I also agree, a confident collaborator will be more productive, take risks also propose more ideas, if they feel that what they do has a positive impact it would create a positive circle.
This is the reason of why companies and managers should try to thrive the confident of every member of the organization, the greatest ideas can come from everywhere.
Thanks for sharing such an insightful personal experience! I really connected with your perspective, especially as someone who has struggled with confidence since starting my career.
I totally agree with your point about the importance of confidence. For me, realizing that it's okay to fail and that I don’t need to be perfect has been a huge help. Embracing the idea that I can learn from my mistakes has helped me grow and feel more confident in my abilities.
At often times, I feel like the other developers in my team are quite better than me and that drags down my confidence, so I really appreciate this, and I'll start building upon this soft skill. As I am about to start a new year, it is a great time to start afresh and monitor the results.
> 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.
This is my main takeaway of the article, and one that made me stop reading and realise how much this is true.
We rarely think that someone is anxious when we meet or interact with them, and when someone closer to you confides about their anxiety, more often than not you are surprised by that. So this is most likely the case when you are feeling anxious and are speaking with others.
Rather than focusing on “confidence”, I would prefer a good communicator with average tech skills would shine better in the long run. I have definitely met engineers who are overconfident and burn bridges because their skills don’t match their bravado (I know that’s not what you’re talking about, but it is a fine line).
However, in my experience, someone with average tech skills but strong communication skills knows when and how to ask for help, knows how to help others, and is often a better teammate.
I get you. That`s my story. You have to know one thing, though. The consequence is that your skills will always have to catch up to your confidence. You will find yourself very fast just barely keeping yourself out of problems. And, as soon as you get older and shift your priorities, you may end up unable to deliver what your resume and confidence promises. You climb fast to that job that makes you feel accomplished and lose it even faster. You will recover, but your confidence won`t.
The other side is that you will keep selling yourself short for a while until someone sees you. And it always happens. At some point, someone puts you in the right place to shine because you can deliver. Delivering without struggling is a confidence on its own, much mode visible to the professional eye.
It is much easier to recover confidence than to play catch-up with your skills.
Agree with the premise, disagree with the conclusion. People can sense fake confidence and when you don’t know what you’re talking about.
A better solution is to address the things you are unconfident about, whether it’s personal insecurities, something you don’t know, or actually just something you’re overestimating. Having someone more experienced give you a unbiased opinions helps a lot with getting out of your head.
To me, confidence does not spring out of "Thin Air". It comes out of past experience, domain expertise, skillset etc or you have to be a good actor, which most of us may not be.
Hence the situation and treatment is a bit more nuanced.
It's indeed a rampant fallacy (mostly seen in management circles unfortunately) where "displayed confidence is directly equated to inherent competence" and it is likely to happen more when others in the audience are more on the clueless side else this behavior would get called out and exposed (going by, "you can fool some people some of the times, but you just can't fool all the people all the time"). I would rather fix this fallacy itself or at least make folks aware of it through coaching, bias-training etc
If you are in leadership position, and the path forward is ambiguous and you are acting with limited data, and part of the success depends on complete buy-in to get started, it may help to instill confidence in the team to move ahead knowing that we may need to pivot as more data becomes available that could change the decision.
In lateral settings, it is preferable to be honest about the situation and go in knowing what we know, and sharing the facts and the next steps to follow, along with why this is the best option. You may start with a better option this way.
While dealing with Juniors or folks looking for guidance, and sometimes hope too, so long you are ready to back up the displayed confidence with actual substance (expertise, knowledge etc) and you are just buying some time till you get there, it is not a bad option and may be beneficial in cases of 'hope' more than 'guidance'.
Having said the above, Yes, as explained in the Ted-Talk, your body language used to display confidence does matter quite a bit, but that actually should augment your competence rather than help you fake it.
I also agree, a confident collaborator will be more productive, take risks also propose more ideas, if they feel that what they do has a positive impact it would create a positive circle.
This is the reason of why companies and managers should try to thrive the confident of every member of the organization, the greatest ideas can come from everywhere.
