Self-esteem: The core of career success
IF YOU are like me, you may take it for granted that you know what self-esteem is, and believe that you have it. That’s what I had thought, about 15 years ago. Then I learned that, at best, I had only a vague notion of what the term actually meant.
Not only that. I also learned, then, that self-esteem was the most crucial psychological resource needed for career success — and that I didn’t have as much of it as I liked to believe.
What brought about this enlightenment?
Well, I met ‘the father of the selfesteem movement’, psychologist Dr Nathaniel Branden. More specifically, I was introduced to his book The Power of Self-Esteem.
In it I learned that self-esteem was more than that innate sense of self-worth, which is our human birthright.
Instead, self-esteem, properly understood, consisted of two interrelated aspects: self-efficacy and self-respect.
Self-efficacy means confidence in the functioning of one’s mind and one’s ability to think, decide, learn, achieve one’s goals and cope with the challenges of life.
Self-respect means the experience of personal worth, the assurance of one’s value as a human being who is deserving and worthy of love, success and happiness. It describes the experience of entitlement to assert one’s needs and wants and to enjoy the fruits of one’s efforts.
Dr Branden, who passed away on December 3, 2014 at age 84 after a long illness, taught that both of these aspects — self-respect and self-efficacy — were indispensable to normal and healthy development and functioning. Without them, our psychological growth is stunted.
Self-esteem is nothing less than the ‘immune system of consciousness’, providing resistance, strength and the capacity for personal growth and adaptability in the face of changing circumstances and life’s inescapable adversities.
LIVE YOUR VALUES
Dr Branden developed on these two pillars in his many books,
including The Psychology of Self-Esteem, The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, Living Consciously, Honoring the Self, Self-Esteem at Work and my favourite, Taking Responsibility. In these and other works, he showed the relationship of healthy self-esteem to success in business, career, relationships, and other practical arenas of life.
Where your career success is concerned, you have to consciously grow your selfefficacy. Affirm and celebrate every achievement. Embrace failure, to learn. Savour challenges. Work hard. And be a lifelong learner.
To nurture self-respect, practise integrity — keep your word; honour your commitments. Be self-reliant and resourceful. Practise positive self-talk. Stand up for yourself against bullies, abusers and manipulators. Live your values. Only cultivate relationships of mutual respect and affection. And be yourself.
In developing the necessary selfrespect and selfefficacy for career success, a great place to start is mastering the six practices of self-esteem: living consciously, self-acceptance, selfresponsibility, integrity, living purposefully and selfassertiveness.
In today’s workplace of unprecedented complexity, unrelenting competitiveness and dizzying change, selfesteem is an urgent practical necessity.
For, as Dr Branden noted: “Today organisations need not only an unprecedentedly higher level of knowledge and skill among all those who participate, but also a higher level of personal autonomy, self-reliance, self-trust and the capacity to exercise initiative — in a word, self-esteem.”