A crash course in well-calibrated confidence

Confidence is essential. Without it, you won’t inspire anyone – and you may well miss out on important opportunities because you’ll be afraid to seize them. No wonder, then, that there are thousands of books offering advice on how to boost self-confidence. But beware: overly simplistic advice preaching absolute confidence isn’t the answer, either. 

Putting on airs and overestimating your own competence will blow up in your face before long, and when that happens it’ll not only be painful – it could permanently damage your credibility. This content is an effort to explain how to find and project the ideal level of confidence. By improving your decision-making ability and understanding your limitations, you’ll become a better and more trusted authority, able to speak confidently on any issue.

Let's read, learn and Grow...

that confidence isn’t everything;

the difference between a trusted leader and a con man; and

why asking “which” is better than asking “whether.”

Contrary to what many think, overconfidence isn’t harmless.

“Think you can or think you can’t – either way you’re right.” This quote, commonly attributed to Henry Ford, offers one way to think about confidence. It suggests that confidence is everything, and that your ability to succeed depends only on the amount of confidence you have. 

But is this true? Well, yes and no. Make no mistake, belief in your own ability is important for success, and underconfidence can result in missed opportunities. But it’s not true that success comes down to simply believing in yourself. In fact, there are plenty of cases where overconfidence can be more harmful to your chances at success than underconfidence. 

Overconfidence is dangerous because of how people make decisions. Decision-making is hard. People rarely have enough information to make a truly educated decision, and so they depend on their intuition to make choices, even important ones. But intuition can – and often does – lead to mistakes. 

History is full of tragic accidents that came about because people made snap decisions that vastly overestimated their own ability. Take the 2008 financial crisis, for example: everyone was overconfident that they knew the value of the subprime mortgages they were buying. The fallout when people realized they didn’t? A global economic crisis.

In fact, research shows that too much confidence can sometimes lead to inferior performances. Psychologist Gabrielle Oettingen has studied the effect of confidence on outcomes and found that people who fantasize more about future successes are actually less likely to accomplish them. This effect can be seen on scales both large and small. A student who thinks he’s already prepared for a test might not study enough and doom himself to a bad grade. Or imagine two companies – one that anticipates great results in the next quarter and one that expects to be in the red. The second one will be more motivated to make changes for the better.

The lesson here is to use confidence to help you start the work you need to succeed, not bypass it. Confidence alone won’t let you finish a marathon if you’ve never run before. But confidence can give you the push to start training, one mile at a time.

People underconfident about difficult tasks often forget that others are struggling as well.

What are you good at? Maybe you’re an outstanding cook. Or maybe you’re an exceptional driver. Whatever the case may be, one thing’s for sure: you do that activity frequently. Makes sense, right? Think about it – nobody would describe themselves as a good golfer if they didn’t actually golf.

But now think about the reverse. The things you’re not good at are probably the things you don’t do frequently. If you’ve never juggled, you wouldn’t be confident in your ability to juggle – and you’d likely describe yourself as a worse-than-average juggler. This may seem like an obvious point, but it’s important to keep in mind because it’s a major source of underconfidence.

Underconfidence is most common when people simultaneously know the limits of their own abilities and don’t know the limits of others’. If something is particularly difficult for you but you can’t see others struggling, you might gain a false sense of your own incompetence. Say you’re studying a new language. You know that everyone in your class speaks the language better than you do. And so you conclude that they’re just better with languages than you are. But you’ve failed to take into account the unseen time other students are spending mastering grammar and vocabulary. 

In short, you’ve become discouraged not because you’re struggling more than others, but because you didn’t see the others struggling. This inability to “see” what others are going through causes all sorts of issues. For example, think about your own naked body. You can probably name scars and blemishes and other flaws – but everyone’s body is imperfect in these ways. Here, underconfidence comes from the fact that you are quite literally unable to see others’ imperfections.

