Overconfidence is a Hell of a Drug
Executive Summary
Confidence is a desirable trait in a leader; overconfidence is not. Unfortunately, both confidence and overconfidence are expressed in the same behaviors. As a result, we have a tendency to associate both confidence and overconfidence with leadership potential. When making leadership selection decisions — hiring a new manager or selecting candidates for promotion, for example — we are unconsciously influenced by the behavioral expressions of both confidence and overconfidence. HR professionals should implement and enforce the use of structured assessment and selection procedures to minimize the influence of overconfidence on decision-makers.
Amy is a confident software engineering manager. She’s very good at what she does and it comes across in her demeanor. Most of the time, she’s self-assured, calm, and has no trouble expressing her opinions. People really like working for Amy, partly because she makes them feel more confident, too.
Her colleague, Kristina, on the other hand, is overconfident. She has a high opinion of her knowledge and abilities, but that opinion is off-the-mark. Like Amy, she’s usually self-assured, calm, and good at expressing her thoughts. Unlike Amy, though, people really don’t like working for her. She has a tendency to promise customers more than she can realistically deliver, which leaves her team constantly over-committed.
Confident people like Amy tend to make effective leaders because they have an accurate sense of their own knowledge and competence. Overconfident people like Kristina, on the other hand, tend to make lousy leaders because they have an exaggerated opinion of themselves that leads them astray.
Kristina, for example, believes she’s the best software engineering manager in her company. In reality, she’s in the bottom third. She also believes that she has amazing technical chops, but her technical skills are mediocre. Finally, she has a tendency to express a very high level of certainty in her own opinions and ideas even when the evidence suggests otherwise.
Overconfident leaders tend to make poor decisions because they believe themselves (and their organizations) to be more capable than they actually are. Their inflated self-judgment also leads them to take unjustified risks when they should be more conservative and to “stick to their guns” when a more flexible approach is called for.
We all want to select confident, but not overconfident, leaders. The problem is that, at first glance, confidence and overconfidence look exactly the same. Both confident and overconfident people clearly express their opinions, remain calm, and convey a general air of self-assuredness. We have a tendency to perceive these behaviors as signals of confidence and associate them with leadership potential.
Researchers from the University of Amsterdam Business School conducted a series of studies to explore these issues. In the first study, they asked HR consultants to rate the leadership potential of 76 assessment center candidates. As the researchers expected, the HR consultants consistently recommended hiring overconfident candidates.
Four subsequent studies reinforced that finding and also demonstrated a few more crucial points. First, candidates who demonstrated confident behaviors were rated as having higher leadership potential regardless of their level of competence. In other words, the link between confidence and leadership potential held up even when the candidates demonstrated low levels of competence.
Secondly, raters were unable to distinguish between confidence and overconfidence. Justified confidence and unjustified overconfidence seems to “look” identical to decision-makers. When a candidate expresses confidence, we unconsciously and involuntarily perceive them to have leadership potential, regardless of whether that confidence is warranted or not.
Takeaways for the HR Professional
This research has obvious implications for every personnel-related decision we make regarding leadership selection, from interviewing external candidates for leadership positions to selecting internal employees for promotions or leadership development programs.
Our tendency to associate confidence with leadership potential is automatic and unconscious, so it’s not reasonable to expect decision-makers to be able to simply switch it off. Instead, we should implement and reinforce the use of objective assessment and selection techniques that minimize the influence of overconfidence on our decisions.
The more we allow ourselves — and the people we support — to rely on our “guts” or intuition to make people-related decisions, the more likely we are to be influenced by the unconscious influence of overconfidence. Structured interviews, validated assessments, and pre-determined selection criteria will go a long way toward minimizing the misleading influence of overconfidence on our personnel decisions.
Source
Ronay, R., Oostrom, J. K., Lehmann-Willenbrock, N., Mayoral, S., & Rusch, H. (2019). Playing the Trump Card: Why We Select Overconfident Leaders and Why it Matters. The Leadership Quarterly.
