The Best 6 Tips to Improve the IT Specialist Self-Esteem to Increase his Productivity at Work

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Self-confidence is crucial for every IT specialist at work. Unreasonable self-doubt consumes a lot of time and energy. Moreover, it leads to poor work performance. Instead of making decisions, you feel insecure and confused. As a result, you have a lot of work to do dealing with tight deadlines and feel more and more stressed every day.

However, high self-esteem can make you more motivated and ambitious, and relieve stress and anxiety. A calm and rational approach to performing professional duties will improve your reputation at work and help you achieve your career goals faster.

In this article, we will talk about the role of positive self-esteem at work and some strategies that will help you to improve it.

Why is positive self-esteem so important in the workplace?

According to the research conducted by Staffbe, an IT outstaffing company, and the website Indeed, most employees believe that being confident at work is the key to professional success. Almost all of them (99% of those surveyed) believe that self-confidence is vital when searching for a job, and 95% of them think of self-confidence as an “important” or “very important” factor for getting a job.

Clearly, sometimes you can feel anxious at work. New tasks and projects, conflicts with colleagues, compromising and many other aspects can cause stress. But it’s OK unless it doesn’t affect your productivity and comfort, reducing your self-esteem.

Healthy self-confidence is responsible for:

• determination;
• motivation to keep moving towards your goal;
• building solid business relationships;
• flexible decision-making;
• resilience.

Furthermore, an applicant who does not doubt his skills is more likely to be hired than his less self-confident opponent.

Here are some key advantages of being self-confident for the IT specialists:

High work performance

Self-confidence helps to achieve the desired results, while insecurity, on the contrary, results in lost opportunities and unrealized goals.

High engagement in a workplace

Self-confident specialists are more engaged and motivated. They feel free to make suggestions and offer fresh ideas. Increased engagement improves workplace relationships.

Reducing daily stress

When you are not focused on self-doubting thoughts, you feel more positive. Good mood can help to reduce work-related stress and keep a positive attitude at work. You can do it!

Job satisfaction

Self-confidence is closely related to professional success and your feelings about it. When you feel confident, you are proud of your accomplishments. You don’t underestimate yourself and don’t think it was some random luck. Hard work pays off. If you think like this, it gives you strength to keep working and a sense of job satisfaction.

Effective solution to business problems

If you have no doubts, you will find new effective solutions to different situations. This is useful not only at work, including the IT sphere and different technical solutions like website optimization, but also helps to grow leadership skills.

Proactivity

Positive self-esteem improves your leadership skills, which also has a positive effect on your career growth. Active and goal-oriented employees who are not afraid to offer their ideas and take responsibility are more likely to be promoted.

6 tips for improving your self-esteem at work

There are a few ways to raise your low self-esteem:

1. Improve your knowledge

The more software skills you have and the more technical tools and techniques you know, the easier it will be to overcome fear and self-doubt at work.

Do whatever you can to improve your skills and gain new knowledge: read more professional books, take part in a seminar or take an online tech course. Keep studying. The IT sphere is continuously changing, so keep your eye on the ball and upgrade your qualification.

Focus on the skills necessary for your current job or the job you are searching for to manage your time the best way.

Improve your professional skills and gain knowledge from related spheres. For example, learn to create high-quality content if you want to improve your writing as a web designer. That will help to improve the quality of your work, which will raise your self-esteem.

2. Focus on your strong suits

Sometimes even highly qualified specialists pay too much attention to small mistakes and failures. Instead, they should focus on the results they achieved due to their hard work. Self-criticism demotivates and kills the mood. This destructive strategy affects your working spirit.

If you don’t know your strong points, make a list of your personal abilities and achievements. Every morning (or at any other time) look through this list to set your mind on good work and build self-confidence.

3. Ask questions

When you ask your colleagues for information and show perseverance in work, it can also improve your self-esteem. If you have any questions in team meetings, project planning sessions or conferences, feel free to clarify the situation.

Take the initiative and ask whatever you have to ask. It can help to solve the problem before it occurs. Moreover, you will overcome doubts and build trust within your team.

4. Acknowledge your accomplishments

Your accomplishments will give you a confidence boost in the future. For example, do not forget about how you completed a difficult task in a short time or when the manager appreciated your good work. This strategy will help you focus on the positive aspects of your job.

5. Set development goals

Setting and achieving development goals dramatically increases your self-confidence. They are not necessarily professional development goals.

As soon as you’ve achieved a goal, set a new one. Keep raising your standards. To develop skills or learn something new, you have to put effort.

6. Learn from your own mistakes

Mistakes are inevitable when working on any project or solving any business task. The point is to analyze them and do better next time. Resigning yourself to failure can be difficult, but it can help you to make the right decision and use your skills correctly in the future.

For example, many novice programmers forget about code maximum line length, the size of a function or writing code comments. Gradually, they gain experience and learn from their mistakes. Everything that seemed unimportant at first glance, in fact, can be crucial for the program to run.

In conclusion

Remember, any change requires patience. And raising self-esteem is no exception. Start to use these strategies step-by-step. Set your first goal, for example, to learn a new programming language. Once it’s done, move on to the next goal. Keep working on self-improvement, and your inner critic will become your biggest defender!