This feeling of inferiority can be incredibly persistent. Even some of the planet’s most celebrated writers and artists feel like “impostors” because they don’t have a sense of how hard others work. If even Nobel Prize–winning author John Steinbeck said, “I’m not a writer. I’ve been fooling myself and other people,” then imagine how difficult it must be for others. What you should take from this is not that you should swing in the other direction and assume that you’re great at whatever you do. Just remember not to compare your hard work with others’ finished products.

Make forecasts that consider a range of possible outcomes to avoid overconfidence.

Things would be so much easier if we could see into the future. Since we can’t, we have to make choices based on our beliefs about what will happen. Whether you’re choosing a business plan or buying a new house, every big decision involves drawing upon a forecast.

The problem? People are generally pretty bad at forecasting. We tend to be too specific in our predictions. To counteract this tendency, try to allow for uncertainty. If you’re planning a wedding, don’t assume that precisely 100 people are going to come. Sure, have a plan in place for 100 guests, but also have backup plans for 80 guests and 120 guests, just in case.

Expected value is a powerful tool for forecasting. It’s pretty simple: instead of choosing a single outcome, assign probabilities to a range of outcomes. For example, instead of thinking that this project should take 10 days, try to figure out how likely it is that you’ll be done in less than 6 days, 6 to 8 days, 8 to 10 days, 10 to 12 days, and so on. When you have a list of probabilities, you can then average out the outcomes and get a mathematical estimate of when you’ll actually be done.

This is an extremely useful way to improve your foresight because it forces you to consider all the possible outcomes of a project instead of making a single assumption that’s likely to be wrong. And there’s another benefit as well: you can save your forecasts and return to them after the fact to improve your thinking. If the project ended up taking 14 days, you can look back at your projections and understand why you were overconfident.

To keep alternative outcomes in mind, think about “which” choice you want to make instead of “whether” you want to make a choice or not. One study demonstrated this by asking some participants whether they wanted to buy a DVD or not, while asking other participants which course of action they’d rather take: buy a DVD or keep their money to spend on another item. Seventy-five percent of people who were presented with the choice of “whether” to buy the DVD chose to buy it, but only 55 percent of people who were reminded of their other options bought the DVD. When making a choice, you can’t be sure you’re making the right one unless you know what all your options are.

Consider others’ perspectives to help challenge your own biases.

Imagine you're shown a large jar of jelly beans and asked to guess precisely how many beans the jar contains. Do you think you'd guess correctly? Probably not, right? If you were with some friends and they guessed too, they would probably all be wrong as well.

But here’s the thing – while no single person would be exactly right, the average of everyone’s guesses would almost certainly be an accurate approximation of the number of beans. No one person could be overly confident about their guess, but together, the entire crowd might come close to the real answer. This holds true for things far more important than jelly beans. It may seem paradoxical, but a crowd can be smarter than a single expert.

Far from being an obstacle to knowledge, disagreement can be an essential tool in improving our forecasting ability. Learning how and why others disagree can help us expand our own thinking and balance out the errors each person tends to make. Sometimes this can be as simple as averaging out both sides of an argument; if two people are arguing over how much something used to cost, chances are that the true answer is somewhere in between. Quick and easy, sure – but it brings results.

This can be a useful principle even if you’re by yourself. One study asked volunteers to estimate the date of various events throughout history. After making an initial guess, they were asked to consider reasons they might have been wrong – and then make a second guess. These second guesses were more accurate than the first; averaging out the two produced a number even more accurate than either guess! Sometimes, the new perspectives that can help balance you out are your own.

That said, when trying to draw upon the wisdom of a crowd, it’s important to remember that you want a range of diverse opinions. If you only ask people with the same biases as you, you aren’t achieving a more balanced estimate. Good organizations bring together people with a range of perspectives to raise alternate ideas and produce better decisions. Think about Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet, which was deliberately filled with people who disagreed with each other. It takes courage to invite such dissent, but the end result is better decision-making.

Exaggerated confidence isn’t trustworthy; ability is what earns trust.

