What's Stopping You Being More Confident?

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SELF-EFFICACY AND TALENT

It’s a description that crops up again and again in self-help books – apparently outlining the critical difference between those with and without confidence. So what is ‘self-efficacy’ (pronounced ‘ef-i-kuh-see’)? And why is it so important for developing confidence in previously under-confident people?

The dictionary definition declares efficacy as the ‘capacity for producing the desired end result’. Therefore, self-efficacy – according to Daniel Goleman in his seminal work Emotional Intelligence (1996) – is no more than ‘the [self-] belief that one has mastery over the events of one’s life and can meet challenges as they come up’.

This makes self-efficacy more than the dictionary’s ‘capacity’: it’s competence with ...