Psychologist demolishes the idea of confidence being valuable

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/23/business/opinion-low-confidence-success/

Anyone else read that and feel like it's finally confirmed what you've felt your entire life even though nobody else agrees with you? I did.

I have always felt that confidence by itself is worthless at best - or more likely, detrimental. Confidence is a thing that should grow naturally from competence, not a facade to be propped up in place of it. To suggest that confidence will lead to competence is putting the cart before the horse with the brakes on.

Why do all the wrong women wear Spandex?

I'm confident that is all wrong.

914Driver wrote: Why do all the wrong women wear Spandex?

^Hahaha exactly

I was also caught a bit of the Family Feud gameshow that said that their average American survey-taker thinks they are a 10/10 dancer. I have yet to see a chubby, pasty American move like Michael Jackson

All I read is that the author can't tell the difference between confidence and arrogance.

Humility has more to do arrogance than confidence.

Plus, my experience recently is more about lack of confidence, where people think they can't do something, so they don't try.

IMHO, that's the core about Henry's statement- if you know you can't, you are right.

Our field needs the unusual to try- so that we have more alternate solutions to the many problems that we face.

The arrogant ones know that their solution is "right". That's bad.

Agree that confidence and humility are more independent than the article seems to imply. A lack of confidence does not imply lots of humility nor the other way around. Alfa seems to have gotten it right in that arrogance and humility are the two that are intertwined. Arrogance can be dangerous where confidence results in a willingness to try.

Confidence without competence, as stated in the article, is delusion and that is easier to weed out in a business setting than arrogance. It is the arrogant people who are dangerous when they are in charge. The delusional have a low probability of ever being in charge of anything to mess it up.

True confidence grows from competence. He's confused that with the false confidence that comes from being backed by a house of cards and putting a brave face on it, or maybe not: that's a component of being a psychopath.

Humility is not being a horse's ass about what that competence and confidence bring to someone. Yeah, some folks have a problem with that, met more than a few in my time.

There were/are psychopaths who projected confidence, he used Gordon Gecko, a fictional character. He'd have been better off to have used Bernie Madoff or even Al Parish as a real life example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Parish

He's trying to suggest a change in something that's been around since the dawn of time, summed up thus by my dad many years ago: 'there's a sucker born every minute and two to take him'. It takes getting bit a time or two for the sucker to acquire knowledge, as in: 'if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is'. I wish the author good luck with that; some people will never learn.

Who needs humility when you've got ability?

The author does not have enough language skills to know the difference between "Arrogance" and "Confidence". They are NOT interchangeable.

People who are confident make decisions and inspire others to act under their umbrella of confidence and make their own decisions. We call them leaders.

To the writer of the article, it could be agreed that there is a fine line between confident and arrogant; crossing it leads to Hubris and the inevitable downfall. To quote Robert Lutz on his own philosophy of confidence: "Often Wrong, Never Uncertain!" Mr Lutz avoids arrogance by not taking himself too seriously and yet being confident in his actions.

That guy is a flake.

NOHOME wrote: To the writer of the article, it could be agreed that there is a fine line between confident and arrogant; crossing it leads to Hubris and the inevitable downfall. To quote Robert Lutz on his own philosophy of confidence: "Often Wrong, Never Uncertain!" Mr Lutz avoids arrogance by not taking himself too seriously and yet being confident in his actions.

The problem there is that the line between confidence/knowing what you are talking about and arrogance is usually drawn by the viewer, and as such, can vary wildly depending on who's listening. Many people do consider Lutz to be arrogant in the extreme, and yet many people find him to simply know what he's talking about and confident.

Cockiness or arrogance are not confidence.

Sometimes it takes a leap of faith to get something off the ground, on that subject somewhere or other I read that the most successful entrepreneurs pretty much have to have, basically, psychotic tendencies (including a very persuasive/cunning personality and the willingness to fail even if it harms others) in order to get their dreams off the ground. As with anything there are examples all over the spectrum.

One story on the subject. It discusses CEO's but the mechanism is basically the same: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/06/14/why-some-psychopaths-make-great-ceos/

Another: http://elitedaily.com/money/entrepreneurship/4-things-psychopaths-can-teach-success/744657/

Whether or not you are competent, good luck ever getting ahead without confidence.