February 19, 2025
People with complete self-confidence are often seen as attractive, but overly confident people can also be disliked by those around them. And while humble people tend to be easy to interact with, false modesty can be off-putting.
It would be fabulous to be confident in oneself and humble at the same time, but this is quite difficult to do, and unfortunately, I myself cannot claim to have achieved this balance. That is precisely why I put a provision of “Having both confidence and humility” into Axis, stemming from the desire for a higher level of human nature.
This discussion will be a little lengthy, so I’ve decided to start with “confidence” this time, continuing on to “humility” next time, followed by a consideration of “the qualities of a leader” in the third segment.
The word “confidence” has various definitions, but put simply, it means to believe in one’s own abilities and to be capable of taking action. For example, compared to the person who says hesitantly, “I might be able to…,” the person who says confidently, “I’ll get it done!” inspires greater peace of mind in the listener.
Confident self-assertion seems to be the better approach, but even among people who have the same level of professional skills, there are those who lack confidence. No doubt there are people who have faced intense criticism for past failures, causing them to wither and avoid taking on new challenges in their work. The experience of failure in the past creates a desire to run away.
I only know one way to break through the fear of “What will I do if I fail?” – which is the accumulation of effort on a daily basis. This is pretty obvious, and hardly anything special, but in over 20 years of working it’s the only thing I’ve found to be effective. You just have to keep building up small efforts day by day, continuing to take on tasks that you would rather shrink away from, that you might fail at, until you come to believe in yourself, knowing that, “Yes, I can get it done!” Accumulation of effort is the only way.
That being said, younger staff members in particular may wonder, “How, exactly, should I be going about this accumulation of effort?” When facing a problem, unless you know how to think about it and act, whatever efforts you make can feel like going around in circles. This is the purpose of establishing TOPC Axis, providing the company’s guidelines that help resolve such concerns held by the staff. The “tech” axis, for example, encourages a “why” mentality to dig deeper into problems; the “service” axis promotes the alignment of expectations; and the “time” axis helps with ownership of scheduling, etc. Together, they offer guidance on how to think and act to accomplish good work. Based on this guidance, one can consider how to proceed, and continue to work diligently.
The nobility of work is in providing value to others. For instance, if you travel overseas for leisure, only you have enjoyed it; nobody else is necessarily made happy as a result. On the other hand, a job well done will give joy to the hearts of both colleagues and customers. That is because of the value that they perceive. And when we see their happy faces, we also feel happiness. It is this virtuous cycle of providing joy and receiving joy in turn that is the value of good work. And it is the repetition of that cycle that brings about confidence in ourselves.
People spend most of their waking hours working. If they could make the people around them happy through the accumulation of effort, I don’t think there would be any better way to inspire confidence. It is because I want our staff to have this joy and confidence that I want us to work hard. As each of us delivers results through continued effort, moving towards success with confidence, I believe that TOPC Potentia will become a company full of such people.
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