great moment. Awesome. And you mentioned the imposter syndrome there. So we hear that in the entrepreneurial space. In fact, I was in a room of 100 entrepreneurs, business leaders. Everybody paid like $15,000 to be in this room. It was incredible.

And the leader of the room stood up there and said, who has this self-doubt, fear, and overwhelm known as imposter syndrome? And the entire room of these key leaders raised their hand. Do we all have this? And what is imposter syndrome? Can you explain that to us? Yeah. In the business world, you've probably heard this word of the Peter Principle. When you graduate into a job where you don't think your skills are good enough, but you just got the promotion, right? And you're like, oh my gosh. And it happens to everybody. Imposter syndrome is this doubt that you have, this self-doubt that says,

I don't want anybody to know that I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm an imposter. I don't belong here. Everybody else is way smarter than me. Everybody else is way more talented. And we all say, oh my gosh, that person got the job. They went to Harvard and Stanford.

They're doing the job. I only went to Iowa school, right? Or man, that person sounds so smart when they speak. I better keep my mouth shut. I remember that. Like, I don't want to put my hand up because oh, I don't know the answer. And then somebody else says the answer. And somebody says, great job. Dang it, I knew that one, right? We all have it. And if we don't have it, then we haven't pushed ourselves to really achieve our potential. Then we're we're good and staying comfortable and high performers. Right. They don't want to stay comfort comfortable. They're driving to the next thing. And it's normal and it's and it's OK to have fear of failure and to have self-doubt when you're in that new novel position. That tells you that you've stretched yourself. And so how do you combat that self-confidence or that imposter syndrome

that eats away at your self-confidence? Well, that's a different question that we can answer later on. But give yourself grace and recognize that when that doubt is coming, then you are growing and stretching and developing your skills. Ooh, I like that. I mean, that's a key point, everybody. Listen to what Ivan just said here. That indication of self-doubt means you're doing something right. It means you're stretching yourself. So, and you mentioned, I mean, there's a lot of gold in this. You mentioned the comfort. And I think the comfort drives us to the minimum necessary in our performance. But this discomfort drives us to find or even pursue that maximum possible. So minimum necessary, maximum possible, where do you want to end up, folks? I think we

know the answer to that. And Ivan has a lot of the boost to get there. We're seeing a lot of people change jobs or adjust their careers, things like that lately. We're seeing a lot of people change jobs or adjust their careers, things like that lately. And there is a lot of self-doubt coming in these times. You apply for a job, but you're like, oh, I don't meet all the requirements that the HR department put on the form. I mean, frankly, I'm a two-time college dropout myself. I went on to become the CEO of a public company and got a 4.0 on my MBA. But the reality was there was a ton of self-doubt and I had to figure out ways to increase that confidence. What recommendations do you have for people in this day and age to increase their self-confidence? I want to give your listeners some real concrete tools because

there's some simple things. Number one is, you know, just remind yourself of all your amazing accomplishments. So if you've watched my TED talk, you'll hear me talk about a self-confidence letter, right? A brag sheet to yourself. Dear Ivan, congratulations on choosing the right woman to marry. You set a goal of getting your PhD before the age of 38. You did it, right? This is all my amazing things. Read that letter to yourself when doubt comes in over and over and over again. When I got a new job, I busted out

that letter and read it to myself time and time and time again. Now your listeners are probably not as old as me, so they're going to probably read it on their iPhone. So it's not a letter, but it's a quick virtual note, whatever that might be number two when you feel that negative talk come in oh my god i can't do this stop it a physical anchoring clap your hands snap your fingers watch professional athletes point clap take a deep breath in sports psychology we call those centering tools to break the thought pattern and then immediately replace it with a positive statement an affirmation. You know, I am the captain of my ship and the master of my fate, bored from Nelson Mandela.

