Tips & Tricks For Conveying Confidence At Work

How confident are you at work? Does it come across that way? Let me help you enhance your professional communication.

The other day, I came across some posts on Instagram about how to showcase more confidence via email communication. Or as they explained it, “How to email like a boss”. I found them very interesting and started digging for more online sources around this topic. Personally, I can recall many cases where I was continuously reading and rereading an email before pressing send. I would change the greetings or adjust the opening line, attempting to sound more confident and knowledgeable but also casual and cool. This was especially the case once I started working with people from all over the world.

How you show up at work is an important aspect of your personal brand. Written communication (such as emails and messages) is one of the many important tools on the job — regardless of whether you are working at a large company or at a small startup. Therefore, mastering how to appear more confident is a game-changer that can boost your career within and beyond your current company.

Here are some tips — take note!

• Instead of “Sorry for the delay”, write “Thanks for your patience”
• Instead of “No problem / no worries”, write “Always happy to help”
• Instead of “Hope that makes sense”, write “Let me know if you have any questions”
• Instead of “Sorry, my bad! I totally missed that”, write “Nice catch! Thanks for letting me know”
• Instead of “What works best for you?”, write “Could you do…?”
• Instead of “Just wanted to check in”, write “When can I expect an update?”
• Instead of “Sorry for bothering you”, write “Is now a good time for a quick question?”
• Instead of “I think…”, write “It would be better to…”

It goes without saying that each situation is different and requires a unique approach. The aforementioned tips will help you to “challenge” yourself and be more direct. My favorite tip by far is the fourth one. I used to say “sorry” very often, even for small things.

This brings us to the next tip:

Stop apologizing! We have all been in situations where we delayed a response or missed something. There is no need to say “I’m sorry” all the time. You can simply say “Thanks for your patience” and/or “Thanks for bringing this to my attention”.

This type of language shows that you recognize the inconvenience but it still demonstrates that you’re confident and in charge. Furthermore, stop apologizing for having an opinion or a question that will enable you to get your job done. I used to say “sorry for bothering you” every time I wanted to ask someone a question. The word “sorry” is so overused in our everyday communications. We have to change that.

Last but not least, here are some further email tips that will make your life (and your recipients) much easier:

• Be specific with your subject: For example, if you are sending a document to your manager for review, you can simply add to the subject line “For your immediate review”.
• Keep the email short and specific: We are all receiving so many emails every day, let’s make things simple by eliminating the unnecessary words and sticking to only what we would like to say. Bullet points help to achieve that!
• Add a proper photo and signature: This goes back to personal branding. A nice photo and a concrete signature make you look more confident and your email look more professional.
• Make this long email into a short discussion: We tend to spend time beautifying our emails rather than focusing on the topic at hand. An important lesson from working at startups is that time is money. A short meeting can save us from hours of long emails back and forth.

Hope you found this helpful! Personal branding is a topic that will be discussed a lot in the coming months. As Marketing and Comms professionals we spend so much time and energy on building our company’s brand that we can sometimes forget about our personal brand.

Do you have any other useful email tips to share? Please comment below 🙂

This blog is about PR, Marketing, and Branding within startups and international environments. In each blog post, we’ll be diving into specific topics or tech ecosystems with the help of local experts. My goal is to create a place for discussion and knowledge-sharing with professionals from all over the world. Hopefully, this blog sparks new ideas and topics you can discuss with your colleagues.

I would love to hear your thoughts, feedback, and topic ideas. Feel free to reach out to me at hello@eleniaktypi.com