The Confidence Trap

00:00:01: Imagine you're about to go into a job interview.

00:00:06: Would you rather wish for more competence or confidence?

00:00:23: Welcome back!

00:00:25: Today we are looking at how easy it is, To fall in the confidence trap.

00:00:30: It catches us mostly In situations when Confidence isn't grounded in competence.

00:00:43: The first direction is that we fall for the confidence of other people.

00:00:49: And it's easy, Confidence has a strong attractive pull.

00:00:54: It gets us to trust others and We easily believe That their display Of confidence matches Their competence.

00:01:02: Today this trap seems To get bigger in many ways With the rise of social media.

00:01:12: Most often we see the loudest and best self-marketeers reach people, And they aren't necessarily the most competent ones.

00:01:21: The attention economy amplifies this.

00:01:24: Platforms like Instagram are designed to reward confident performance... ...and many influencers have mastered the art of looking like experts without being one.

00:01:36: It's marketing not expertise!

00:01:39: With shrinking attention spans We're rarely stopping to question any of it, because following confident people is natural human behavior.

00:01:50: This how we grow up and learn – It's How We Survive!

00:01:54: We follow our parents or teachers And other people who seem more experienced and knowledged than us.

00:02:01: We trust them & naturally associate confidence with competence.

00:02:06: Hearing an expert talk Following a leader strategy or the advice of a doctor, requires us to trust him.

00:02:15: Imagine you are seeing two doctors for treatment?

00:02:18: Dr A says... So I could prescribe something.

00:02:22: it's fairly new and quite talked about —I don't have much experience with that yet— but tests apparently show good results for conditions like yours so i think you should try it!

00:02:33: Next you speak with Dr B… I'm going to prescribe your newer medication.

00:02:38: It's been called a breakthrough in many publications.

00:02:42: I haven't prescribed it many times yet, but the clinical results for your condition are strong.

00:02:47: So i'm going to prescribe it for two weeks.

00:02:50: Which doctors advice would you follow?

00:02:54: Now i am pretty confident most of you will pick Dr B. The interesting thing is they basically told you the same Same medication They talk about the same test result and they have the same level of experience prescribing it.

00:03:12: The difference is how they presented it, It's absolutely reasonable to look for confidence in people we want to trust but We're living in a world that not only rewards grounded Confidence!

00:03:26: It has somehow evolved To reward the simple display Of even more.

00:03:31: And if you Look at where That kind overconfidence Is playing out right now Look at the race for AI technology.

00:03:39: A technology built in just a few years, that is definitely extraordinary but the confidence we can handle all its implications while racing.

00:03:51: to scale it and use it at large Is certainly worth questioning because The key challenge of us are We never know how much And what we don't know.

00:04:03: unless we stay open To learning and reflection We will fall into the trap from other direction, meaning that we are falling for our own confidence.

00:04:14: So let me tell you about my most painful experience of falling in to this trap.

00:04:20: A couple years ago My husband decided That just going uphill with mountain bikes and back down on regular routes was a bit boring.

00:04:30: He is certainly adventurous type And from time to time, I do enjoy a bit of adrenaline myself.

00:04:37: Not as much as him but in this case i wasn't really given a choice.

00:04:42: he surprised me with the gift over one-day training course With a downhill riding professional and He advertised it quite well To me by saying It would generally give Me more confidence and security when I learned these techniques.

00:04:57: So just a couple of days later we had The Training!

00:05:02: We were given all the techniques practiced on a stand where the bike was hanging in the air so you could feel every action and how it influenced its movement.

00:05:14: we learned,and I built just enough confidence to go on a beginner trail In The Afternoon.

00:05:20: Now for those of You unfamiliar with downhill trails They are designed To have fun With many turns some steep areas For speed And bumps to make It jump A bit And you don't sit while riding, but just stand to fully control the bike.

00:05:36: The afternoon trail turned out a lot of fun!

00:05:39: The trainer let us ride it in parts so he could still observe and correct us.

00:05:45: My initial fear got less... ...and I think my husband was already quietly celebrating his chance at picking up this new hobby together.

00:05:55: So next?

00:05:56: He booked our trip to Saalbach.

00:05:58: It's quite well-known skiing area in Austria and it offers trail riding in summer.

00:06:04: Like the skiing slopes, the trails are color-coded for different experience levels.

00:06:10: Now I honestly don't remember seeing a code for the trail which he took me on And i'm sure that after what happened... ...I will also never get to know this.

00:06:20: But It Took Me Only Five Turns On That Trail For A Pretty Painful Lesson In Overconfidence.

00:06:27: What Happened To Me Actually Has A Name.

00:06:30: It's called the Dunning-Kruger effect.