Nobody outworks me and I can learn anything. Three affirmations a day. And here's the science behind that, Adam, real quickly. Three affirmations a day in the creative world of marketing and collateral, 17% increase in productivity. If you're in the analytics, diagnostic problem solving, 23 to 27% faster to solve complex problems. And finally, in revenue generation sales world, you increase your sales profitability by over 27%. A Harvard study by Sonia Lubomirsky. So there's two quick ones. I have tons more, but I don't want to monopolize all your time there. Well, I mean, those were really cool. And it makes me reflect on a sales team I was

coaching one time where they would go in and I would say, all right, what is your key product? And they would say, it's this particular test that they were selling to physicians. And I said, okay, how many of those do you sell to each of your customers? And they said, it's about four. I said, four. Okay. Who, who set that number? And they go, well, that's just kind of what we, what we've normally sold. And I said, is that what you tell your physicians? They said, yeah. I said, okay, well, how many customers does an average physician have? And they said, 400. I go, you're only serving 1% of their customers with this? And I said, how many are eligible for this test or need this test? They said, it's probably about 40. So we go from 1% to 10% here. I said, well, why don't you go in and say, hey, you have 10% of your customers are eligible for this. Let's see if we can get those 10% taken care of with it.

I said, let's give that a try. So a couple months later at the next quarterly meeting, I said, what happened here? And they came in and they said, we're selling an average of 27. So why is that? And they go, well, it just changed in our heads. I mean, is this self-confidence and sales of I can perform more? You know, it's a combination of two things, right? It's a matter of self-confidence.

But really, you're talking about this is a sports psychology high performance term called the Pygmalion effect, meaning people will always rise to a minimum level of expectations. And because somebody changed that expectation, people then said, oh, it could happen. People were watching us. Yeah. You know, I do a talk on high performance where we talk about the Pygmalion effect and how it allows Olympians achieve excellence. But yeah, that's to me what happened right there. So this is fascinating because I want to talk now go, you know, sales team, individual, building high performance teams is one of the key things that you are an expert at. How do we build self-confidence into team building? And give us some tips and pointers on doing that. Yeah. So number one thing I always talk about is a clear sense of purpose,

making sure that everybody is aligned with who we are and what we're about. You know, put a ding in the universe, Skype. Be disruptive in the pursuit of change, Apple. Southlake Hospital, give a damn. Those clear sense of purpose. Zappos, live and deliver our wow. People mistake purpose with this vision of we will do this and this and this and this, and that's too much. Claire sense that everybody can

say that makes the neck of my hair stand up. I'm excited. Then cohesion, social cohesion, not the technical skills and the processes about onboarding and all of this. When they looked at NBA's teams in the 80s and said which teams were more likely to win the championship? It wasn't talent. It wasn't salary. It wasn't number one draft picks. It was the team that had the most fist bumps, high fives, butt taps, chest bumps. The team that felt most connected to one another. Right. Cohesion. Those are two things that I read. They start and end my high-performing teams. I focus a lot on those. Wow. So, I mean, for the listeners,

if you coach a real estate team or a football team, or maybe you run a small business like a, you know, some sub sandwich shop in one of the business we have. It's fascinating to listen to what Ivan's talking about here, because I think this plays across the board. The whole saying teamwork makes the dream work. And the reality is, if we're all working together on this, and like Ivan said, lifting each other up, we're building something stronger. So you mostly coach soccer and have been a high performance sports psychology coaching consultant for a championship basketball team, as well as individual sports psychology coach. I mean, you've done a lot in sports improvement and performance. You know, tell us a little bit about some of the experiences you've had both

between the teamwork and the individual sports like you know you've done tennis and karate things like that where it's more of an individual sport but um give us some examples that we can apply to ourselves yeah so i'll tell you know here's a perfect example you know so i was working with with canada's national basketball team right They're at the FIBA U19. Canada never had a big-time movement. And all the number one picks, they don't want to play for Canada. And so we had the U19 team. A 16-year-old kid was the star player on this team because we allowed him to have a moment to own the stage and own it.

