How to be confident: fight your corner, says guru Bob

How can you be confident in the workplace and stand up for yourself in the face of intimidation?

Bob Etherington, pictured, former Reuters sales and marketing manager and now a globe-trotting management skills trainer, has the answer: “Make sure you don’t let people intimidate you. If you crumble and say ‘yes, yes, yes’, they’ll walk all over you. Try to find something deep inside that says ‘I’m not going to give in on this’.” At first, he says, you will necessarily be faking it: “But if it comes out right for you, people will notice. Then it becomes natural and real.”

Etherington, author of Presentation Skills for Quivering Wrecks and other similar works, adds: “Remember that people test you all the time. Often all they want to see is if you’ll fight your corner.”

His advice was quoted in the Financial Times recently in a piece headed Standing up for yourself.

Etherington, who was international director of sales training when he left Reuters in 2001 after 22 years, seems incapable of retiring.

“In 2010, after my second go at retirement in the 10 years since the Baron ‘let me go’, I decided that I’d probably never retire,” he told The Baron. “Several ex-clients from my previous start-up business had asked me to take on training assignments and rather than say ‘no’ I attempted to price myself out of the market by tripling the day rate I normally quoted. I won all the assignments over cheaper rivals for several thousand additional pounds each day. This was interesting. ‘If he’s that expensive he MUST be good’.

“One such client who’d received some presentation skills training asked me if I also did ‘Leadership Training’. The obvious answer was ‘no’ but on a whim I asked ‘Well, exactly what are you looking for?’ When he described what it was he wanted, I realised it sounded like the job description for my first real Reuters job - markets manager. (In this role, older readers may remember, the luckless appointee was given total responsibility, in a particular market - mine was ‘Money’ - for new product strategy, marketing plan, sales execution, lead sales, UK and overseas talent management, motivating the global sales team and long term product development. Not forgetting frequent summons to address general manager Michael Nelson and other top executives, an experience similar to a junior gladiator being dumped in the Coliseum). Once again the client seemed pleased with the resultant proposal for his own senior management team that we were given a pilot assignment: a 10-day leadership programme in 2011 spread over four months - all to be delivered completely PowerPoint free.”

This went so well that in 2011 Etherington was offered more work. “Some of the resultant projects from these programmes, we’ve been told by their board, have already saved the company $15 million to $20 million each.” More work is lined up this year from places as far apart as Australia to Trinidad. In between, he has become sales adviser to several hedge funds and private equity finance companies as well as other appointments.

“I also seem to have become a useful pundit on sales matters in journals as distinguished as Casino magazine and Esquire. The Financial Times also occasionally ask to interview me on sales-related topics. After one such interview the well-known American management guru Tom Peters re-tweeted a quote I had given them during an interview about ‘confidence’: ‘Companies aren’t run by the best people... they’re run by the people who think they’re the best’ (OMG! he agreed).”

That’s the Etherington story so far. “Massively over confident and too brainless to realise my shortcomings. My brother told someone recently that my problem is that ‘I don’t know my own limitations’. He’s probably right.” ■