Costs of under-confidence

http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2015/12/costs-of-under-confidence.html

by sergeant3 • 11 years ago

92 33 11 years ago

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arbitrage• 11 years ago

I don't like the tone of the opening anecdote

Had Linda been more confident, we'd have won.

It appears that Linda kept being right. Regardless, the captain kept not choosing her answers. Perhaps being a poor captain led to the team's defeat, not Linda failing to assert herself properly. Afterall, a good captain should have experience in the world of pub quizzes, and one would expect that he might have seen this sort of situation before. Failing that, based with the empirical evidence of Linda being right often, he probably should have picked her answers more frequently.

I think the larger lesson here is that confidence is a good thing, but relying on it solely can fail miserably as a substitute for having actual knowledge about something.

pdpi• 11 years ago

Given that the situation was not ideal, what can we do to improve it? From the captain's point of view, he should learn to accept answers from less assertive people. From Linda's point of view, though, wishing that the captain would accept her answers is pointless. The only course of action available to her, if she wants to change things, is to be more assertive herself — Don't hope for change in others, effect change yourself.

silverbax88• 11 years ago

I don't think that was the scenario laid out, although I believe the overall article has merit, the anecdote is not a good one for representation of confidence as it impacts success.

Linda is smart enough to know she might not be right; smarter quiz players (pub quizzes, Jeopardy, etc) don't blurt out an answer to every question. Claiming someone should 'be more confident' in this case indicates that she knew for a fact that she had the right answer but wasn't assertive. This ignores the more likely scenario: she didn't actually know if she was right.

Yes, the article is stating Linda needed to be more confident - but out of context, what if Linda had tried being more confident and assertive in previous games and had been completely wrong, costing her team the match?

m52go• 11 years ago

I think the larger lesson here is that confidence is a good thing, but relying on it solely can fail miserably as a substitute for having actual knowledge about something.

That's exactly what the article is saying, if you follow it to the end: "What matters is that one's confidence be properly calibrated - neither too high, not too low. Very few of us achieve this."

The point is that without proper confidence, there's no chance of success. With proper confidence, there's at least a chance.

Hence the parallel to the "faint heart never won fair lady" aphorism: you're never guaranteed success in love without confidence, but you're guaranteed a shot you never otherwise would have had.

spangry4• 11 years ago

Individual success anyway. Without leaders who have the ability to recognise competence in others (and incompetence, despite how confident a person sounds), the team/organisation/country has no chance of success. However, confident sounding individuals definitely thrive in this sort of environment (until the whole place goes belly-up because it's filled with confident sounding stupid people).

beobab• 11 years ago

I agree with your larger lesson, but it's worth noting that you don't get feedback about your answers being right or not until the end when no further answers are required, so the captain did not have empirical evidence of Linda's correctness. He will next time, however. :)

abetusk• 11 years ago

This is not necessarily true. In may pub quizes I've been part of, there are multiple rounds of 5-10 questions each where the answers are given after each round. This keeps teams engaged and heightens the mood since there are running totals for each team.

Had the captain been better, he could have picked out which teammates (presumably, Linda) had been better predictors of the correct answer. Instead he chose confidence as the metric.

exelius• 11 years ago

I think the larger lesson here is that confidence is a good thing, but relying on it solely can fail miserably as a substitute for having actual knowledge about something.

Key word here is "can". In many leadership circumstances, it is impossible to know the right answer definitively. In those cases, it is best to choose what appears to be the best answer, and stick with it until you have overwhelming evidence otherwise. You need confidence to do that -- and in many cases, unwarranted confidence.

Leadership is all about putting yourself out there to be wrong. Many people are very risk-averse without someone else giving them permission, so you give them permission. But ultimately, who gave you permission? At some point down the chain, the answer has to be "I give myself the permission".

Like it or not, leadership is 90% confidence, 10% competence (and the 10% competence is largely around how well you learn from failure).

spangry4• 11 years ago

Couldn't agree more: if people think team outcomes would improve "if only the smart people spoke more confidently", it's a sign of incompetent leadership to me. This problem is as damaging as it is pervasive, and scales from pub trivia to national elections (where voters are the collective team captain).

However, the most fascinating example is found in large hierarchical organisations (i.e. large corporates and government agencies). Poor managers have no relevant domain knowledge. So the only basis they have for decision making is 'who sounds the most confident', because they lack the ability to judge who is actually correct. Worse still, the 'captains' (managers) decide who gets to be the 'sub-captains' (and therefore future captains).

I watched it happen in real-time once. I worked in a relatively young organisation that put 2-3 incompetent guys in upper management. They made bad hires and bad decisions, because they had zero domain expertise (IT). I was startled at how quickly incompetence spread throughout the organisation, like a metastasising cancer. Within 6 months they had virtually ruined the place, and the (few) competent hires they had made were rapidly jumping ship.

