How to Boost Your Clients’ Self-Esteem Using Psychology

Whether we realize it or not, the way we view ourselves has an impact on our day-to-day lives. Self-esteem, defined as how we perceive our own value or worth, is a non-fixed measure that can vary over time. Various factors are believed to influence self-esteem, including everything from genetics and health to social circumstances, life experiences, and even personality. Understanding these factors and how they affect a person is key to boosting their self-esteem, which can be beneficial to their overall life and career. This is especially valuable to professionals like executive coaches, who require such insights to provide the right recommendations and assistance to their clients.

February is international boost self-esteem month, so we’re drawing attention to this topic and the ways that executive coaches—or anyone who consults or coaches other professionals—can improve their clients’ self-esteem using methods rooted in psychology.

Measuring Self-Esteem

Have you ever heard of the five C’s of self-esteem (sometimes called the “5Cs of Positive Youth Development (PYD)”)? While often used in reference to children, these qualities can also be used to understand development potential and self-esteem in adults. The five C’s are:

• Competence
• Confidence
• Character
• Connection
• Caring

Each of these psychological, behavioral, and social qualities can be traced back to an individual’s personality and perception of themselves. Confidence is the trait most frequently tied to self-esteem, but each of these items is integral to the development of a person’s identity and self-value. For example, a CEO that feels more competent in their ability to lead is likely to have higher self-esteem than one that doubts this ability. The same goes for an executive who has close connections and supportive relationships outside of work, compared to one that often feels lonely or isolated when it comes to dealing with their problems.

With this in mind, let’s go over a few ways that you can work to build up a client’s self-esteem by understanding your client on a deeper level.  

1. Monitor Self-Talk

The way we think, feel, and believe about ourselves is linked to the way we talk about ourselves. Our words have power, and using words that are negative or positive in nature can correlate to how negatively or positively we deem our overall value to be. While it’s normal to use self-deprecating phrases once in a while, it’s best to encourage your clients to avoid such language. For example, we might normalize saying something along the lines of “I’m so dumb,” after making a careless mistake, but saying this out loud only confirms to the brain a negative thought about oneself. While such comments may seem minor at first, they can lead to lower self-esteem over time as the brain looks for further evidence to confirm these statements.

Rather than ignoring this type of self-talk, mention it whenever your client says something self-deprecating and encourage them to change the way they speak about themselves. Have them re-frame their statement in a way that is fair and leads to positive action, such as “I made a mistake, but I can fix it.” Encouraging more positive self-talk can help immensely, which is why affirmations can be powerful tools in boosting self-esteem. Even phrases as simple as “I am confident and capable of achieving whatever I set my mind to” can help confirm positive thoughts and feelings about oneself.

2. Encourage Gratitude Practices

When working with executives and those in high powered positions, you may notice that these individuals have a hard time slowing down to appreciate where they are at now rather than skipping ahead to chase their next goal. This is why it’s so important to promote practicing gratitude, as doing so has been linked to improved mental health and better self-esteem. If a person has a lot to be thankful for, they may be able to appreciate that they worked hard for all their current success, thus enhancing their feelings of confidence and competence.

3. Acknowledge Achievements

Oftentimes, people in executive-level positions can be so focused on recognizing the successes of their team that they forget to stop and recognize their own. Acknowledging achievements, no matter how big or how small, is important for self-esteem, however. That’s why coaches should incorporate practices that foster clients’ feelings of pride in themselves and the work that they’ve done. Even simply asking them to describe a recent thing they have done that would be something they would celebrate an employee for doing can be beneficial for self-esteem, as it forces them to stop for a moment and think about their own work from a different perspective.

While your clients may have hired you to help them achieve their future goals, it’s essential to help them recognize what they have already accomplished so far.

4. Help With Setting Manageable Goals

Speaking of goals, it’s important to focus on coaching your clients into setting ones that are attainable, measurable, and manageable. When someone focuses only on goals that are far-reaching and difficult to make happen, they may feel worse about themselves if they do not achieve these goals in the time frame that they had originally intended. Focusing on setting smaller, more manageable goals, on the other hand, helps to increase positive feelings about oneself when each goal is reached.

The key is not necessarily to discourage your clients from having larger goals in mind, but rather to have them break these major milestones down into bite-sized steps. Checking each of these items off of their to-do list will not only make them feel more accomplished, but also motivate them to continue on their journey to achieve the larger goal.

5. Avoid Comparison

One easy way to destroy someone’s self-esteem is with comparison. Comparing yourself to someone else who has something that you want or admire does little to help you acquire that thing. Instead, it only makes you question yourself and feel less valued. The same sentiment goes for your clients, which is why it’s good to remind them not to compare themselves to other executives—be it at their own company or elsewhere. Everyone has slightly different job duties, management styles, strengths, and skillsets, and each person may have had different advantages or disadvantages over time as well. When it comes to comparisons, the only version that may work to boost self-esteem is comparing your client to a previous version of themselves. Highlight all the growth they’ve made over time and all that they have accomplished to show them what’s possible and encourage them to have a positive self-view.

6. Focus on Their Strengths

While part of your role may involve helping your clients improve on their weaknesses, the way you go about this can make all the difference. Focusing first on someone’s strengths keeps them from experiencing imposter syndrome or feeling like they are less qualified for their role. In addition, it also sets them up for opportunities to work on any areas where they may be less strong.

This is what makes it so important to understand your clients and their unique personality profiles, as these insights act as a road map to knowing:

• What coaching styles they may respond best to
• What tendencies they might have
• What job duties they may naturally excel at or struggle with
• How well they may respond to certain recommendations

The Value of Personality Insights for Improving Your Clients’ Self-Esteem

Having a broad view of a client’s personality right from the start provides an excellent jumping off point for coaching, as it gives you a baseline understanding of who they are on a deeper level. How you acquire this information about a client matters as well, though, which is why it’s essential to use tools that you can trust.

The NEO Inventories Normative Update are concise measures of the five major domains or dimensions of personality and the most important traits or facets that define each domain. These assessment tools have been used by professionals in a wide range of fields for over three decades, which speaks to their versatility and the value of the insights they provide. Available in different versions so that you can select the one that best suits your needs, the NEO Inventories measure 18 traits grouped into five domains:

• Neuroticism (N)
• Extraversion (E)
• Openness to Experience (O)
• Agreeableness (A)
• Conscientiousness (C)

Now updated to provide a new normative sample representative of the current U.S. population, fewer components for easier purchasing, administration and scoring options through our online PARiConnect platform, and more, the NEO Inventories Normative Update is your key to unlocking the insights you need to better serve your clients.

Discover how you can help boost your clients’ self-esteem by using the NEO Inventories Normative Update today with PAR.