Building confidence: lessons learned in a content career

In February 2021, I spoke at the ContentEd conference about the ways I’ve built confidence over my career. This post contains the video of that talk and the transcript.

Video

The talk is 9:38.

Transcript

Hello, I’m Lauren Tormey. I’m a content designer at the University of Edinburgh, and I’m here today to talk about building confidence: lessons learned in a content career.

Things I need to clarify first

First, if you already know me, you might have the impression I’ve always been a very confident person. (I actually had a friend tell me he didn’t know of an unconfident Lauren when I told him I was giving this talk.) I can assure you, though, I’m a more confident person today than I was when at the start of my career. And in a few years’ time, I’ll be more confident than I am now. ​​

Second, it has to be acknowledged that I have unearned privilege in this world. There are systems in place that in some ways make it easier for a white, middle class woman like me to be confident.​

The things that have helped me become more confident

So that being said, this presentation is not a how-to guide on how to become confident. I haven’t lived some universal experience that everyone has the same access to.​​

Rather I wanted to share some of the reflections from my career that have contributed to me becoming a more confident person.​​

While I don’t think my experience is universal, I also don’t think the lessons I have learned are unique to me and my situation. You may have similar stories yourself. So because of that, I wanted to share these lessons in the hope that maybe they’ll make you reflect on your own career, especially if confidence is something you struggle with.​​

So the lessons I’ll talk through today are:​

• stepping outside of my comfort zone​
• continuing to educate myself​
• receiving and providing encouragement​

​And how all of these contributed to me building confidence.​

Stepping outside my comfort zone​

So first, stepping outside of my comfort zone.​

The time I felt most uncomfortable in my career was that time I felt like I failed in my job. I was working on a website redesign project where I was tasked with carrying out a pair writing workshop for a university department we were working with. Pair writing workshops were something I had carried out many times before, and I thought like I knew what I was doing with them.​

However, the pair writing workshop I carried out for this department ended up being a complete disaster. And the reason for that was the way I had carried out pair writing workshops previously was not what this department needed.

What I really needed to do was adapt my workshop to their unique needs, but I didn’t feel comfortable doing that because I really didn’t know how. That wasn’t something I had done in my career yet. So I carried on with the workshop like it was this out-of-the-box product. I had a dozen people in a room for 2 hours and produced no usable content. ​

I went home after and cried my eyes out. I felt like I failed in my job. A couple days later someone showed me this diagram called the Pit of Success and it clicked with me then what was happening.​

Up until that point in my career, I was feeling capable, comfortable, and confident in my content knowledge. Then I hit a point where I questioned what I knew and felt confused, stressed, overwhelmed. That’s the pit I fell into. But the pit didn’t mean I was incapable. It just meant I hadn’t learned how to do what I needed to do.

So for the rest of that project, I told my boss I needed more guidance, and he was able to give me that helping hand I didn’t realise I needed. And as I learned more, I improved and got out of that pit.

By the end of that project, I was at this new higher level of ability. I was more capable and more confident than I was when I started the project, precisely because I had to step out of my comfort zone and learned something new.​

Continuing to educate myself

This lesson became incredibly helpful a couple of months later when I had the opportunity to take on a content consultancy gig for a start-up company. It was an opportunity that reminded me not only do I need to step out of my comfort zone, but that education is for life, not just for school days.​

As someone who had only ever worked in higher ed, the idea of being a sole content professional at a company that needed to make money to survive — it made me question if I was actually qualified to take on this job.​

But I told myself two things at the time:​

• 1- I know what I know. I know what I don’t know. And I can learn what I don’t know.​
• 2- There’s nothing to be gained by not doing this job. But there is something to be gained by doing it.​

And it was those thoughts that made me step out of my higher ed comfort zone and learn what it was like to work for a private sector company.​

And I can tell you it is probably this decision that has contributed most to me being confident in my career.​

This in large part has to do with suddenly being the one content expert when I was used to working with a team of other content professionals. I was now the decision maker for all things content. And as someone who was trained as a content designer, I didn’t realise how much upskilling I was going to need to do in both content strategy and user research to carry out this job.

I thought I had read all the books and all the articles that meant I knew how to do these things. But reading all the literature in the world doesn’t mean you suddenly know how to do those things.