It was like they'd read the Netflix Culture slides (http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664) and decided to do the exact opposite...

js2• 11 years ago

I was startled at how quickly incompetence spread throughout the organisation, like a metastasising cancer.

Sounds like an example of the law of crappy people in action.

http://www.terrencebrown.net/the-law-of-crappy-people/

https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2015/02/ben-horowitz-the-la...

nostrademons• 11 years ago

That's the big problem with the modern workplace, right? It's impossible to be an expert in everything, and so you need to quickly judge who the experts are and defer to them. And it's made doubly difficult because competence and confidence are often inversely proportional: once you've put in all the detailed study necessary to actually become an expert, you understand just how much you don't understand.

Anyway, I'm actually with the article on this one: it's on Linda to learn to speak up and become more confident. Why? Because of game theory. The situation where everyone projects a realistic assessment of their own confidence is not an evolutionarily-stable strategy. It is trivial to "defect" and project high confidence in an area of low competence, the cost (to the individual) of doing this is low, and the chance of detection is also low in most situations. That means that any large population will tend toward being filled with blowhards; statistically, somebody is gonna do it, and then once they do it everyone else has to become a blowhard to keep up. And so analyzing this rationally, your only choice is to become a blowhard yourself, ideally while also keeping factual discipline so your ideas are themselves usually right.

Interestingly, I've seen some very good managers make their careers off of "confidence arbitrage". Basically, they learn to recognize and surround themselves with people who have low confidence but high competence. They then take the opinions of these individual contributors (which are often right, but often stated equivocally) and then repeat them to upper management with zero doubt, basically providing a confidence boost to other peoples' opinions. This helps viewpoints that are right but imperfectly stated get heard, and it makes the manager seem like a genius. Win-win for everyone.

HeyLaughingBoy• 11 years ago

You have to be careful with that word, "team." It does not always mean what you think it does.

On a real team, as opposed to what I describe as "a group of people who just happen to be working at the same goal," the leader and the others should understand each other well enough to know when they speak confidently they'll be taken seriously, and to back off when they are unsure.

In the typical corporate "team" (i.e., people who were told to work together), you get exactly the behavior you describe because people don't know each other well, don't think as a group -- tends to be everyone looking out for themselves, and have little invested in the success of the team because they know that their contributions aren't likely to be valued very highly.

jt2190• 11 years ago

  > I think the larger lesson here is that confidence is 
  > a good thing, but relying on it solely can fail miserably 
  > as a substitute for having actual knowledge about 
  > something.

How should the coach have audited the correctness of answers that he himself didn't know the answer to? Should he put his confidence in answer that the person answering wasn't confident in?

I'm reminded of the film "The last King of Scotland":

  [Idi Amin]          I want you to tell me what to do. 

  [Nicholas Garrigan] You want ME to tell YOU what to do?
 
  [Idi Amin]          Yes, you are my advisor. You are 
                      the only one I can trust in here. 
                      You should have told me not to 
                      throw the Asians out, 
                      in the first place. 

  [Nicholas Garrigan] I DID! 

  [Idi Amin]          But you did not persuade me, 
                      Nicholas. You did not persuade me!

It's really not enough to be right. You must convince others that you are right.

unfocused2• 11 years ago

If Idi Amin and Nicholas Garrigan had the "fight it out!" rule in my pub quiz night, Nicholas should've won.

Of course, in their context it's a bit more complicated. :)

Retra• 11 years ago

Those who are making decisions should spend more effort listening to those who know how to make them. Otherwise, what is the justification for having executive power? It's not your fault you don't know how to make the decision, and it's also not your fault that you don't know how to listen? Then what is your fault? Why should you have any power at all, under those circumstances?

There's not much value in picking advisors who you prefer to ignore.

js8• 11 years ago

As far as I understand it, there are ways to remedy this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management

roldie• 11 years ago

I think the over-confident people are not necessarily more sure of their abilities, but rather, less afraid of being wrong or making a mistake. Mistakes are just shrugged off, whereas for the under-confident, mistakes can be crippling and cause further under-confidence.

Having a culture where it's ok to fail is very important for the under-confident to progress. Knowing that a wrong outcome is little more than an opportunity for learning can be incredibly empowering.

vonmoltke• 11 years ago

Unfortunately, the hiring process (in general, but particularly in the tech industry) is biased towards the overconfident and strongly against the under-confident. It then becomes hard to build that sort of culture because you are actively filtering out the people who fit it.

unfocused2• 11 years ago

This is an interesting article since he cites a pub quiz and sports - something I participate in.

