Girl Scouting builds girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place.The second facet of the mission statement is to build confidence. Confidence matches nicely with courage. When a girl is confident she needs less courage to move forward. When a girl lacks confidence, she will need to draw on her courage. Possessing both traits will help a girl to tackle whatever challenges she may face.
So let's define confidence. While multiple definitions exist, this one seems to meet the meaning within the context of the Girl Scout Mission:
Merriam-Webster defines confidence as a feeling or belief that you can do something well or succeed at something.
When I started this post, I thought I knew what I would write. Girls gain confidence by having skills. So be sure your program builds skills and you'll be building confidence. As I researched the topic of confidence, however, I found that the truth is much more complex than this and that confidence may be more important than I thought.
Consider the following scenario. You are staffing at a weekend camp with a group of girls. You have been setting up camp and are running out of time before you need to be at a scheduled activity. One tent still needs to be pitched and you are busy with another task. You ask the girls who knows how to put up the tent. One girl raises her hand high and says "Oh! I know how. I did that one over there," and points to a nicely pitched tent. Another girl says "Well, I helped with that one too, but I made a mistake once before, so I'm not so sure." Which girl will you put in charge?
If you're like most people, you'll choose the first girl, the one who projected confidence that she could do the job. In fact, research shows that people are often promoted or given opportunities more on the basis of their confidence than their actual competence. This is aggravated for women by the fact that there is a gender gap in confidence. Men and women with equal levels of competence are likely to have differing levels of confidence. Specifically, men are more likely to be overconfident in their abilities while women are more likely to underestimate themselves.
To build girls of confidence we need to provide ample program opportunities to build a wide variety of skills, but we also need to pay attention to how we structure our response to these activities so that they are confidence building.
Important keys to building confidence:
Risk-taking and failure
Confidence is directly related to taking action. A confident person is not afraid to take action when given an opportunity. This creates a feedback loop where that experience then helps to build more confidence. We need to let girls take risks and especially take the risk that they will fail at something. It is important when girls are learning new skills that we don't expect perfection and that we let them fail - possibly multiple times - so they learn that failure happens, but success will come with perseverance. Knowing that they can be successful, even after failing, will build confidence.
Praise and Criticism
The feedback that a girl gets while learning a new skill will also affect her confidence level. Research shows that women are likely to be perfectionists - having high confidence levels only when they feel they are perfect at something. This creates the situation indicated earlier where women's confidence levels are below their actual competence. It's important that our feedback helps girls to understand that they don't have to be perfect to feel competent.
Praise should always be aimed at a girl's effort. Praise them for working hard, praise them for sticking with it, praise them for facing a failure courageously. Don't tell them they are smart, or "good at this." Children who receive praise for their effort end up believing that they control their acquisition of skills and knowledge and they will gain confidence that they can improve. Children who receive praise for innate ability end up believing that they don't have control. When they encounter hurdles, they may shut down and simply decide "I'm just not good at this," destroying their confidence.
Criticism should be constructive but present. In line with risk-taking and failure, it's important that a girl receives criticism and learns that she can work past it. Some psychologists believe that boys gain confidence through criticism and punishment in early school grades. They learn to be resilient in the face of criticism, which translates into confidence when faced with criticism later in life.
Do It!
A main focus of this blog. Building confidence will come from actually doing activities. These are the times when girls will choose to take risks and face failures. This is where girls will build skills that they know others don't have. Confidence is not built by reading about it or by talking about it, but by doing it.
Let's revisit the tent-pitching girls. It turns out that the two of them together put up that well-pitched tent. The second girl has a lot of experience and really knows how to pitch a tent, but her leader always hovers over her while she is working, points out every minor error, and expects perfection, so her confidence is low. The first girl has only put up one tent in her life, the one that the second girl just showed her how to pitch. But the two of them did it together, got past whatever problems they encountered, and she built confidence through her success and is eager to go again. Let them go at it again together with little supervision, tell them they worked hard and did a great job, and help them fix any major safety issues and you'll help them grow to the confident women we want them to be.
How do you build confidence with your girls? Share your experiences in the comments.
Smitty
References:
Katty Kay and Claire Shipman. "The Confidence Gap." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 14 Apr. 2014. Web. 14 July 2015. <http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/04/the-confidence-gap/359815/>.
Barker, Eric. "How to Be More Confident: 5 Research Backed Methods." Time. Time, 30 Apr. 2014. Web. 14 July 2015. <http://time.com/81811/how-to-be-more-confident-5-research-backed-methods/>.
No comments:
Post a Comment