Self efficacy is a well known concept that is linked with success at work and success in management.  Self efficacy means that I have belief in my own competence and I am confident.  Albert Bandura said  “the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations.”  Management benefits from being aware of basic psychological concepts.

If you are a manager who is insecure or, as well, you are a manager who is self-important and believes in their own intelligence above all others, then you face a challenge in managing others.

If you are insecure you will constantly challenge others in order to make your position stable.  With your fears, you constantly question what you do and additionally question what all others around you do. This questioning sends a message of no confidence.  Engaging in attention getting behavior will undermine your staff and their ability to feel confident about what they do.  Attention gaining behavior will disengage staff and when this disconnection occurs, disloyalty may soon follow.

If instead, your mission in life is intellectual superiority, similar results are probable.  The need to be intellectually superior interferes with good management, as people need to feel competent about their work.  An intellectually superior supervisor will constantly send a message that they have all the answers while others cannot and do not have answers.  These managers will use their position as managers to engorge themselves to an inflated ego. They will constantly fill their ego needs with others’ insecurity or need for a job.  People will tolerate bad management and ego inflated supervisors in order to keep work.   This almost never works to enrich and enlarge a workforce.  Good managers understand that fundamentally, staff must feel capable in order to execute their work.  Good managers will not use their staff to pontificate or to fulfill their own needs.

A staff with self efficacy is going to feel capable and confident.  Staff who are capable and confident do the work much more effectively and efficiently.  Effective and efficient work means more success in business.

Ego needs are very human, but the work place is not the place to fulfill ego needs, not if you want to be an effective manager.  When you are inside of your ego, it is difficult to recognize what you are doing.  People must often work hard to recognize what their ego is doing.  Once you recognize your egoic behavior, you can then take steps to be an effective manager.  Effective managers give credit and compliments to their staff and assure their staff that their competence is a valuable asset to the organization.  Confidence building is what good managers do for staff and good mangers do not expect confidence building from staff.