Check out this great clip.

The clever thing about it is that people can relate to both parts – the pessimistic, apathetic part, and the optimistic, hopeful part.

As human beings we all have those sides to us. Some days we couldn’t give a flying fig about things, other days we plug into what matters and get involved. But this clip made me think – what happens if these 2 sides are perfectly balanced, 50/50?

It means equilibrium.
It means that things won’t move forwards.
It means that we get in our own way.

So the elephant in the room is the fact that if Gen Y really wants to move the world forwards they need to shift that equilibrium. They need to shift the balance away from apathy and towards engagement.

The optimism, flexibility and ‘can-do’ attitude of Gen-Y is well documented, particularly with regard to changing the workplace, but I’ve seen indications in my own work and in the writing of others that Gen-Y isn’t quite so ‘can-do’ as they like to think they are. This makes me think that for all the talking up and hopeful interchange, much of Gen-Y will hit a wall where they discover that changing things is much more difficult than they thought.

There’s a big can of worms here, because I’m always coaching people on knowing the difference between the things in their life that they can change and influence and the things they can’t. I’ve seen clients bang their heads against brick walls trying to get things to happen, when it’s either completely out of their control or something that just isn’t ready to happen, so I let them know that it’s okay to stop bashing away against something they can’t change, and that that energy is better used elsewhere.

But maybe that’s missing an important point – that if everyone simply focused on the things that they can change and influence the equilibrium remains intact. Surely to move things forwards in line with the optimistic and hopeful side of us we need to engage with more than the things we can control. We need to engage with the things that seem to be out of control.

I honestly believe that everyone wants their life to matter; that everyone wants their contribution to the world to be greater than the sum of the parts. The problem, of course, is how that can happen in a world that seems to make that as difficult as possible, and how you can deal with the sometimes paralysing fear that what you do won’t matter.

Here’s what I think.

Changing the world, or at least your world, sounds like a mammoth, intimidating, confidence shredding task. But if you shift your own equilibrium, so that you’re spending more of your time engaging rather than not engaging, the rest will follow. Simple as.

It’s much easier to find the confidence and courage to plug into something that matters to you, as it means that you don’t have to worry about whether what you’re doing will matter to the world or contribute to a Big Picture. It just means that as long as what you’re plugged into means something to you, that’s all that really matters.

So by all means engage with something as big or complex as volunteering for a charity, standing on a political stage to make your viewpoint heard, taking part in a community project, working for an organisation with values you connect with or helping a friend in crisis. But it doesn’t have to be big, grand or life-changing. It could also be as simple or as small as engaging with a friendship, giving your barrista a smile, taking time to listen to a colleague’s point of view, making a suggestion instead of making a criticism, or any one of a million other things.

The point is this - if you can decide to spend more of your time plugged into things that mean something to you than not plugged into much at all, then you’ve got something special.

That’s how the equilibrium shifts, and that’s how things change.

There’s a lot of talk out there about being professional and growing up. Ryan Healey’s at it. Ryan Paugh’s at it. Angela Marino’s talking about it - and that’s the tip of the iceberg.

Sure, as you go from college to the workplace and even as you get promoted there’s a certain amount of growing up that needs to be done. Work isn’t optional unless you’re pretty darn lucky, money can be hard to come by and those pants aren’t gonna wash themselves.

But please, can we give the whole ‘being professional’ thing a rest? This is a real bug-bear of mine, because if you set out to ‘be professional’ you won’t be doing your best work and you’ll keep missing real success.

When you hit the workplace for the first time, or if you switch jobs and enter a new workplace, there’s a very real temptation to show your best side to your new colleagues and new boss. It’s like going on a date – you want the other party to see you as a great person, someone who’ll add a huge amount while not causing trouble, and you do that by taking care to show only the parts of you that you think will get the result you’re looking for. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to give a good impression and I applaud someone who’s keen to show their best strengths and assets.

The problem comes when you start filtering your behaviour and judgement so that you fit in with what you think it means to be ‘professional’ or ‘grown-up’. Too many times, ‘being professional’ means self-editing.

I’ve seen it loads of times. Cassie complained to me that she felt awkward in meetings, like her confidence vanished. When we dug into it, the reason for her awkwardness and low confidence was that she was self-editing what she did and said based on what she thought being a professional meant she should be doing and saying. When she let go of the idea of being professional she had more impact in her meetings, made a valid and valued contribution and did more great work as a result.

