Christian Business Concepts
Christian Business Concepts
The Power of Confidence: Is Yours Lifting Others or Just Lifting You?
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Pressure tests our leadership, and what we bring to the room either gives oxygen or quietly drains it. We unpack how godly confidence—rooted in humility and dependence—turns into a measurable performance edge, while arrogance erodes engagement, muffles dissent, and slows growth. Drawing on Scripture and real-world studies, we connect faith, stewardship, and decision-making to help you lead with clarity when the stakes are high.
We break down the data: revenue lift from confident teams, faster decisions without sacrificing quality, and quicker recovery after shocks. Then we turn insight into practice with five trainable “confidence muscles”: decisive clarity, calm presence, outcome ownership, future orientation, and generous credit. You’ll hear the exact phrases that signal a slide into arrogance, and simple swaps that keep your language—and your culture—healthy. Our goal is a leadership stance that says here I am while keeping the spotlight on the mission and the people.
To keep confidence from curdling, we share five guardrails you can install today: the 24-hour rule for major decisions, pre-mortems to add humility without slowing execution, a deliberate who disagrees moment, a public leadership scoreboard, and reverse mentoring to puncture echo chambers. We add daily drills—the three-second rule, an evidence journal, as-if rehearsal, posture resets, and the 100 repetitions principle—so courage becomes a reflex instead of a speech. Anchored in passages like Luke 16:10, Philippians 4:12–13, and 2 Corinthians 2:14, the message is simple: lead boldly, stay teachable, and keep your confidence tethered to the One who strengthens you.
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Great job, Kelly, and welcome everyone to this week's uh Christian Business Concepts Podcast. I'm so thrilled that you've joined us today. I'm your host, Harold Milby, and each week we apply biblical truths to business principles in order to help everyone uh find true godly success. Now, whether you're a business owner or a business leader, maybe a department head or an organizational leader or just someone who wants to grow, my desire is that you'll be encouraged, enlightened, and empowered by what you hear today. Now, be sure to help us grow the CBC community by sharing this podcast with four or five others and by posting this link uh to the podcast on your Facebook or maybe on your LinkedIn pages. Uh, be sure to write a review as well. Uh now, before we get into today's topic, I want to give a big shout out to Frankfurt, Germany for having so many downloads. We sure do appreciate you and all of you who make CBC a part of your weekly growth plan and your growth program. Uh, I just want to say thank you. I appreciate that very, very much in everything uh that you do. Uh so very, very appreciative for all of you who listen and uh every week. So we're so thankful. Uh now today I want to talk about something that some leaders struggle with, but I want to talk about the power of confidence uh in a leader's life and and and the and the dangers that can come with it uh with that confidence. So we're gonna talk about that. I want to talk a little bit first about why confidence actually matters in business. And I want to share some numbers with you. So when we're talking about revenue growth, high confidence leadership teams outperform low confidence teams by 21% in revenue. Now that's that's uh according to uh Harvard Business Review, a report that they put out in 2023. So a high confidence leadership team outperformed lower confidence teams by 21% in revenue. So 21% higher revenue growth. Uh, you know, the Bible talks about in Luke 16 and 10, it talks about being faithful in the little things so that you can turn around then and can be faithful in the large things, but it starts in the small things. And one of these small things is confidence. Uh well, what about employee engagement? You know, teams with confidence, teams that are confident, not arrogant, but they're confident, their leaders score 30% higher on engagement. You know, confidence says, here I am, even when the stakes are my life. You know what I'm saying? It it it's so important. And uh, even though it can kind of be a little bit scary, you know, uh, and I think when you're when you're spirit-led and you have the speed of decision making that you have to make, uh, you know, according to McKenzie Quarterly in 1920 or in 2022, I should say, confident leaders make decisions 42% faster without sacrificing quality. That's big, that's huge. What about crisis performance? Well, crisis performance, um, you know, crisis performance, uh, confident leaders, um, their companies recover two almost two and a half times faster from market conditions or maybe a market shock of some sort, um, according to one leadership study. Uh, you know, Romans 20, uh, Romans 8 and 28 says God works all things out for good to those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose. So, yeah, there's going to be times of crisis. There will be times of crisis, but at the same time, um, you know, we we have the