Chapter Four
Building High SelfEsteem
Chapter Preview: Building High Self-Esteem
• Define and discuss how it is developed
• Influences on human relations and
success at work
• Characteristics of people with low and
high self-esteem
• Role of mentors in professional life
• Ways individuals and organizations can
raise self-esteem
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Two Major Components
• Self-efficacy
– Belief you can achieve what you set out to
do
– Developed though experience of mastery
• success builds confidence to succeed in other
areas
• Self-respect
– What you think and feel about yourself
– Self-respect likely earns respect from
others
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Self-Esteem = Self-Efficacy + Self-Respect
• One’s appreciation of own worth and
importance
• Experience of being capable of meeting
life’s challenges and being worthy of
happiness
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Self-Esteem = Self-Efficacy + Self-Respect
• Character to be accountable for
behaviors
• Acting responsibly toward others
• Confidence in ability to
– think
– understand
– make decisions
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How Self-Esteem Develops
• Self-concept
– bundle of facts, opinions, beliefs, and
perceptions about yourself that are present
in every moment of every day
– much is unconscious, yet continues to
influence judgments, feelings, and
behaviors
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Childhood
• Experience early in life have a
significant impact on one’s life and
potential in later years
• Foundation of self-esteem in childhood
emerges later in life
– Emotional stability impacts self-esteem
• Defining negative experiences occur
– Abusive or uncaring parent
– Serious childhood accident
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Total Person Insight
Feeling good about who you are
and what you’ve here on earth to
do—that is the real work of your
life. And it’s ongoing. Each of us
arrives with all we need to feel
valued and unique, but slowly that
gets chipped away.
Oprah Winfrey
Founder and Editorial Director, O, The Oprah
Magazine
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Adolescence
• Develop and consolidate feelings about
yourself
• Age 12 to 18
• Changes and challenges
– physical image
– peer and social pressure
– begin to assume adult responsibilities
• Role models are important
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Adulthood
• Reinforced self-concept molded by past
• Adults tend to define themselves in
terms of:
– Things they possession
– What they do for a living
– Internal value system and emotional
makeup
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Total Person Insight
How many times do we pay for one mistake? The
answer is thousands of times. The human is the only
animal on earth that pays a thousand times for the
same mistake. The rest of the animals pay once for
every mistake they make. But not us. We have
powerful memory. We make a mistake, we judge
ourselves, we find ourselves guilty, and punish
ourselves….Every time we remember, we judge
ourselves again, we are guilty again, and we punish
ourselves again, and again, and again.
Don Miguel Ruiz
Author, The Four Agreements
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How Self-Esteem Influences Your
Behavior
• Powerful influence on behavior
– at work
– in personal life
• Healthy self-esteem is
– less vulnerable to negative views of others
– more tolerant and respectful of others
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Locus of Control
• Internal locus of control
– Belief that one is largely responsible for
what happens
• External locus of control
– Belief that life is almost totally controlled by
outside forces
– Success is luck
– Often rely on approval from others
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Characteristics - Low Self-Esteem
• Tendency toward
– External locus of control
– Self-destructive behaviors
– Poor human relations skills
– Failure syndrome
– Trouble with relationships
– Being less productive
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Characteristics - High Self-Esteem
• Future oriented
• Better able to cope with life’s challenges
• Feel emotions without letting them
affect behavior in a negative way
• Less likely to take things personally
• Accept people as unique, talented
individuals
• Exhibit self-confident behaviors
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Building Self-Esteem
• Possible but difficult to change
• Difficult to determine source of personal
doubt
• Difficult finding words to describe
negative feelings
• Begins with desire to overcome low selfesteem
• Slow evolution
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How to Build Self-Esteem
• Identify the source of low self-esteem:
– Careful examination of defining moments in
life
– Make list of labels others use to describe you
– Determine which ones you’ve internalized
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How to Build Self-Esteem
• Identify and accept your limitations:
– Accept yourself for who you are now
– Don’t demand perfection
– Don’t dwell on the past
– Learn to dislike behaviors rather than selfcondemnation
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How to Build Self-Esteem
• Take responsibility for your decisions:
– Making decisions helps you develop
confidence in your own judgment
– Be willing to set goals
– Accept the consequences of your
decisions
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Total Person Insight
There is little understanding in our
culture that being an adult is an ongoing
process of learning and self-correcting:
Life is always changing, revealing what
was previously unknown and unplanned
for.
Fran Cox and Louis Cox
Authors, A Conscious Life
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How to Build Self-Esteem
• Develop expertise in some area:
– Developing “expert power” builds selfesteem
– Use what you know to benefit yourself and
your company
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How to Build Self-Esteem
• Seek the support and guidance of
mentors:
– A mentor helps you learn something that you
would otherwise not have learned as well or
as quickly
– Effective tool used in organizations
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How to Build Self-Esteem
• Tips for building a mentor relationship:
– Having multiple mentors is best
– A mentor should have the qualities of a
good coach
– Market yourself to prospective mentors
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How to Build Self-Esteem
• Set goals:
– People who set goals maintain high selfesteem
– Make your goals realistic.
– Picture yourself reaching the goal
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How to Build Self-Esteem
• Visualize achievement of your goals:
– To visualize means to form a mental image
of something
– If you want to succeed, picture yourself
succeeding over and over
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Goal Setting Principles
• Spend time reflecting on things you
want to change in your life
• Develop a goal-setting plan that
includes steps to achieve the goal
• Modify your environment by changing
stimuli around you
• Monitor your behavior and reward
progress
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How to Build Self-Esteem
• Use positive self-talk:
– Self-talk takes place silently in the privacy
of your mind
– It is the personal conversations you have
with yourself
– Your self-talk can dramatically affect your
behavior
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How to Build Self-Esteem
• Create self-talk statements for each of
your goals:
– Be specific about the behavior you want to
change
– Begin each statement with a first-person
pronoun
– Describe the results you want to achieve
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Figure 4.1
Self-Esteem Cycles
Figure 4.1
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Organizations Can Help
• Low self-esteem often means poor
performance
• Organizations realizing importance of
their role in developing self-esteem
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Factors That Enhance
The Self-Esteem of
Employees
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Organizations Can…
• Value and accommodate each unique
individual
• Recognize accomplishments
• Use well-designed training programs
• Clarify expectations and provide
feedback
• Keep employees well informed
• Encourage the use of employees’ ideas
• Emphasize teamwork
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Summary
• Self-esteem is a combination of selfrespect and self-efficacy
– Feeling competent and worthy
• Self-esteem is the foundation for a
successful personal life
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Summary
• Self-esteem is
– acquired and built from birth
– influenced by parents, friends, associates,
and the media
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Summary
• People with high self-esteem tend to
– be future oriented
– cope with problems creatively, handle their
emotions, and give as well as receive help
– accept others as unique talented
individuals
– exhibit self-confident behaviors
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Summary
• To build high self-esteem individuals
must
– accept the past
– build for the future
– accept their limitations
– develop expertise in some area
– make decisions and live with the
consequences
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Summary
• Set goals by
– visualizing the person they want to be
– monitoring self-talk
• Organizations now realize the need for
help in building self-esteem in their
employees
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Summary
• Organizations can
– offer training sessions
– give better feedback and statements of
expectations
– offer greater respect for the individual in
the workplace
– foster teamwork
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