And we ended up winning our first ever gold medal. I was the high-performance coach for this team. You might know the guy that ended up winning our first ever gold medal. I was the high performance coach for this team. You might know the guy that ended up being drafted that was a star. His name was RJ Barrett, ended up being a top three pick for the New York Knicks. One of the things that we did that will really help that team's performance, and especially RJ's,

was we concentrated on showing not the mistakes that a team made, but all the great moments. You can still create teachable, coachable moments by catching excellence, right? Instead of, ah, you didn't put your hand up, you didn't rebound. No, ignore that. And then that's praise the process. That translates in the corporate world by if you want to change behavior, stop getting on somebody who's late or who did the project wrong. It's like, you know what? Hey, folks, at the end of the meeting, thanks for coming on time. I really appreciate it. It allows us to get started and not waste any time. Hey folks, I just want to share with you this

PowerPoint presentation, four lines, logo in the bottom right. This is the template that we want. This is outstanding. Let's have more of this, right? Still praising the process. Individually now, you know, one of the things we have to recognize is that we have to recognize that everybody is motivated differently and we we can't we want to be fair right and treat everybody equally doesn't work like that find out what their thing is and that only happens by you investing in that relationship beyond the confines of the boardroom. That brings out the best in our performers. Wow. And you mentioned mistakes. Let's talk about mistakes and failures here. Because I'll tell you, you know, it's, and I

know you talk about like Thomas Edison and, you know, some of the ways that people have found success is by finding failure and finding mistakes. How do we reset our self-confidence or how do we get back on the horse or on the bus or whatever it is when we are so down on ourselves? Yeah, I think this is an important piece because sometimes people say, oh, just make mistakes, make mistakes. This is great. We're moving. It's making mistakes and taking the time and the space to reflect. I ask myself two questions. What am I here to learn? Because that's where the real growth happens.

And if we stop on the first answer, we don't get to the real meat, right? I got fired from a national team. We didn't qualify for the World Cup, just the recent one. And I was like, gosh, dang it. What am I here to learn? If only I did this in the final minute, they wouldn't have tied the game. We would have won. No, that's not the right answer. If only I did this in preseason six months ago and recruited different talent. No, that wasn't the right answer. It wasn't until I got to the third reflection. I said, you know what? I needed

to do a better job of managing the expectations of the people above me and the politics and building a coalition of people to support me. Now, that's the right answer. Sometimes we don't sit there and reflect. We just think I failed. So therefore, I go to the next one. But if we don't ask what we're here to learn and then who are we here to teach, then we don't create a sustainable, high performing organization. We want to hide our mistakes because we're too embarrassed and too ashamed. Well, that doesn't lead to excellence in the corporate world. Wow. So what am I here to learn and who am I here to teach? Those are some powerful questions,

folks. So thank you for sharing those with us. This has been an immersion in working on that self-confidence. So Ivan, I mean, this has been fantastic, but I want to dig into your head with my final question and find out what powers Dr. Ivan Joseph. So I ask this question to all of our great guests on the show, and I'm sure you have an incredible answer as well. Dr. Joseph, how do you start your day with a win and build that self-confidence? That's a great question. And it's not very sexy, but the truth of the matter is I get up, I take a glass of water and I always go for a half hour, 45 minute walk. Because in that space, I ground myself and I try not to just think about, you know, what I've got to do for the day, because then I'm just, my brain races. It's a moment of reflection and gratitude and a moment to pause and reflect on the wins that you've had. The wins that you've had at what I do. Right? Don't underestimate that time. Some people, it's going to be a quiet moment, but for me, it's a walk because I want to get that exercise in,

get the blood flowing, get the dopamine going. And that's how I start my day with a win. What a great morning routine. Thank you for sharing that with us. Dr. Ivan Joseph, internationally renowned speaker, author, performance coach, consultant, educator, TEDx talker. Make sure you check him out. Very easy to find on YouTube. He's got one of the top TEDx talks in the world. Dr. Ivan Joseph, thank you for being on Start With A Win. My pleasure, folks.

Enjoy your day. Thanks for joining us on Start With A Win. Be sure to like and subscribe to this episode and share it with your friends. Also, be sure to check out Adam on YouTube at Adam Canto CEO, as well as on all the social media platforms. And don't forget, start with a win.