Confidence,
like art, never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to
all the questions.
Kept wondering why “Confidence" is considered to be one of the most important factors in the game of life till I realized that we are oblivious to the fact that confidence is one of the heuristics we use to judge people. We come across different kinds of people in our day-day life and we are constantly expected to respond to various stimuli. We have no choice but to adapt to the situation by first assessing the situation using some heuristics and then choose our response.
Let’s say, we go to a party and meet some people. Invariably, we end up meeting some super confident individuals and our response/judgement to that at a subconscious level would be:
- Knowledgeable hence Genuine respect
for the person or
- Get Intimidated
We live in such
a competitive world that we have almost forgotten the virtue
called reverence. It is becoming increasingly difficult to accept that
somebody is more knowledgeable than you. But you judge somebody using a
heuristic called “Confidence”. It is important to know that due to limitations in
our cognitive capabilities, we are subject to illusion of confidence. What it
means is that we tend to assume that somebody is knowledgeable if they
sound confident. Most of often we would have judged candidates in an
interview based on their confidence only to realize that there is a vast
difference in projected capabilities versus actual.
It is very
important that one does not fall prey to the illusion of confidence. If
you want to handle the illusion of confidence, here is a simple trick.
First of all,
drop all you belief systems and pre-existing internal knowledge that you are
likely form based on the stimuli and just increase your sensory acuity. Sensory
acuity involves the ability to make refined sensory observations and this can
happen if one can reduce or drop all preconceived notion/ pre-existing internal
knowledge. Let me elaborate the difference between power of sensory acuity versus how we lose out
on valuable information because of preexisting filters. Ken Norris, a desert
biologist, used his graduate students to observe a desert lizard. While Norris has 6 pages of observation, his
students had just one page. This was largely due to their preexisting
knowledge. So what happens when you increase your sensory acuity? Just based on
adjusting Physiology ( changing body language)or eye accessing
cues, one can access truthfulness or congruence.
The second
approach is to pose some simple unassuming questions on the same topic. Usually
people who sounds confident without enough subject matter will get stuck at
some point and will be exposed.
The next time
you meet a super confident person do not fall for the illusion of confidence.
Take your time,observe and then judge them, confidently!!!
