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Whenever there is great stress and great change, there is also opportunity.
An opportunity to help your clients, your buyers, your audience to not only get through this time, but to come out the other side having learned or created something valuable.
Which means that if you can instill confidence—a thoughtful, realistic belief in their ability to persevere—you’ve helped your tribe coin a valuable currency.
None other than trust guru Charles Green makes the case that now is the perfect time to build deeper intimacy with your clients (he joined Jonathan and me for this timely interview where he also lays out a prescriptive for engaging with clients now).
Building confidence is similar.
These are emotional times and we each seek out voices that will help us move forward.
Experts who don’t fear monger or sugarcoat, but help us keep putting one foot in front of the other (literally or figuratively).
Those who focus on their sweet-spot audience and give us stepping stones to the next right thing.
Because when this is behind us, your clients will remember who stayed (or became) visible, who was silent and who went off the rails.
To keep building confidence, you can:
Stay relentlessly focused on what your tribe is thinking, feeling and dealing with right now.
Point out the elephant in the room—fear gets played out in all sorts of obvious and sometime insidious ways. When you allow it to be identified, it’s easier to move though it.
Double down on the aspects of your work that dovetail with the current situation. Maybe you do more coaching or strategy and less execution right now.
Keep making generous or risky offers. Now is the time to be helpful, to share your wisdom in ways you may not have considered before. It’s also an ideal time to take risks: to experiment with ideas that may not work. If not now, when?
Stay connected—the pace of change is rapid and personal which means many of us are feeling emotional and aren’t acting with our usual speed and efficiency. We’ll remember that you cared enough to check in.
Understand that your expertise is just table stakes. Your audience wants to know that you see them, understand their challenges and are in this for the duration.
Building confidence in the minds and hearts of your audience is always a worthy quest, but especially so now.
Focus on what they need most from you and every bit of confidence you give them becomes the connective tissue that will bind you when this is over.