What “building your confidence” looks like – 5 takeaways

Joining Alannah Grech, Partner Success Manager – Communities, ACS for the discussion were Dr Geoff Augutis, Education and Government Solutions – Owner, Queensland Computers Pty Ltd and Nethumi Perera, Event Organiser, WinTECH and Student Ambassador at CQUniversity.

This webinar aimed to help our students and emerging professionals

So what did we learn? Here are 5 key takeaways: 

• Be Authentic: Geoff described his experience starting out in the workforce trying to present himself as a smooth professional, before finding that wearing highly formal office wear and censoring his natural manner of speaking were simply making him “a worse version of someone else”. By being himself, he lost some opportunities but was able to find the people and businesses who valued what he specifically could bring to the table. 

• Set Achievable Goals: Nethumi described her progress from someone who was shy and socially anxious through to running events and being a student ambassador, explaining how she started with a simple goal when attending events – start a conversation with one person. This grew over time, and enabled her to keep ticking off wins until she felt confident moving into any new social situation. 

• Seek Support: If you are struggling with anxiety, imposter syndrome or low confidence, universities will often offer counselling or mentoring programs, and workplaces will often have an official EAP (Employee Assistance Program). These sessions are usually free and can give you tools to help work around your anxieties, as well as offer a comfortable space in which to discuss the challenges you’re facing. 

• Low-Stakes Practice: Find spaces in which you can fail without consequence – whether that is attending events outside of your specific field, engaging in social hobbies or activities such as debating or Toastmasters, or simply introducing yourself more often in social settings.  

• Learn From Rejection: Geoff made a fantastic, brutally honest point – no-one is going to remember you if you’re a bit socially awkward in a conversation and fail to leave an impression, which means there’s very little harm in trying! Nethumi highlighted how it’s important to focus on your personal growth – even if the conversation wasn’t perfect, it could still represent a significant step forward from where you started. 

Thank you to our wonderful speakers for their inspiring stories, to Alannah for hosting with aplomb and asking insightful questions that got to the heart of what our student members are looking for, and to Jasmine Best, Student Engagement Coordinator for running the back-end and moderating the chat – answering even more questions and providing her own perspective for our incredibly active audience.

If you’d like to learn more about the events we hold at ACS for our members, you can do so here: https://www.acs.org.au/cpd-education/event-listing.html