I’ve spent some time reflecting yesterday and I realized that. When people want you to be confident they don’t want you to be actually confident, they want you to pretend you are. It is idiotic and makes no sense, but it explains a lot of situations in which I behaved the wrong way.
confidence to me means the opposite of that. it means questioning your asssumptions, approaching things from a different angle, reflect, recalculate, asking for a second opinion. Because I’ll end up with greater confidence that my assertions are more truthful. But apparently doing all that makes people think I’m insecure. Shit!
Confidence doesn’t mean that you stand by a decision if others disagree. That’s being stubborn. If people have valid points you hadn’t considered when they try to convince you, you shouldn’t just stick to your decision. If the counterargument is just “really? are you sure?” you shouldn’t just give in. But if the counterargument is “really? did you account for X?” (and you hadn’t, and X is important), then you might suddenly want to rethink the situation.
Confidence is more like an approximation for: on a scale of 1-100, how sure are you? If your answer is 75 or higher… just say 100. If your answer is 50-75… just say 75, and highlight key things you are still very not confident about. If it’s lower than that, just say 0. “This will help you understand confidence” vs “This is generally how confidence works, the numbers might be a bit off, or the exact details aren’t right, but it gets you most of the way there.” vs “I have no idea what confidence is”.
The key is not about how confident you actually are, but how others perceive your confidence. And in that regard, different situations call for different levels of confidence. A doctor doing brain surgeon shouldn’t just go cutting through things at a 78 confidence level. But when deciding on what to have for lunch, “I dunno, tacos?” is fine even if you’re only 23 confidence that you actually want tacos.
There are jobs out there that basically exist in the 50-75 confidence range. But you have to be able to articulate your lack of confidence and propose remedies. “Are we ready for the product launch Monday?” “No, I’m still concerned that we haven’t addressed X”. Some companies are very risk averse, and if your lack of confidence in success is because of confidence in the existence of risks (which you have to be able to convey to be helpful).
You have to figure out what level of confidence youre supposed to have in a situation (accounting for negative consequences of being wrong), and then give your answer. But to further complicate things, sometimes “give your answer” means answering “are you sure?” and sometimes it means presenting yourself in a way that implies that you are sure. Social interactions are weird.