00:06:33: I went from someone with zero knowledge about trail riding to someone with a little knowledge and some practice, which made me confident that i could ride that trail.

00:06:43: The problem?

00:06:45: My confidence clearly didn't match my skill level.

00:06:48: in that scenario And despite some recent debate on the research of David Dunning & Justin Kruger About how strong they presented actually is Their overall observation holds.

00:07:02: When we know zero, we feel fine admitting it.

00:07:05: We're deliberately cautious and willing to learn.

00:07:09: Learning then builds our confidence!

00:07:12: We start seeing moments of success through understanding applying new knowledge And connecting the dots.

00:07:18: What Dunning & Kruger described is that soon something interesting happens.

00:07:23: Our confidence shoots up very quickly.

00:07:26: It usually does so much faster than our actual skill.

00:07:30: We start feeling like we've got it and trust ourselves too much, And that was me right there on the steep trail in Austria.

00:07:40: So The first moment where should be careful of not becoming overconfident is when were are beginner mode.

00:07:47: But today confidence being rewarded has a significant impact.

00:07:52: how children develop Social media and its self-performance focus has especially impacted the younger generation in ways that amplify the simple display of confidence.

00:08:05: It is rewarded with attention, likes followers visibility.

00:08:10: The generation that grew up entirely inside this system didn't choose it but they were definitely shaped by it.

00:08:17: They learned very early on.

00:08:19: how you present yourself often matters more than what sits behind And it's certainly not their fault because... ...it is the environment that previous generations handed them.

00:08:31: So, It shouldn't come as a surprise That the gap between performed confidence and grounded confidence Is getting wider these days.

00:08:40: How we rewarded matters Performance over substance Leads people away from path that actually builds it.

00:08:48: Learning in ability to see our own fallibility our key countermeasures against overconfidence, not just for young people but all of us.

00:08:59: Because the trap catches us as much when we progress and become experts with strong skills!

00:09:07: The more we establish ourselves in positions that signal expertise or experience –the easier to get pulled out from.

00:09:15: a learning path helped us get there.

00:09:18: We've built our authority, and that comes along with recognition and trust.

00:09:23: People see our positioning as validated And the higher we climb The easier it becomes to lose sight of things we don't know!

00:09:33: The positioning easily creates an environment where people rarely question our thinking & decision-making... ...and this creates our blind spots.

00:09:43: Our successors equally contribute over confidence A track record and other people believing in it rarely produce self-doubts.

00:09:53: That's when many people start believing that being great is a certain domain makes them also an expert in related areas.

00:10:01: Your husband just fixed the toaster.

00:10:04: Well, maybe next time you'll find him fixing your washing machine.

00:10:09: Or think about The Fitness Influencer who built following with workout routines.

00:10:16: They clearly know what they're doing and the results are strong.

00:10:20: One day, they start giving nutrition advice.

00:10:23: Of course fitness & nutrition go hand in hand And though they're not nutrition experts They hold some good knowledge.

00:10:30: Then come supplement recommendations.

00:10:34: Next...they started talking about hormone levels and blood work as if that had been to medical school.

00:10:41: Their audience doesn't question it Because of their authority.

00:10:44: built into one area simply gets carried over.

00:10:49: Ego and confidence grow with recognition, And together they make it very hard to stop and say actually I don't know enough about this.

00:11:00: in business the area where i've seen This most is when leaders are being asked To evaluate other people?

00:11:09: Throughout my career kept asking myself what makes them so sure They're good at this.

00:11:14: The reasoning I came across most.

00:11:17: They have established themselves as experts, then became managers so they can obviously work with others.

00:11:24: Which means...they must also know how to meet people!

00:11:27: The reality?

00:11:29: After having sat in hundreds of interviews evaluation meetings and eventually training leaders on How To Assess Other People Carefully my observation is rather Without training and experience, most of us tend to be pretty bad at knowing how to read other people.

00:11:47: And the reason is simple – humans are complex!

00:11:52: And humans interacting with other humans is even more complex.

00:11:57: Our predictability is pretty low because we aren't robots.

00:12:01: The number of variables influencing our performance is also very high.

00:12:06: Just think about your good-and-bad days as a workforce and the many things that can lead to one or the other.

00:12:15: When we get a new job, many variables change – New colleagues A new boss New processes To learn Maybe you relocate And have whole life set up.

00:12:26: Our capabilities are same But let just one of those variables be problematic.

00:12:32: Things shift easily.

00:12:34: So what does recruiting usually look like?

00:12:37: We interview people about their past experience, their achievements and goals.

00:12:43: And we try to capture their motivation in personality.

00:12:46: then we try match all of this information with the job or work environment.