Shelley felt stuck in her law firm and didn’t know why her career wasn’t taking off in the way she hoped it would. She was demotivated and her confidence was steadily slipping. When we got down to it – guess what? – we saw that she was so busy pussy-footing around, trying to fit in, trying to get on with her colleagues and trying to be professional that she forgot about doing great work in a way that works for her.

She’d started out at her firm careful to make a good, professional impression, and before long that became automatic. ‘Being professional’ became a primary focus, and she clean forgot about using her strengths and values to do great work.

These are just 2 examples, and there are countless more, myself included. Some years ago I drove myself nuts while self-editing and squeezing myself into a box marked ‘professional’. It wasn’t a box that I fitted into and I hated every moment, all the while pretending it was fine because it was the professional thing to do.

The problem’s always the same - thinking that you need to grow up and be professional in order to fit into an organisation and do your job well. Do this and you’ll limit yourself and will be getting in the way of your own success.

The solution’s the same too – putting your primary focus onto doing great work by using your strengths, talents and values instead of fitting into how you assume you should be behaving. Do this and you’re free to do your best work by being yourself.

I’m a laid back guy. I love to laugh. I love not taking things seriously. When I’m freelancing (even on Big Messy Project) I deliberately take time to forget about being professional, because I know that frees me up to do my best work.

That’s not to say that I drop my trousers and moon people in meetings or that I come back from lunch with a half-drunk bottle of tequila and a completely drunk Mariachi band in tow. Reggie Perrin’s a hero of mine, but I’m not going to be as unprofessional as he was.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Nope, I’m talking about how you shouldn’t make ‘being professional’ your focus, not how you should make an ass out of yourself and get fired.

Please, please, please don’t be so keen to grow up and be professional. It’s vastly over-rated and no fun at all.

So what are your experiences with ‘being professional’? Do you feel the need to be professional that you sometimes struggle to deliver against? Have you seen that ‘being professional’ stops you from doing your best work, or maybe you’ve seen that it helps? Lemme know.

In my freelancing work that I do alongside my coaching I was given a Big Messy Project to run for an ad agency in London, and an old problem of mine resurfaced.

I like things to run smoothly and I like everyone to work together, have fun and deliver great results. So when conflict arises I really struggle with it; firstly because my life is generally conflict free, secondly because I always do what I can to set things up ahead of time to ensure there isn’t any, and thirdly because it makes me feel awkward and uncomfortable.

One part of the team wanted to deliver the project a particular way with a specific creative concept, while another part wanted another concept. Both sides were passionate about their position, and each was using all kinds of tricks to strengthen their position, even to the point of undermining mine. My responsibility was to find a workable solution that everyone could get behind, that (most importantly) gave the client exactly what they were looking for.

Here’s what I did, and here are 5 strategies you can use to handle conflict.

1. Listen
   Make sure you’ve heard everyone and respect their point of view. You don’t necessarily have to understand everyone’s perspective (doing that can take a lifetime), but you need to have a true respect for their position. Not only does that mean that you’re fully informed about what’s happening and where people are, but it demonstrates the value of the relationships you have and that you’re happy to listen and willing to engage with others.

   It also means that you might see a way through that hadn’t occurred to you before; it gives you the opportunity to grab nuggets of gold from different people to create a way forward that’s a workable and effective compromise.

2. Do your due diligence
   If there are facts you need to gather or new areas you need to explore, make sure you go deep enough into those areas to figure out the depth and breadth of them. Of course, that assumes you have the time to do that, so this is a tricky balance between doing enough due diligence to be informed, checking in with your instincts and leveraging your experience to anticipate the different paths.

   So what do you need to know, and what’s the best way to get those answers? Work that out with an open mind and you’ll be in a stronger position to move forwards.

3. Don’t make it personal
   When someone’s disagreeing or even attacking your position it’s easy for emotions to get involved. Frustration, anger and blame can all get swept up, and before you know it you’ve got a bigger problem than you ever thought.

   Don’t make it personal. If someone disagrees with your position they’re allowed to, just as you’re allowed to disagree with others. The moment that you start taking differences of opinion as personal criticism and judgement (even if that’s exactly what’s being thrown at you) you’ll either be on the defensive or will come out on the offensive with all guns blazing.

