People don’t like uncertainty. I remember the tale of one NFL coach who told a story of his kicker coming to him after missing a series of crucial game kicks. He said, “Coach, I’ve lost my confidence.” The coach cut him the next day.
You have to have your own confidence in your abilities to do a job or a task. You get that confidence by preparing for what will be needed and then also having practice or experience in doing the task — and perhaps an aptitude for it. If I’m told, “Eric get ready, I need you to write something and speak on a particular topic — I’m ready, no problem, send me in coach!” However, if someone came and said, “Eric, I’m going to be giving you a math problem to do in front of an audience in 10 minutes,” this would be the death of me — I’d have zero confidence in my abilities.
So, there is personal confidence and then there is people’s confidence in you and your organization to do the job. Previously here in this blog I shared this Disaster Zone column: “Too Important to Leave to the Professionals.” What happened as described there is that there was a lack of confidence in the emergency management and other organizations to handle the response to COVID-19.
OK, I’ll go back to the banking “issue,” if it is not a crisis at this point. Last week there was an announcement that bigger banks had “chipped in” $30 billion to shore up First Republic Bank. Look for the word “confidence” in the story.
I’m just going to add my conjecture on those actions. Unsaid is the fact that I think either or both the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve told the bigger banks (behind the scenes), “Hey guys, get in the game here and help shore up the banking system.” Don’t think for a minute that those banks did what they did all by themselves.
The government didn’t try to take credit for the action, since doing so would “undermine confidence” in what the status of the banking system is for smaller, regional banks. When people complain about government, this is an example of government doing what is needed to help. Laissez faire approaches in a crisis don’t work!!!