00:12:51: That's nothing else than running a predictability assessment on future outcomes.

00:12:56: It comes with a lot influencing factors.

00:13:00: So when you decide to hire someone?

00:13:02: You are simply placing bed on them.

00:13:05: Now.

00:13:05: consider that the time spent in interviews is also very limited and The information quality strongly depends on the practices and capabilities of the interviewers.

00:13:18: Wouldn't you agree?

00:13:19: That recruiting should be a well-established process, And that any person involved In the assessment Should have gone through substantial training before they take part in hiring decisions.

00:13:32: Such a training doesn't just focus on how to assess personality, motivation and capabilities but also in how not let our own thinking with all its mental shortcuts influence our evaluation.

00:13:48: I have given many such training sessions the hard truth.

00:13:52: most leaders didn't get them before they held their responsibility With which they have done it so far, They are genuinely thankful and willing to learn more.

00:14:08: Because being able to capture another person To really see them Understand what drives them And which capabilities they have Is absolutely essential to lead them well.

00:14:21: This is where I want you to introduce Daniel Kahneman.

00:14:25: Kahnemen spent decades studying how we make decisions.

00:14:30: One of the most useful things he gave us is a distinction between what we called system one and system two thinking.

00:14:39: Imagine having to decision-making engines in your brain, System one as fast.

00:14:45: it's automatic.

00:14:46: It's the part that decides within seconds whether you trust someone or not.

00:14:52: System too this rather slow.

00:14:55: We have to consciously activated an.

00:14:57: it requires effort energy.

00:15:00: In an interview, system two would be the part that stops you and asks is what I'm feeling really about this person?

00:15:08: or Is it because they remind me of someone?

00:15:11: Do i think highly of them because their actual capabilities Or Because They went to The same university.

00:15:19: Is It Rather Their Confidence That Speaks To Me or Their Competence?

00:15:25: System one is our autopilot Shifting gears following our everyday route to work, we can trust it for that.

00:15:34: But high-stakes situations require system two thinking and I'm sure you agree that hiring decisions are high stakes.

00:15:43: but when we're tired under pressure or simply used doing things a certain way We defaulted to System One.

00:15:51: That's where recruiting processes become vulnerable.

00:15:55: Even when there are multiple interviewers and very clear evaluation criteria, system one thinking can still impact our decisions.

00:16:05: It's still influences how we interpret answers—how we rate what we hear which candidate remember most at the end of day.

00:16:13: So Clear & Well Designed establish processes help but they don't necessarily keep people from running on autopilot.

00:16:23: If we're not trained to notice when it's on, We tend make decisions based on system one instead of system two thinking.

00:16:32: Kahneman called this the illusion of validity.

00:16:36: Feeling sure about a judgment is NOT THE SAME as being right about it.

00:16:41: His research showed that even experienced evaluators were giving poor predictions And Even When They Were Shown That Their Predictions Were Wrong It didn't change how confident they felt about the next candidate.

00:16:56: That's The Trap!

00:16:57: We have done things in certain ways, we feel confident it is working and when it doesn't... ...we find other reasons to be the cause.

00:17:07: When someone turns out to be a wrong hire….

00:17:10: …it's easy not question our decision-making and finding excuses like They've just sold themselves really well –the role evolved–It wasn't what were originally hired for And a very typical one, they just didn't fit the culture.

00:17:27: So what does it actually look like when our system-one thinking is running the show?

00:17:33: In judging other people its shows up as biases.

00:17:37: Biases are mental shortcuts that happen subconsciously.

00:17:42: They get us to develop certain expectations and attribute traits & behaviors to people without even realizing them.

00:17:51: Let me give you few examples Some of them you've probably heard off.

00:17:56: The halo effect is one of the most common biases.

00:18:00: when someone carries a positive attribute like attractiveness or ambition, it colors how we see them entirely.

00:18:09: One positive quality becomes a filter for everything else.

00:18:14: Then there's confirmation bias meaning once we formed an impression We start looking for evidence that confirms it.

00:18:22: Information that contradicts our judgment gets overlooked or even explained away.

00:18:29: We also get influenced by similarity bias as we tend to favor people who are like us, same educational background, the same sense of humor and this one is particularly tricky because it often gets translated into cultural fit.

00:18:49: To fall for biases is also human.

00:18:53: And by the way, AI is not necessarily the solution.

00:18:57: Algorithms carry biases from their training data forward so they don't remove human bias but can actually scale it.

00:19:06: Amazon learned this the hard way.

00:19:08: They built an AI hiring tool which was trained on ten years of CVData.

00:19:13: Most these series came form men.

00:19:16: The outcome is fairly obvious.