ability, if we are confident, to recover faster uh than those who are not confident. Uh even even your personal earnings, even your personal earnings, according to a Stanford uh GSB study in 2024, it says confident, again, not arrogant, but confident executives earn 12 to 18, 18% more over their career than those that are not confident. And of course, you know, if we talk about personal wealth, what about generational wealth? You know, confident stewards multiply resources. That's what it talks about in Matthew chapter 10. It talks about the multiplication of the talents, the multiplication of what was left to them, what was given to them that they were in charge of. And that was the whole, the whole parable was about the steward and being a good steward and practicing good principles of stewardship. And uh, so when you're when you're confident, uh, you do much better at that. And I wish I had time to go into Matthew 25. We could spend the whole podcast there because there's a lot to be said about that parable when it comes to confidence. Now, what's the bottom line? Confidence is not a soft skill. It's a it's a it's it's a hard performance multiplier. You know, it's extremely important to guard yourself for uh from allowing confidence uh to creep into arrogance. We we we don't want to allow arrogance to to operate in our lives. And and how do we how do we deal with that? How do we watch for that? Well, I I think we have to look at some of the root causes. What are some of the root causes for arrogance? Well, uh, first root cause is unexamined success. So when you don't really look at it, you know, when you continue to rent win without any kind of reflection at all, what happens is your brain gets somewhat rewired and you begin to believe, well, I'm the reason. I'm I'm the reason that we continue to have all the success. Um, you know, uh the Bible says in Psalms 10 and 4, it says, in his pride, the wicked does not seek him. And I think that is a danger because we become arrogant and then we don't even seek the Lord because we think it's all about us. And that happens when we don't examine our successes. And we need to do that on a regular basis because one thing I do know is we learn. We learn by our successes. And so if you stop learning and you just look at the success for what it is, then what happens is we become arrogant. Uh another root cause of arrogance is insecurity. Because when you have insecurity, you begin to overcompensate. In other words, it's this deep fear of not uh of being, we'll say, not enough. And so then we begin to have these over-the-top kind of displays of superiority. And uh, you know, uh there are those like leaders maybe who grew up poor, and um they they begin to to uh name drop you know their their private jets uh you know that they have. Uh, you know, uh those are the kinds of things and in Proverbs 16, 18 talks about pride goes before destruction. Uh, you know, pride is an overcompensation of insecurity. That's what pride is. Uh another root cause is uh what I would call the isolation echo chamber. Let me say that again. Isolation echo chamber. So you you a person begins to surround themselves with just yes people or people who just need a paycheck. And so they're going to make sure they tow, they're going to tow the line for the leader because, you know, they they they want to continue to get their paycheck, so they're they become yes people. And uh, you know, the executive team is just afraid to disagree, and then their decisions are never challenged. Um, you know, Proverbs 12, 15 says the way of fools seems right to them. You know, we we are isolated from anybody that has a differing opinion or has some different ideas or a different approach because we don't want to hear it. And uh so that can cause arrogance. Uh, another is comparison plus envy. In other words, we measure ourselves against others instead of measuring ourselves according to the standard that God has for us. You know, we're bigger than, let's say, our ex, you know, competitor, whoever that may be. And that becomes our identity. Our identity becomes we're bigger, we're bigger than. Um, and so we begin to compare, uh, and then we can also bring envy there as well. Um, you know, so that's that's important to look for. And then another one, the last one is a forgotten dependence. In other words, we stop praying, we stop reading the word of God, uh, we never fast anymore. Um, you know, God, you know, we get to that mindset of, well, God bless me because I deserve it. Um, you know, let's let's remember what it says in Revelation chapter 3, verse 17. It says, you know, you say, I am rich and I need nothing. Um, but the Bible goes on to say, yeah, but inside you're dead. You know, there's no life there. And so a lot of times arrogance comes because we we don't depend on the Lord, we don't have that humility with the understanding that it is God. He is our creator who gives us the power uh to become successful. Uh, so you know, I have a confidence, competency model. It's it's like five uh cores, I guess we could say. Uh and and again, these four uh uh these the four these four um uh uh uh models, these competency model, uh, this confidency uh a confidence competency uh model, um it's a very repeatable