   Be passionate if you’re passionate and recognise your emotions; but balance that with the facts and a liberal sprinkling of common sense.

4. Be ready to be wrong
   If you’re wrong, admit it. Don’t hang on to your position just for the sake of wanting to be right – that’ll get you into more hot water, will waste everyone’s time and will really screw things up.

   Being wrong isn’t a bad thing – it shows that you’re switched on enough to do the best thing for all concerned and find the best route through, even if that flies in the face of what you were thinking previously.

5. State your case simply and assertively
   The more complicated you make things the more complex it’ll be for you and other people to unravel. Simplify what’s happening, simplify your position (even take a moment to jot down some bullet points) and figure out the simplest way to move forwards. Even if you don’t have all the answers, you need to be confident enough in the solution to make a decision and state your case.

   There’s a point where the debate needs to be over, and you need to communicate that in a way that engages rather alienates. Let people know coolly and unambiguously what the facts are and the way forward.

Everyone has their own challenges when it comes to handling conflict, and these are just a handful of the strategies I’ve employed at various times. How do you deal (or not deal) with conflict?

Can you be a leader and not be confident?

Hell yeah.

While the Obama’s, Clinton’s, Trump’s , Blair’s and even the Bush’s of the world all seem to be confident (even if where they’re placing their confidence is just plain nuts), I’m willing to bet that there are times when they don’t know what the heck they’re going to do and are shaking in their boots.

The same goes for leadership on a smaller scale. If you’re a new manager or have some leadership responsibility then don’t worry, you’re allowed to not be confident.

There are many styles and definitions of leadership, but as I see it, a leader is simply someone who takes people from point A to point B. A leader is someone who knows what the destination is, believes in the benefits of getting there and inspires others to join them on the journey.

A leader has confidence in the direction they’re heading in; a leader has confidence that the end point is ‘right’ and a leader has the confidence to fully engage with the journey.

And here’s the key difference – a leader does not need to be confident in the specifics of each step of that journey, they just need to be confident that the journey matters.

Read that last sentence again.

People can spot a leader who’s faking it from a mile away, so the real trick if you’re in a leadership position is to put effort into getting to the same place of (un)confidence. That’s true, authentic leadership, and the only way to have that is to know yourself well enough to have figured out that you can learn, adapt and grow, and from knowing what really matters to you.

This ties in nicely with the 3rd Principle of Self-Confidence - “Being truly confident doesn’t mean you can’t not be confident”, and the leaders who’ve inspired me and who I look up to most certainly have this in common. I’m willing to bet that the leaders you look up to do too.

Gen-Y professionals seem to generate 2 responses from people. The first is that they’re honest, capable, resourceful, valuable and enthusiastic individuals and a valuable asset to an organisation. The second is that they’re they’re a bunch of selfish, needy, disloyal know-it-alls who are headed for the biggest of reality-checks.

I’ve come across both of these Gen-Y types in my time, both personally and professionally (and I know which I prefer), but I don’t think this is particularly new. There have always been ‘good guys’ and there have always been ‘jerks’.

In a recent article in Business Week, Jack and Suzy Welch argue that there are two reasons why Gen-Y gets a bad rap -

“The first is the age-old human propensity to worry about the wayward values of ‘kids these days’. Your grandparents worried about your parents, who worried about you, and someday your kids will worry about theirs. The second reason is something we call trend inflation. With the explosion of media outlets in every form, all of them needing content, there has emerged a relentless parade of so-called cultural phenomena backed up by little more than the vague phrase, ‘experts say’.”

I think it’s a little more than that. We’re so indundated by media messages that the emergence of online digital media has helped shift things from a ‘push’ environment where information and ads are pushed onto the consumer to a ‘pull’ environment, where the consumer is massively more selective and able to filter what they see and when they see it.

This seems to have fed into the Gen-Y attitude, putting them in a much firmer position of choice about what happens and how. Undoubtedly there’s more choice these days - from what work you do and how you get it done, to what you eat and how you socialise, to where you live and how you pursue success.

And this is where Gen-Y can turn into a bunch of needy know-it-alls. The problem comes where they pursue an idea of success that they’ve absorbed rather than developed for themselves. Taking on an idea of success from the outside means that it will never mean much - it’ll only appear to mean something until that inevitable day when you wake up and find your life meaningless. It’s typically these people who go around with a sense of entitlement, acting like they know it all and (when you get right down to it) chasing something for no other reason than it looks good and keeps them busy.