00:19:20: So in leadership When our decisions shape other people's careers and lives, being unaware of biases is not acceptable.

00:19:31: I've put together a free resource called The Leader's Bias Cheat-Cheat.

00:19:36: It covers twelve of the most common biases that affect how we make decisions And How We Judge Other People.

00:19:44: You can find link in show notes.

00:19:46: Its definitely good tool to stay aware But awareness alone won't keep us from falling into the trap.

00:19:55: And I'm also not saying we shouldn't trust our confidence, a leader who can decide or questions every call isn't leading anyone.

00:20:04: The risk lies in confidence without humility and staying open to being wrong is what Adam Grant calls confident humility.

00:20:15: for those that don't know him yet Adam Grant is best-selling author and organizational psychologist at Wharton.

00:20:23: In his book, Think Again.

00:20:25: he says that most people think confidence and humility work like a seesaw more of one means less of the other And he explains why?

00:20:35: That's wrong.

00:20:37: We can have both at the same time.

00:20:39: Confidence is how much we believe and trust in our capabilities.

00:20:44: Humility is how much we recognize that we're human, and that we all have blind spots.

00:20:50: So we can be confident in our ability to learn and grow... ...and still be honest about the things we don't know yet.

00:20:58: Grant also calls this having a scientist's mindset.

00:21:03: because scientists don't start with a conclusion….

00:21:07: …and then go look for proof!

00:21:09: They start with question or hypothesis.

00:21:14: and counter-evidence to test it.

00:21:17: Then they use the results to update their thinking, And what drives a scientist's mindset?

00:21:24: Curiosity!

00:21:26: So when we reward certainty & confidence too much It reduces our curiosity and drives our ego To create blind spots.

00:21:36: Because eventually We tie our identity to our thinking... ...and that gets us to become less open to being wrong.

00:21:45: We also lose our willingness to keep learning, which eventually includes interest in the perspectives and ideas of other people.

00:21:56: So in practice staying open to being wrong means awareness that our track record doesn't make us the expert in every situation.

00:22:06: It also means asking ourselves And others what could I be missing when it comes to judging?

00:22:14: Other People?

00:22:15: It is this balance of confidence and humility paired with genuine curiosity about people that separates an, I can read People in Seconds kind-of leader from the one who knows their biases.

00:22:31: When we are open to being wrong We stay curious And keep learning!

00:22:37: People also tend to trust those leaders more Who were open About their limitations because such leaders shape an environment where employees feel invited to present their ideas, to ask questions and give different perspectives.

00:22:53: And curiosity is not only the foundation of learning but it's essential for innovation.

00:23:01: Workplaces that embrace this attract a kind.

00:23:04: people who seek leaders that pave way for them grow instead continuously showing they're the smartest person in room.

00:23:14: Remember the famous quote by Steve Jobs?

00:23:28: This is why I recommend to anyone who deeply identifies as an expert or someone primarily driven Because when being the smartest person in the room is part of your identity, others' ideas thinking and competence can eventually feel like a threat.

00:23:56: And instead of protecting outcomes and development such leaders tend to protect their identity.

00:24:04: They don't hire people who could grow smarter than them.

00:24:07: they Don't focus on getting others to perform there best.

00:24:12: So let geniuses be geniuses and experts be experts.

00:24:17: Don't turn them into leaders, and expect to produce more

00:24:22: geniuses.".

00:24:25: Now I really love James Bond movies!

00:24:30: Who doesn't like a hero willing fight the villains of world?

00:24:34: And producing this episode reminded me of scene from Casino Royale.

00:24:40: Bond had acted recklessly trusting his own judgement.

00:24:44: instead following and M, played by the wonderful Dame Judi Dench confronts him.

00:24:51: Given his overconfidence she extends a warning to him by saying arrogance and self-awareness seldom go hand in hand.

00:25:02: Practicing self awareness and balancing confidence with humility that's what keeps us grounded.

00:25:10: In Friday's reflection episode.

00:25:12: I will share some great ways to do this.

00:25:17: If you don't wanna miss it and are not following the podcast yet, hit that subscribe button to get notified when its live.

00:25:25: Now for those of you who're still curious about what happened in my downhill career….

00:25:31: Well I left on that mountain in Austria!

00:25:35: Despite my husband's hope that buying all kinds of protective gear after my crash would get me to return... ...I decided this hobby wasn't for me.

00:25:46: But there surely is always something to discover and learn.

00:25:52: And when it comes leadership, being able really understand other people There's one thing we could all use a bit more of curiosity.

00:26:03: So stay curious Stay tuned.

00:26:06: Thanks for tuning into the new work playbook Where Work Is Better Because People Matter.