People at the very top of their fields are rarely lacking in self-confidence. Think of global sports superstars like Michael Jordan and Cristiano Ronaldo – they seem larger-than-life, so confident in their abilities that it comes as a surprise when they fail. And this seems like an enviable trait. Who wouldn’t want to possess such supreme confidence?

But be careful about trying to mimic their behaviors. Remember: Usain Bolt doesn’t run fast because he’s bursting with confidence – he’s confident because he can run ridiculously fast. Confidence can impress others, but it has to be backed by something.

Of course, pure confidence can inspire trust. Imagine you’re explaining a concept to someone. The person listening to you is completely unfamiliar with the subject; all he has to go on is your word. In a scenario like this, confidence does make a difference. In fact, research shows that, all else being equal, expressing confidence increases perceived credibility.

But that only goes so far. Anyone can fake self-confidence, and many do. We even have words for those who fake confidence without backing it up: con artists and scammers. Think of a salesperson trying to pass off fake goods as legit, or unprepared students trying to bluff their way through an oral presentation. The moment you start digging into the substance of whatever they’re talking about, their credibility collapses and they become untrustworthy. In the long run, confidence means nothing if it has no basis in reality.

That’s not to say you should be overly critical or pessimistic. The middle path is to communicate honestly about what you don’t know, drawing upon your experience and ability to convey credible and well-calibrated information. One study looked at which analysts were most trustworthy when it came to predicting the outcome of games. Analysts who projected false certainty were viewed as trustworthy – but so were those who said they weren’t sure. The most credible were those who were able to give probabilities along the lines of “one team has a 65 percent chance of winning,” which displayed both their uncertainty and a level of deeper knowledge. It’s this kind of well-deserved confidence that truly resonates in the long run.

For confident leadership, set clear standards and be open to new information.

Perhaps no area of life is more closely linked with confidence than leadership. A leader without confidence isn’t a leader at all; if you don’t believe in your own ability, you’ll struggle to make decisions and earn the respect of the people you’re leading. So can a leader carefully calibrate her confidence?

The answer lies not in putting forward a false front but in being open to information and aware of what you don’t know. Clarity is essential, both for yourself and your team.

Vague and uncertain standards can lead to inaccurate self-images because everyone has different personal experiences. If you ask a person if he’s a good driver, he’ll likely answer yes; everyone has their own idea of what “good driving” is. However, if you ask people to rate their ability to parallel park, merge into traffic, navigate highways, and other specific skills, you’ll get a more complete analysis of their driving abilities.

This is especially important in leadership contexts since a common source of conflict in a team setting is when people have different ideas of what’s needed. Set clear, measurable standards, and both leaders and team members will have a more accurate idea of where they stand. For example, a teacher who shows her students examples of well-written papers will get fewer complaints about grading, as both sides understand what level of work is expected.

That said, setting clear goals isn’t enough. Leaders also have to make sure they’re receiving all the available information – not just the things they want to hear. It can be easy for authority figures to fall into the trap of only accepting adulation, while ignoring the news that doesn’t align with the outcomes they desire. Indeed, research shows that people naturally apply different levels of scrutiny to news depending on whether it aligns with what they want to hear or not. If you’re looking for proof that you made a good decision and the first piece of evidence you find supports that, then great! No need to look any further, right?

But that doesn’t make for effective leadership. Good leaders build organizations where people can raise questions and concerns, even if they go against what leadership originally believed. It’s difficult to remain truly open to all information, but remember: the more information you have, the more perfect your confidence will be.

Confidence is a powerful tool, but it has to be deserved. When making decisions, don’t forget to consider a wide range of possibilities so you’re better informed and can more accurately calibrate your confidence moving forward. False bravado will be exposed quickly, while true self-confidence comes from knowing what you don’t know.

Actionable advice:

Make a probability forecast.

Next time you have a big project or long-term goal, write out your estimate of how likely you are to complete the task in a number of different time frames. Chances are, this will give you a better idea of how long it’ll really take. When you’re done, you can look back on your original forecast and get a better idea of whether you tend to over- or underestimate things and why.

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