Hot take: you cannot successfully fake being confident.
Not to say it wouldnt be useful if you could.
But the same studies show that its not enough to merely fake being confident.
You have to actually believe ityou have to be honestly overconfident.
Anderson thinks the reason extremely confident people dont alienate others is that they arent faking it.
They genuinely believe they are good, and that self-belief is what comes across.
Fake confidence, he told us, just doesnt work in the same way.
[…] Most people can spot fake confidence from a mile away.
Most people can spot fake confidence from a mile away.
40% off TNW Conference!
Instead, you enable manual override, behaving in the way you think a confident person would.
(Im guilty of all of these things.)
But my take is that this sort of self-promotion rings hollow.
And this punch in of back-talk absolutelydoesmake me appear less competent.
Meanwhile, we fail to address the root of the problem.
So whats the solution?
But heres whats worked for me.
If they ever realize it.
But most of us dont go from having two left feet to being Ginger Rogers overnight.
How can I be sure Im not one of them?
The analytics-crazed field of software development has tools for doing just this.
And this, particularly in the world of tech, is important, because non-objective measures abound.
Switching into Computer Science as a sophomore, I was already behind.
Lots of my classmates had been coding since they were in utero.
And it wasnt just the lingo that intimidated me.
It was also that my classmates had such strong opinions!
I had no idea, but I was convinced it was what legit programmers did.
Which gave me the impression that was a lot further behind than I actually was.
This phenomenon is one of the most repeatable results in psychology.
But Frank*, I said, you dont know anything about Android development.
To which he replied:
And without this job, how will I ever learn?
Ive seen another common variant when my female coworkers are asked if they can complete a task.
I dont know… Ive never worked on anything like that.
Ill have to ask my manager about it.
Ive never in my life heard a male coworker say anything like that.
Its not that my male coworkers claimed they could do everything.
Its just that they usually placed the blame elsewhereon complicated software or incompetent coworkersrather than on themselves.
Maybe no one measure is perfect, but together they can paint a clearer picture.
Of course, at the end of this calibration exercise, you may learn something that you dont like.
Maybe that means you do need to spend time garnering experience or studying hard to level up your skills.
Its an actionable insight.
Ive never been happy in a job I didnt feel that I was good at.
The right move for me has always been to pivot to something that suits my strengths better.
Credit: Dale Markowitz
Overselling your abilities is unwise and feels icky.
And on the topic of talking the talk, heres another tip: dont unnecessarily undercut yourself.
But that doesnt mean you should go out of your way to kill your credibility.
My fiance once asked his dad for advice on asking out a girl who was out of his league.
His father replied:
Let her figure that out.
If you say something wrong, someone will look it up and correct you, or maybe they wont.
Just dont try this on Twitter.
I dont know how to change that.
But sometimes identifying the things you cant change gives you more time to focus on the things you might.
But what do I know?
- Frank, you know who you are.