Education didn’t change between my school days and my career. I didn’t read a textbook and that was me done at school. I had to study and be tested on that knowledge. It’s the same in my career. I didn’t really know what content strategy was until I was forced to build one for a company.

I’m not embarrassed to say it — I literally googled what is content strategy when I started this consultancy job because I needed to re-read the basics when it was my first time actually putting it into practice.

And sure enough, just as I told myself I can learn what I don’t know, I searched online for resources that could give me a guide or a template to work off of. I learned what worked and what didn’t. And I’m a much more confident content professional in my higher ed role because I had the opportunity to experiment on my own and in a different industry.​

Receiving and giving encouragement

Now on to receiving and giving encouragement.

Building confidence doesn’t happen in isolation. It has to be said you get a confident boost when you hear from other people that you’re good at what you do or that others believe in your abilities. ​

An important moment in my career when this rang true was when I presented at my first conference back in 2017. At the time, I was thinking about asking my boss about attending my first conference, when he beat me to it and told me I should apply to present a workshop at IWMW, which is a conference for digital professionals in higher ed in the UK.​

I was 2 years into my career. I didn’t think I had anything of value to say to people who were much more experienced in their careers. But my boss told me that pair writing (that infamous workshop I spoke of earlier) was not something everyone in higher ed would be aware of and it would be a good opportunity for me.​

Sure enough, I submitted my workshop proposal and it was accepted. And you know what? I had 10 people show up at my session who wanted to learn about pair writing. It went okay. I got some good feedback and some suggestions on what to improve.​

It was a significant moment for me because I realized I added value not just to my university, but to the higher ed sector. So receiving that encouragement to present (and hearing nice feedback from my participants) did wonders for my confidence.

The self-sufficient part of my personality is a bit uneasy about being reliant on others for validation. But the truth of the matter is we don’t exist on our own. We live and we work as part of communities, and everybody needs a little love and encouragement every now and again. ​

So this leads into my last point. You don’t only get a confidence boost from receiving encouragement. You also get it from returning the favour.

Two years after my conference debut, I actually was on the organising committee for IWMW and ended up giving an impromptu lightning talk at the conference. That’s a picture of me giving the talk.​​

I spoke about what an important moment it was in my career facilitating that pair writing workshop at the conference two years prior. But I said I wouldn’t have done it if my boss didn’t encourage me to.​​

So I put forward a call to action to everyone in the audience. I told them they have to encourage the early career professionals they work with to speak at conferences. Because people just starting out in their career likely won’t think they have something of value to say.​​

And that’s the message I want to share with all of you now. And I want to share that with you regardless of where you are in your career, but especially to those of you who struggle with your confidence.​​

If you’ve ever shied away from submitting a conference session proposal, if you’ve ever felt like you’re not qualified to do something you actually are capable of, let me tell you this:​​

You wouldn’t be attending a conference if you weren’t interesting in learning and growing. So know that you have something of value to say. And you are good at what you do. ​

Some closing reminders

And on that note, some closing reminders.​

I’ve just told you about building confidence. I’ve by no means reached some uber confident endpoint. Confidence is something I’ll keep building in my career and in my life.​

And again, my experiences aren’t necessarily universal or available to everyone. Some people also might not place much importance on being confident. But for me, I know building confidence has not only been beneficial for my career — it has given me a sense of freedom and fearlessness I didn’t used to have and it makes me feel capable of doing anything I want to achieve. And that’s a really nice feeling.​​

So I hope if you’re someone who’s ever questioned your abilities, you know that good things might come about from:​

• stepping outside your comfort zone​
• continuing to educate yourself​
• receiving encouragement (wherever you may find it) and returning the favor​

Thanks for listening

And if you find it difficult to find encouragement, let me know. I like to tell people the nice things I think about them.​

Thank you for listening. You can find me on LinkedIn or on Twitter @ltormey.​

And if you liked what I had to said, a shameless plug for my fundraiser I’m doing this year. I’m doing a monthly running challenge in support of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, which is a charity that helps out immigrants in the UK. If you believe governments shouldn’t separate families because they don’t earn enough money, as we currently do in the UK, I would be super grateful for your support. More info at bit.ly/2021-laurun.​

Take care.

​