The one quote of the day from Air Force Officer Training School I will never forget: “Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence” by Vince Lombardi.
I apply it to everything I do. It’s a better way of saying “fake it til you make it.”
A lack of confidence can radiate from a person in different ways, making people question you, your abilities, and affecting your organization. Some show a lack of confidence by not speaking up, whispering when they have to say something and just sounding lame. Some, like me, just keep talking until I get someone to tells them “yeah, got it” just to make it stop.
As a young lieutenant, because no matter if you are about to pin on captain, you are still a young lieutenant, I was given some of the best advice from an Army major who at that point I had worked with for a total of 24 hours. At that moment, I lacked confidence because I was young, new, nervous and unsure of my new job, I was trying to explain something to him when the words were just not coming out right. A minute into me babbling, I was still not at the bottom line of why I was taking up his time.
This major said something I will never forget. He told me to stop talking and to figure out what I was going to say because he was only going to listen for the next 30 seconds. While he now claims he never said that to me, and maybe I made it up, but it is something I now apply to my career as a PAO.
Whether you are updating your commander, your JOC staff or trying to give your elevator speech as to why your unit is the best unit in the DoD, you only have about 30 seconds to do it and you better expel confidence. Clear and concise will at least make people think you know what you are talking about and make them care, because why would you communicate to someone who does not care? You being confident makes them confident in your abilities.
When you talk a lot around a topic or whisper, it shows that you don’t know what you are doing, even if you do. You’re the one person on the commander’s staff who is the subject matter expert in communicating. Do it, do it well, make your team better, and don’t let anyone second guess you.