system. It's not a personality trait. So uh first uh I call them muscles, okay? I call them muscles, but you have decisive clarity. In other words, you have the ability to make a call and you explain it simply. You know, the CEO who says something like, Um, uh, well, we're we're shutting down products X by quarter two, and they have no justification for it at all. They just do it. But when you have confidence, you have the ability to make that call, but then you have the ability to explain it in detail very simply. So that's important. Another one of these muscles that we want to talk about is calm presence. In other words, we remain unflustered when everybody else may be losing it, right? Uh, you know, there might be a plant manager, for example, walking the floor during a major breakdown, but he never raises his voice. You know, he's trying to show that calm presence, and and that again, it helps to build confidence. Uh, another is outcome ownership. And and that's, you know, when you have outcome ownership, that that's kind of like you take the hit publicly. You take the public hit uh when when when you're wrong, or or when uh the win, uh you know, you have a win, you you you take it, you give it uh credit to your team. Uh you don't take all the credit for that. You know, um, you know, the the VP who might say something like, um, well, you know, we missed that quarter, that's on me. And then they work together to fix it. Um, but that's a confident leader. And then another muscle is future orientation. In other words, you're talking about what's next instead of defending what just happened. Uh, I'll give you an example of this, like a sales leader after maybe losing a deal. Uh, they may say something like, Well, here are the three moves we make on Monday. They don't focus on the mistake or they don't focus on what happened. They focus on what are we going to do next. And uh so that's important. So these are just kind of muscles that you need to reflect on and build up uh in your in your life in order for that confidence to come and to stay. And uh so you've got some things to be concerned about, uh, and and that is of course this what I call this arrogance tripwire. And and that's kind of where confidence goes toxic, if I can say it that way. You know, confidence, now this is healthy, and I'm gonna use these statements to kind of give you a difference between the two. Uh the hell uh healthy confidence says things like, well, we earned this because we executed better. Arrogance would say they lost because they're idiots. So you see the difference. And so the the if you want some warning warning signs of crossing that line, that tripwire, uh, using language like they, it diminishes others. In other words, we earned this because we executed better. They lost because they're idiots. They, they, they, they. So that's just kind of a word to kind of look for. It kind of gives you an idea. Uh another healthy statement, if you're you know truly confident, is well, I'm convinced this is the right path. And then you look at your team and you say, convince me otherwise. Convince me that I'm making a mistake. Uh arrogance would say, I'm right into discussion. That's it. And and and so it's not a confidence, it's more of uh arrogance. Uh so what you're doing is you're shutting down any kind of dissent, you're doing it real quick. And uh that's not confidence, that's arrogance. Another confidence statement to give you an idea of confidence, it would be to say something like, Well, I was wrong, and here's what I learned. So it's not only admitting when you're wrong, but it it and sharing that with you know the group, uh, your team, uh, or your leadership, but um, you know, you also say, Here's what I learned in that failure. Um you know, an arrogance statement to that would be that wasn't my call. In other words, they're deflecting blame. They don't want to accept blame, so they deflect it. Uh, they deflect it onto something else, someone else, uh, but they won't take the blame for it. That becomes arrogance. Um you know, when you're confident, you're curious about other people's views. When you're arrogant, you get bored, you're dismissive of other people's views. You get a lot of eye rolling, checking your phone in meetings, it just communicates to everybody in the room that you don't value uh what they what their view is. You don't value their opinion. And when you're confident, you give credit and you do it generously. You don't just give credit every now and then, but you give credit, you do it generously. Um, you know, you you you take credit quietly, uh, you know, or obviously when you're arrogant. You know, in other words, you use I more than you use we when you're talking about something that was very positive or very successful. So either you take that credit and you take it to yourself and you're very quiet about it, you don't share it with anybody. Uh, and uh, or or you are obviously taking credit for it. You're you're specifically saying it's because of you. That's arrogance. And and all of these statements, you know, we're talking about, these are just examples of how confidence can lead into toxicity uh with uh your team and among people uh within your business. You know, Norman Vincent Peel, who is is somebody who really ministered to me as I was growing up and learning a lot of things about leadership, uh, you know, he said, believe in yourself, have faith in your abilities. Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers, you cannot be successful or happy. And I like that statement. Uh so you've got some guardrails, you know, here. Here's five non-negotiable practices that I would encourage you to take up. So one of them is never announce a major decision in the same meeting you make it. In other words, sleep on it. Uh, I call it the 24-hour rule. Get at least, you know, some dissenting views. Um, what happens when you take that 24-hour rule? In other words, that you you sleep on it, you wait, it it really kills about 60% of the arrogance-driven choices. Uh, so you you'll want to take that 24-hour rule. The next one is the pre-mortem ritual, what I call the pre-mortem ritual. In other words, before every big launch or investment, you you need to force the team to spend 10 minutes explaining how that it could fail spectacularly. In other words, look at everything that could happen that could go wrong. And uh, you know, it it you have this humility there, but at the same time, that still preserves your confidence, you know, because you're prepared. And preparation, you know, we'll talk about that here in a second, but preparation really builds confidence. If you're prepared, uh, that will bring confidence. That's an exciting part. Um then a third one is the the who disagrees, you know, proposition. I call it the who disagrees close or proposition. In other words, end every decision meeting. If you have a meeting where you're trying to make a decision, end that meeting with the literal question, who in this room disagrees or feel nervous, feels nervous about this decision, then wait 10 full seconds of silence. If you're gonna wait, I know 10 seconds with nobody saying anything really sounds awkward. It feels awkward, but give it 10 seconds and maybe you'll get some minority voices that will come to the surface and talk about why they think it's a bad idea. You know, one of the greatest things I learned from the person that I worked for for so many years, as he was the CEO, and um was the fact that that he was always saying, Look, if you disagree with me, let me know now. If you feel nervous about this, let me know now. Because there's gonna come a time when I'm gonna say, get in the car, close the door, keep your mouth shut, and we're going down the road. But until I say that, I want to hear anybody that has a dissenting view or has a different idea or disagrees or feels nervous about what we're doing. And so I think that's important. And that actually just tells you that you have confidence and the people around you will see that confidence. And confidence breeds confidence. That's the other thing. Uh, number four is a public scoreboard. I call it the public scoreboard. You know, post your personal leadership KPIs. In other words, what are your KPIs, your key performance indicators? What are they? Maybe they have something to do with safety, maybe it's turnover, the percentage of employee uh turnover, uh, you know, whatever on a wall or some kind of an intranet thing within the company where every everybody can see when you miss it. Uh you know, confidence without account of accountability is going to equal arrogance. So you want some of the accountability. Put yourself out there. And then you have something called the reverse mentor program. In other words, every leader gets one direct report, you know, who is a younger person, a younger person who has explicit permission to call out arrogance in real time. Now they may you you may want them to do it in private, but that's okay. But you pick one person. And uh one company that did that, uh they they cut that perceived executive arrogance by 41% in 18 months. So it's important, you've got to be able to have that voice that keeps you accountable again. It's so very, very important. So, you know, make sure that you you incorporate these. And even what I call the three-second rule, you know, that's the moment that you feel fear or hesitation, take in three seconds or less because confidence is not the absence of fear, it it's the decision to move before, before you get hijacked by those negative feelings. You know, an example would be hit send on a very scary email that you need to send and and and you know, or or walk straight up to the prospect or start that speech the instant the countdown hits zero, uh, you know, three, two, one, go. You know, every time you obey the second or the three-second rule, your brain rewires. In other words, it tells yourself, I'm the kind of person that acts. You know, confidence is the decision to act before you feel ready. Don't wait until you feel ready. Confidence, again, confidence is the decision to act before you even feel ready. Uh, Dale Carnegie said this. He said, Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy. Great statement. Uh, what about an evidence journal? You know, this is something that I've done. Uh, you know, every night you write down three specific things that you did well that day, no matter how small they are. Maybe you closed a$20,000 deal or you stayed calm uh when the