The other approach, adopted by the kind of Gen-Y people that I love, is to figure out what success really looks like and get clear on what you want to build for yourself and those you care about. This comes from a place of knowing who you are and what you’re about - yep, a place of self-confidence.

Jack and Suzy echo this:

“…the question ‘Does success only have to be about money?’ came up just the other evening at dinner with a Gen Yer we know who earns a modest salary as an assistant golf pro. ‘I wake up every morning thrilled about getting to work and helping people,’ he told us. ‘That’s what makes me feel successful.’”

The Gen-Yers who understand that they’ll be able to live a full life and contribute to whatever rocks their world as long as they’re living life from the inside-out are the ones who will succeed. These are the folks who are making change happen, who’re setting up businesses in line with what they care about and who’re being snapped up by organisations around the world.

Remember who you are and what’s important to you; then you’ve got it made.

Moving into a management role for the first time can be darn scary. Whether you’re promoted internally or hired straight into a position where you have a team reporting to you, there are some key things that will help you find your feet and ramp up your confidence quickly.

1. Fake it just enough
   You can’t know it all and pretending that you do is sure to get you into hot water. If you adopt the approach of ‘faking it til you make it’ your team will see straight through you, and sooner or later you’ll trip up big time.
   
   Of course, if you answer every question with a shrug of your shoulders and a blank stare your team will lose all confidence in you and respect for you, so there’s a balance to be struck. You need to fake it just enough so that you build trust and respect in your team, but not too far that you pretend you can do it all yourself.
   
   It’s really down to being ready to wing it, something that will always be part of the job of a manager.
2. Find your groove
   Don’t walk around doing an impression of ‘a manager’. It’ll feel fake and it just won’t get the results you need.
   
   Finding your style as a manager can take a while, but it’s the only way you’ll be able to bring everything together and deliver consistently. Learn from the best managers you know and by all means look for a mentor, but don’t take on someone else’s approach and style wholesale.
   
   Don’t assume that your team want to be managed the way you want to be managed. Look at what your team needs and how to manage them to get the best out of them, and figure out what strengths, talents, experience and skills you have that will meet those needs.
   
   In the Business Week article ’Becoming the Boss’, Linda A. Hill suggests that to succeed as a new manager you need to: “Demonstrate character (intending to do the right thing), managerial competence (listening more than talking), and influence (getting others to do the right thing). She cites a great example, ”An investment bank manager won employees’ respect by shifting from showing off his technical competence to asking them about their knowledge and ideas.”
3. Focus on the relationships
   A manager will thrive or die on their ability to build relationships. You’ll have all kinds of conflicting demands made of you and your team, and it’s through your relationships with people that things change and things get done.
   
   Hill suggests that “it’s imperative to earn respect and credibility by leveraging the knowledge of the people around you”, and the only way to do that is by building positive, enabling relationships, not just in your own team but with the people your team depends on to get things done.
   
   I’ve seen that whenever I’m helping organisations out as a Project Manager I always place a high priority on building relationships, and that effort shows results pretty much instantly. People will respect you, trust you and go that little bit further if you have a good relationship in place.

One last thing - always remember that you’ll ramp up your confidence and find things easier if you add your own personality and strengths into the mix.

I just saw Michael Moore’s movie Sicko (man alive am I glad I live in the UK!), and during his trip to the UK in the middle of the movie he sits down with ex Member of Parliament Tony Benn, to get his two-penneth about why people put up with terrible services from their Government. He says,

“There are two ways that people are controlled. First of all frighten people and secondly demoralise them. Hopeless people don’t vote. An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern. I think there’s an element in the thinking of some people [that says] we don’t want people to be educated, healthy and confident because they get out of control.”

I think good old Mr Benn put his finger right on it. That’s why we’re seeing record turnouts in the caucuses and why Gen Y is diving right into the election process.

Government do use tools such as fear and demoralisation to keep their populations in check, but we’re seeing a fascinating shift in that dynamic. Gen Y is the first generation since the 60’s to have real hope, and to be educated enough and have the wherewithal to know how to go about delivering on that hope.

Both Hillary and Obama seem to understand that, and seem to get how important this election is. It’s down to Gen Y to shape the next few decades and to make sure they keep the process of being educated, healthy and confident alive.