The confidence map

We build walls to protect ourselves — literally and figuratively. (Library of Congress)

In teaching or coaching, there are moments in which you sense that it would be counterproductive to push further.

Maybe the student has just had a breakthrough after a period of intense effort. Or maybe you get the feeling that she’s already pushing as hard as she can.

Or perhaps, it just feels fragile. A question or suggestion, no matter how gentle or well-intentioned, could cause the whole thing to disappear, like breath upon a snowflake.

Sure, there are other times when such a student might proceed with confidence. But when it’s fragile, the rules are different.

You can’t harvest a tender green shoot. You have to wait until you have a ripe fruit. How do we tell the difference when the “fruit,” so to speak, is invisible?

Under such circumstances, when one wrong move could lead to the collapse of a promising project, it is helpful to construct a confidence map.

When you make a practice of doing this for yourself, it becomes easier to do it for someone else.

To construct a confidence map, you take note of how you feel in some domain. What comes to mind when you think of working on this skill? How long does it take you to get started in a given practice session? How much pain does it cause you when you mess up? How open are you to the feedback of others?

Take note of the things that trigger frustration, despair, anxiety, shame, and other negative emotions. Learning can be a little bit uncomfortable, but we get our best results when we carefully calibrate that discomfort to our level of confidence. If the discomfort is leading you quickly to the brink of negative emotions, pull back! This part is fragile. Go easy. You can always do more later.

As you proceed, you will also find moments in which the discomfort feels delicious, like a particularly good stretch. Those are the moments when you are not at the edge of your confidence map. This is the time to challenge yourself and get aggressive. You might even try something that is a huge leap past your current level of skill, just to see if you can. If you mess up, you’ll just laugh and try again. No big deal.

When things are fragile, much is at stake. Our entire self-concept may be on the line. A moment of pain may be so traumatic that we never return to task at hand — it happens all the time. Putting pressure on ourselves is under such circumstances carries a huge cost.

Meanwhile, when we’re feeling confident, we are close to invincible. We can achieve things far beyond our expectations. It’s a magical state of being, so powerful that many coaches and teachers try to manufacture it for the people they seek to serve. Though someone can instantly make the leap to this place with a shift in mindset, that shift has to be their own.

With an understanding of how this dynamic works in our own experiences, it becomes easier to see the signs in someone else. Working with introverts, you might notice moments of hesitation. You might feel awkward, as though you can’t quite say the right thing to your student. You might be holding your breath a bit, hoping they don’t mess up. You’re not feeling a sense of playfulness. With extroverts, you might hear them start to make excuses. They might chatter without a clear point to what they’re trying to say. They seem distracted.

When things are especially fragile, you can’t even talk about it. You have to get to a safer place on the map — a place of greater confidence — before you can help your student understand what it means for something to be fragile. Otherwise, you’re just poking into the fragile place, which is too fragile to accommodate such poking. “I’m not uncomfortable! You’re uncomfortable!”

Over time, with a greater understanding of your student’s confidence map (and your own!), you can build them up and guide them to strengthen their fragile places. You’ll be able to discuss what you’re doing and work on it together with a sense of intention instead of fear.

What do you know about your own confidence map? Where do you get stuck and give up? Where do you find yourself with the fortitude to press on even when things are intense and challenging? I’d love to hear in the comments.