Never be fooled by the ‘confidence fakers’
“We have to hit the target! Nothing below this number is acceptable” said Amit, drawing a circle around the number ‘400’ on whiteboard. For a few seconds, all 8 people in the room looked at Amit. Some of them were trying to remember who originally wrote that number on the board (it was an intense discussion). Others were surprised by his confidence, considering he had the least context and understanding compared to everyone else in the room. That’s not only because Amit was the newest member of the team, but it was also evident during ‘the approach’ he presented to the team, who were patient despite having heard different versions of the same approach multiple times earlier.
As one of the 8 people in the room, I thought that Amit was faking his confidence. One major reason why I concluded this was because I had done the same in multiple situations. This provoked me to reflect on why do people fake confidence and why is it harmful (in case it is). So, I’ve tried to write my thoughts on related questions to understand the problem in greater depth.
Before starting, I am tending to think that misplaced confidence is different from fake confidence. Fake confidence implies some degree of deliberate ignorance about the soundness of your assertions thereby creating a gap between how you think you should act and how you actually act. Misplaced confidence, on the other side, is when your analysis is aligned with your behaviour but your analysis itself is incomplete. Keeping this in mind, let’s start exploring-
Question 1. First, let’s ask, why do people fake confidence?
Possible answer: To keep this answer simple I’ll start with this:
Willingness to fake confidence :comes from:
Expected personal benefit from projecting confidence (minus) Expected personal loss from not delivering results
This is simply understood as people who stand to gain from faking confidence without having their ‘skin in the game’ are more likely to fake confidence. This also happens because people who are weak and not clear on what they want are easy to influence by confidence which makes it easier for confidence fakers to benefit from them.
This list of confidence fakers not only includes the new recruit who expects to gain credibility and acceptance by projecting confidence, the top manager who wants to look like they genuinely want to deliver a 300% year on year growth, the recruiter who promises you that you’ll get to do everything on your job description, but it also includes you who exuberantly confirm that it’s your dream to work on each and every point of the job description.
To make it slightly more complicated most people are bad at estimating probabilities of good and bad case scenarios. To make it even more complicated, most of us don’t correctly estimate the values of good and bad case scenarios. May be this is because we’re not clear on why we want what we want, from the start. And even more interestingly, most of times, some benefits are short lived - making you feel worse after few hours (like eating junk).
Question 2. Now, is there anything wrong with faking confidence?
Possible answer: On a personal level few people might gain from faking confidence for some time (may be for long as well). I’ve not seen enough of world to comment on that. However, I’ve definitely seen what can go wrong in case you keep faking confidence, which I’ve summarised in the two points below:
- It sets a vicious cycle of decline in the system: When a situation is bad but complex to understand, presence of people who fake confidence colours the thinking of decision makers who are biased to think that situation is good. People who are critical of the system are seemed as generally negative and overly focussed on shortcomings, and steadily they start getting ignored. This makes people in power feel closer to confident and positive people thereby starting a vicious cycle further closing eyes and ears of decision makers away from the sources of problems. To simplify it — faking confidence can drive your team away from truth further and further. To quote George Orwell, “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.”
- It moves you increasingly away from yourself: This is more abstract but here’s is how I feel/think about this. If you keep getting things by faking confidence, you might travel farther than most people think you should but your fears/insecurities will continue to grow. I’ll simply say that this happens because one keep getting weak if one’s values and actions are not integrated.
Question 3: How can you spot confidence fakers?
Possible answer: Well you can start with applying the cost benefit as presented in answer to question 1. To more carefully observe if someone might be faking their confidence — my suggestion is to pay more attention to following things:
- How many things will have to be true for this statement to be true?
Try to deeply understand the details of what is being asserted — there are always hidden assumptions and assertions which should be questioned. If you don’t have sufficient understanding, seek from outside sources preferably from those who have an opposing stance. - How many things have we done in the past?
First things to be questioned should be the ones which were asserted in the past but not done. What is different this time which was not done earlier? Also question the underlying assumption behind why this different action will work and what can make it not work? - How many “general” and “non-commital” words are being used?
Those faking confidence tend to use ‘general’ sounding vocabulary. To give you an example — “This time, we’re going to provide more value to our customers” or equally hazy “We are making our sales calls more personalised to improve conversion”. The receiver might forget to question, considering they ‘readily believe’ that ‘providing more value’ and ‘personalising’ are the things that work and are good. But ‘how will that be achieved’, ‘why have we not done it till now’, ‘have we done some experiments in this regard’, or ‘what are the implementation challenges’ are the details that should not remain hidden.
Question 4: When is it allowed to fake confidence?
Possible answer: I’ll say it is allowed when you have a ‘skin in the game’ which means that you stand to lose when you break their trust. There are less things that are bad with the confidence of an entrepreneur, projected towards their investor, who’s willing to work towards their vision and are betting their time and money on it. However, it’s not the same case when they bluff an employee and don’t stand to loose from it.
I started this note by saying that leadership is not about faking confidence. I’ve shared my thoughts on why people do it, how can it harm, and how to identify it. To conclude, I’ll say that a culture of faking confidence is really harmful for any individual/society/organisation/institution as it takes them away from truth. What promotes the culture of faking confidence is authority without accountability, whereas responsibility and accountability are good antidotes to it.
Please share your suggestions/remarks.
Cheers!
