I shared this with a group of product managers at Facebook. A few suggested it might be worth sharing publicly, so here you go:

The topic of self-confidence comes up a fair amount in discussions with/about product managers. In my opinion, it isn’t super productive to focus on confidence as a goal in and of itself. Instead, I see confidence as a by-product of two more important skills: self-awareness and a growth mindset.

Self-awareness is table stakes.

Self-awareness is the ability to be not just brutally honest with yourself, but to be accurate in that brutal honesty, to accurately assess your own strengths and areas for development. …