when the phone lines went dead, or or you asked for help instead of faking it. You know, real evidence beats fake affirmations. And then after 30 days of doing this, you're gonna have 90 undeniable proofs that you're competent. Because you're writing down three specific things a day. Do it for 30 days. That's 90 proofs of your competence. And and confidence equals accumulated evidence of past successes. Think about that. It equals accumulated evidence of your past successes. You know, you know what an expert is? An expert is somebody who was once a beginner who just refused to quit. That's an expert. You know, what about the as if principle? You know, you act, you speak, and you carry yourself today exactly as the version of you who's already at the next level would. You know, you dress as if, you decide as if, you delegate as if, you walk into rooms, as if. You know, this isn't arrogance, it's confidence. You're and here's the thing, it's this is psychological. Your brain doesn't know the difference. Your brain doesn't know the difference between imagination and reality when the emotions are attached. So you become the person you're pretending to be faster than any other method. And I say that because this method is used by the Navy SEALs, it's used by Olympic athletes. It it's just a great method. So it, you know, it's called the as-if method, the as if principle. You know, confidence is the memory of surviving every time you thought you wouldn't. That's confidence. Uh Christina Grimmie said, confidence is not they will like me. Confidence instead is I'll be fine if they don't. And then there's the power of posture. The power of posture. Two, two minutes, just two minutes of deliberate high power posture. In other words, your shoulders are back, your chin's level, hands are on your hips, you know, before any kind of high stakes moment increases in men, it increases your testosterone 20% and drops cortisol 25%, according to a Harvard study by Amy Cuddy and Dana Carney. Uh so that's that's powerful uh just by having this great posture. Uh so you know, you can do it privately in the restroom, do it privately in your car. Your body changes your brain chemistry. You walk in feeling and looking like the leader you already are. Um and then lastly, there's this 100 repetitions rule. Anything you do a hundred times, you will do with confidence. I I've got hundreds of podcasts that are on the podcast right now. Well, let me tell you something. After I did a hundred of them, I felt very confident. You know, you you have a hundred cold calls or a hundred difficult conversations or a hundred times leading a meeting, or a hundred times that you've made a presentation, a hundred times you've done some type of training, you become confident because confidence is simply the memory of having survived and improved a thing before. You know, so I think that's important because confidence is going, let me say it this way. I like this. Let me say this one because Zig Ziggler said this, and I think it's kind of comical at the same time, uh, but it really makes a true statement. And I want to end with this confidence, according to Zig Ziggler, confidence is going after Moby Dick in a rowboat and taking tartar sauce with you. So think about that. Always remember that. Confidence is going after Moby Dick in a rowboat and taking tartar sauce with you. That's confidence. See, the world needs marketplace leaders who can walk into chaos and say, just like Peter did, such as I have, I give you in the name of Jesus, rise up and walk. That's confidence. That's spiritual, biblical uh kingdom multiplying confidence. And that's what we knew we need. You know, Philippians 4, 12 through 13 says, I know how to be brought low, I know how to abound in any and every circumstance. I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance, and needs. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. That's godly confidence. Second Corinthians 2 14 says, Now thanks be unto God, which always causes us to triumph in Christ and maketh manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in every place. Again, confidence. Because confidence is the oxygen that's needed for great leadership. Arrogance, on the other hand, is carbon monoxide. It kills the room while you still feel invincible. So you guard yourself daily because no one's going to tell you when you've crossed it until it's too late. Confidence says, follow me, I know where we're going. Arrogance says, follow me, how dare you question where we're going. So you've got to choose every day, choose every day which one you're going to be. Lord, thank you today for helping us to understand the power of confidence and the first line that exists between it and arrogance. Lord, let us stand strong in who we are in Christ and how we can be bold as a lion. Like I ask, Lord, I ask that you help each and everyone who has decided to listen to this podcast today to apply these principles. Lord, help them to find true. Godly success in the name of Jesus. Amen. And amen. Well, thanks for listening and downloading this podcast today. That's all the time we have for today. So until next time, remember, Jesus is Lord and He wants you blessed.
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