Confidence is a preference for the...

Why confidence isn't always what it seems.

Are you quietly confident or loudly unconfident?

As someone squarely in the former camp, I admit that I hadn’t really considered things from the other side. That is until Carrie-Ann and I made it our topic of discussion in this week’s episode of How to Take the Lead.

I realised that my perception of ‘confident’ people is just as off as those who labelled me as lacking confidence when I started in my management and leadership career. When in fact my quietness was down to my introversion and said nothing about my ability to do my role.

Hearing Carrie-Ann’s experiences of how confidence can actually be an overcompensation for not knowing something, gave me cause to rethink.

And I suppose this plays to the point of my issue with the word confidence. It means different things to different people and there is no standard measure by which we can benchmark.

So my question is if none of us are quite who we seem when labelled confident or unconfident, who is driving this focus on the issue?