Engineering Confidence

As a junior engineer, I had a sad realization from the following thought experiment. Which engineer do you think will have more impact (drop a comment below):

1. An engineer with above-average confidence and average skills

2. An engineer with above-average skills and average confidence

From my experience, the confident engineer with average skills performs better. Their confidence opens up many opportunities through influence. Even if you aren’t a tech lead, influence is necessary to grow your career. And having confidence is a key part of influence.

Of course, it’s best to have both confidence and the ability to back it up. I’m not saying skills aren’t important, but they only matter to a certain extent in most domains. Confidence has disproportionate impact in collaborative environments. So, unless you’re a solopreneur, you should care about this soft skill.

I used to think that confidence that accurately matches your abilities was best. Given the above, I now think a slight bias towards overconfidence is better. It helps you influence others and gives you opportunities to grow outside the comfort zone of your abilities.

Confidence is just an assessment of your abilities. It’s a prediction of future results. Proving your abilities with past results will build your confidence. This is the long-term solution.

However, this is much slower than it needs to be. What is even better is to have confidence before you have the ability. A little bit of overconfidence will push you out of your comfort zone so you can grow. To do this, it’s helpful to fake it until you make it.

You’ll be surprised at how well this works. People rarely know how you feel just by looking at you. Unless you have some obvious nervous body language, people will assume you’re not anxious. So, if you just force yourself to do what a confident person would, people will tend to go with it.

For example, I give speeches at a public speaking club called Toastmasters. Everyone in the audience writes anonymous feedback for the speakers. I feel nervous whenever I give a speech, yet the feedback often says delivery and confidence are my strong points. Little do they know, I’m faking it until I make it.

Years ago, I stumbled upon this TED talk about body language. The research presented in it claims that just as your thoughts shape your body language, the opposite is also true. Your body language can shape your thoughts.

Therefore, one research-backed tip to build confidence is to control your body language. If you catch me before a big speech, you’ll find me standing with my arms wide somewhere private because of this.

Recommend watching the talk, it’s interesting and can change how you think about body language.

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The last thing I’d like to leave you with is that confidence is a muscle. Just as you can build it, you can also easily lose it.

During the pandemic, I got used to only speaking to people through video calls. When I finally gave a speech in front of a live audience, I realized that I had lost some of my confidence.

So if you see the value of confidence, never stop proving to yourself that you can do hard things.

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Thanks for reading,
Ryan Peterman