I've been playing for about 4 years in a pub quiz. We've won once and are considered a strong team. However, the difference between the a strong team, and the better team in a night, is the fact that our team fosters a "no suggestion is a dumb suggestion" policy. No matter how stupid you think your answer is, you are encouraged to say it. In fact, if we see body language from a person hesitating we're quick to jump in and say "Spit it out! Just say it!"

We essentially create a safe zone for our team members to not worry about the consequences of a wrong answer. There were so many times where a completely wrong suggestion makes another teammate say, "Hey! Wait, I think I remember!"

We also have a policy of if a person has a different answer than the rest, then he/she has to "fight for it". That is, you have to convince the rest of the team. By having a "fight for it" rule, we put controlled confrontation on the centre of the table and let people hash it out. There is no regret, or fear, or worrying about feelings. It's just a normal part of our evening that is done with humour and friendliness. Firm, but friendly!

By doing the above, we instil confidence in every team member. Those that are more confident by their nature, can still be challenged by anyone and keeps them in check, and the weaker confident ones feel safer to step forward when they need to. It balances out and our team has absolutely great chemistry because of it.

I've also played team sports for most of my life and some of the best teams I've played for had former professional athletes. Since they were stronger than the rest and more confident, they always raised their hand and took the blame for any mistake! It was quite funny because we knew my screw up was not their fault, but they would make an excuse about how they should've done 'X' and I wouldn't have screwed up.

Needless to say, that allowed players like me that weren't former pros, to be at ease and to be more confident and give my best, knowing that the strongest player on the team wasn't going to look down on me for every mistake.

It was a very interesting dynamic where the more confident person ensured that the less confident person is playing their best and it raised their confidence. Again, it is a kind of delicate balance that can change on any given night.

jabagonuts• 11 years ago

There are two elements to this. One is knowing what you don't know - not being overconfident. The other is knowing what you do know

This reminds me of my musician days, when we sometimes talked about the four stages of progression from beginner to pro.

1. You know you don't know (beginner) 2. You don't know you don't know (cocky amateur - over confident) 3. You don't know you know (talented amateur - under confident) 4. You know you know (seasoned pro)

percept• 11 years ago

5. You know you don't know, and nobody else does either (fully realized)

1_player• 11 years ago

"I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."

- Socrates

PaulHoule• 11 years ago

A side effect of the narcissistic disturbance which you see a lot today is an unstable self image. One minute you think you can do anything, then you have some slight reversal and you think you are useless.

steven2012• 11 years ago

It is shocking how far being self-confident can carry you, despite having very little skill or being completely wrong. I've worked with several engineers who are extremely confident in themselves, talk with complete confidence and authority, and are generally wrong. One engineer I worked with recently almost took down our entire company with his terrible code. And yet, everyone keeps going to him for answers, etc.

I think it's just human nature. Underconfidence is the exact opposite. Conducting you with underconfidence will lead to no one taking you seriously. Unfortunately, moving up in your career requires for you to convince people to have confidence in you, so this is a skill everyone needs to learn.

taurath2• 11 years ago

A simple record of getting things done well and accurately will make people take you seriously in good organizations more than any amount of confidence.

fapjacks• 11 years ago

I wish it were like that. Depends on the organization.

mswen• 11 years ago

Those of us with engineering or mathematical background wish that what you assert would be consistently true. My own experience in medium to large corporations indicates that this is only partially true and often requires substantial endurance and sub-par compensation before it begins to work out.

I like Jason Roberts article on Luck Surface Area http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-surf...

This rings much closer to the truth in my experience. The best results are some combination of what you suggest plus the confidence and ability to communicate about the good work that you have done.

crimsonalucard• 11 years ago

Over confidence is related to self deception. In fact research shows that over-confidence is the biological norm. It is normal for people to lie to themselves. In fact the strange thing is, people who are under-confident tend to be diagnosed as clinically depressed.

source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100008723963904433437045775489...

spangry4• 11 years ago

The phenomenon you're talking about is known as 'depressive realism' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism). The evidence is fairly inconclusive, but it's an interesting (and IMHO, plausible) hypothesis on depression. The prevailing theory is that depressed people have a more accurate perception of reality (as opposed to the non-depressed, who have a positively biased perception).

There's some (disputed) evidence that Winston Churchill suffered from depression. Perhaps this is why he was such an effective war-time prime minister: in a time of war, if your perception of reality is inaccurate, you're less likely to survive.

It's interesting to contrast the speeches of Chamberlain and Churchill with this in mind. On the one hand you have Chamberlain's "Peace for our time" speech after concluding the Munich Agreement:

"My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep."

And on the other you have Churchill's first speech to the House of Commons after becoming Prime Minister:

"I would say to the House as I said to those who have joined this government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs—Victory in spite of all terror—Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival."

Costs of under-confidence

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