According to psychologist, Albert Bandura (not to be confused with actor, Antonio Banderas), self-efficacy is “the core belief that one has the power to affect (sic) changes by one’s actions. This core belief operates through its impact on cognitive, motivational, affective, and decisional processes.”
To paraphrase: Self-efficacy is seeing the power within yourself to act and impact.
Reflect on Your Own Experience
Take a moment to reflect for yourself: To what extent do you personally have self-efficacy or see the power within yourself to take action and impact the circumstances around you? In what areas of your work and life do you feel you have high levels of self-efficacy? In what areas is your self-efficacy lower? To what do you attribute those different levels?
High Self-efficacy
How do you feel when you have a high sense of self-efficacy? What impact does it have on your emotions, actions, results? When self-efficacy in organizations is high, we might hear more reports of:
- Lower levels of frustration and stress
- More open communication
- Fewer interpersonal conflicts
- Faster problem solving
- Greater collaboration
- More accountability
Low Self-efficacy
What is the impact of having a low sense of self-efficacy? How do you feel? What do you attribute that lower sense to? When self-efficacy in organizations is low, we might get more reports of:
- Defensiveness
- Blaming others or outside circumstances for lack of progress
- Misaligned goals and expectations
- Frustration with or lack of tolerance for diverse ideas and approaches
- ”Silos” where work is carried out without regard for or integration with other parts of the organization
- ”Hallway conversations” where communication or decisions are made outside of formal channels
- Lack of initiative, creativity or resourcefulness
- Performance problems or low productivity
- Turnover or absenteeism
Causes and Effects
What situations or circumstances might cause employees to feel a high sense of self-efficacy? Under what conditions might it be lower? According to Bandura, their are four main sources for developing self-efficacy:
- Mastery experiences (having experienced accomplishment after facing a challenge)
- Vicarious experiences (being exposed to others’ experiences of accomplishment after a challenge)
- Verbal persuasion (encouragement from the people in your work and life)
- Emotional and physiological states (personal conditions).
What Can We Do?
Whether our attention is on raising the level of self-efficacy in ourselves or others, there are several factors to keep in mind:
As individuals:
Often when we feel frustrated, drained, or helpless, the culprits are “others”. Remember that we cannot control or change others; we can only control or change ourselves. Bringing ourselves back to the question of what is within our control and how we can positively influence our own circumstances in itself is and builds self-efficacy. See Locus of Control.
As managers:
Direct reports come in all shapes, sizes, colors and temperment. They also come in all experience levels. As managers, we can apply best practices like the oldie but REALLY goodie: Situational Leadership and the One Minute Manager so that we are making purposeful decisions about how to lead each of our staff, meeting them where they are and giving them the support they need to build and maintain self-efficacy.
As organizations:
Culture is on the lips of many an executive team these days and no one is talking about it better right now in my opinion than Jason Korman of Gapingvoid. Organizations should be baking culture into their business plans, strategies, operations and performance metrics so that the maximum value of human resources can be leveraged – for the company and for the people themselves.
As HR:
Invest in yourself and your teams to learn and practice the tools available for building and sustaining self-efficacy. Because success begets success and success builds self-efficacy and self-efficacy makes a difference which is success in itself. It’s a cycle of goodness that organizations, managers and employees will benefit from when HR is the champion for it as part of a strategic path to growth.
If you are a human resource management professional interested in learning more about self-efficacy and promoting the self-efficacy of employees, consider joining UPschool. As an UPschool member you have access to programs, workshops, tools, templates and expert guidance/coaching that promotes self-efficacy, uncovers your unique motivation factors and helps you to ignite your motivation & unlock your best capabilities.
Everything you need to become everything you want