I enjoyed this thought: Little do they know, I’m faking it until I make it. Thanks for sharing it :)
Me also
Thanks for sharing such an insightful personal experience! I really connected with your perspective, especially as someone who has struggled with confidence since starting my career.
I totally agree with your point about the importance of confidence. For me, realizing that it's okay to fail and that I don’t need to be perfect has been a huge help. Embracing the idea that I can learn from my mistakes has helped me grow and feel more confident in my abilities.
At often times, I feel like the other developers in my team are quite better than me and that drags down my confidence, so I really appreciate this, and I'll start building upon this soft skill. As I am about to start a new year, it is a great time to start afresh and monitor the results.
Loved this thoughts 🙌
> 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.
This is my main takeaway of the article, and one that made me stop reading and realise how much this is true.
We rarely think that someone is anxious when we meet or interact with them, and when someone closer to you confides about their anxiety, more often than not you are surprised by that. So this is most likely the case when you are feeling anxious and are speaking with others.
Rather than focusing on “confidence”, I would prefer a good communicator with average tech skills would shine better in the long run. I have definitely met engineers who are overconfident and burn bridges because their skills don’t match their bravado (I know that’s not what you’re talking about, but it is a fine line).
However, in my experience, someone with average tech skills but strong communication skills knows when and how to ask for help, knows how to help others, and is often a better teammate.
> I have definitely met engineers who are overconfident and burn bridges because their skills don’t match their bravado
Agreed it can be overdone. Nothing worse than someone who is confidently wrong all the time.
> strong communication skills
Definitely important to have in any strong engineer's skillset.
I get you. That`s my story. You have to know one thing, though. The consequence is that your skills will always have to catch up to your confidence. You will find yourself very fast just barely keeping yourself out of problems. And, as soon as you get older and shift your priorities, you may end up unable to deliver what your resume and confidence promises. You climb fast to that job that makes you feel accomplished and lose it even faster. You will recover, but your confidence won`t.
The other side is that you will keep selling yourself short for a while until someone sees you. And it always happens. At some point, someone puts you in the right place to shine because you can deliver. Delivering without struggling is a confidence on its own, much mode visible to the professional eye.
It is much easier to recover confidence than to play catch-up with your skills.
Agree with the premise, disagree with the conclusion. People can sense fake confidence and when you don’t know what you’re talking about.
A better solution is to address the things you are unconfident about, whether it’s personal insecurities, something you don’t know, or actually just something you’re overestimating. Having someone more experienced give you a unbiased opinions helps a lot with getting out of your head.
Let’s not fake confidence, let’s build it.
> People can sense fake confidence and when you don’t know what you’re talking about.
It depends. Not black and white if you know it or not. Assuming you aren’t completely incompetent, confidence does make a big difference short term
> A better solution is to address the things you are unconfident about
We are already aligned on this, I recommended this as the long term solution
To me, confidence does not spring out of "Thin Air". It comes out of past experience, domain expertise, skillset etc or you have to be a good actor, which most of us may not be.
Hence the situation and treatment is a bit more nuanced.
It's indeed a rampant fallacy (mostly seen in management circles unfortunately) where "displayed confidence is directly equated to inherent competence" and it is likely to happen more when others in the audience are more on the clueless side else this behavior would get called out and exposed (going by, "you can fool some people some of the times, but you just can't fool all the people all the time"). I would rather fix this fallacy itself or at least make folks aware of it through coaching, bias-training etc
If you are in leadership position, and the path forward is ambiguous and you are acting with limited data, and part of the success depends on complete buy-in to get started, it may help to instill confidence in the team to move ahead knowing that we may need to pivot as more data becomes available that could change the decision.
In lateral settings, it is preferable to be honest about the situation and go in knowing what we know, and sharing the facts and the next steps to follow, along with why this is the best option. You may start with a better option this way.
While dealing with Juniors or folks looking for guidance, and sometimes hope too, so long you are ready to back up the displayed confidence with actual substance (expertise, knowledge etc) and you are just buying some time till you get there, it is not a bad option and may be beneficial in cases of 'hope' more than 'guidance'.
Having said the above, Yes, as explained in the Ted-Talk, your body language used to display confidence does matter quite a bit, but that actually should augment your competence rather than help you fake it.
Just my 2c.