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April 25, 2019 By Amanda Kaiser

The Association Member Self-Confidence Trap

I sat down next to one of the conference keynoters at lunch. This keynote speaker is a successful tax accountant for extremely high net worth individuals. In other words, he is a successful and savvy businessman. I told him that I thought his keynote was marvelously funny. He suddenly looked bashful and said, “You think so? I felt like I did not know what I was doing up there. The other speakers have been so good, much better than me.” His response surprised me.

Each one of us has self-confidence issues sometimes.

We are all dealing with doubts. “Who am I to lead, teach, or instruct?”

We are all dealing with insecurities. “What if they see me trip, stutter, or freeze?”

Your members may appear to have it all together, but they too have an inner voice which is busy bringing them down a peg or two.

That inner voice fights to keep us in line. It likes the status quo. It will happily corral us well within our comfort zone.

Associations and our events can amplify our member’s inner voice, or we can tamp it down. Members can interact with us and say, “yikes, it’s a scary world out there; I think I’d better hunker down.” Or they can say, “wow, there are some great opportunities out there that I want to try out.”

How is your association speaking to your member’s inner voice?

Related:

  1. The whole conference experience is decided in the first 10 seconds
  2. Reduce nervousness to increase engagement at your next conference
  3. Not fitting in is awkward for many members

Filed Under: Member Experience Tagged With: association culture, doubt, member culture, resistance, status quo

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