Confidence: knowing vs learning

Confidence. This is a topic that comes up often in many of the conversations I have with students, colleagues, team members, leaders...everyone. It shows up as imposter syndrome, frustration, isolation, job (dis)satisfaction, and in employee engagement scores. The fact of the matter is that everyone struggles with confidence at one time or another and often, at multiple times through a person's career(s). It's what makes us human, no? The desire to fit in, acknowledged for a job well done. Feedback, rewards.... pride.

"I know"

One thing I've noticed not only in my own experience but observing others, is that the more we try to "know" or at least demonstrate what we "know", the lower our confidence tends to dip. Whether it's acknowledgment from our leaders, our colleagues, or having a client or team accept our recommendations, continually trying to demonstrate our knowledge or expertise tends to result in increasing levels of frustration and decreasing levels of confidence. Internally, it starts to feel like we're banging on the table, yelling at people (figuratively, not literally), to acknowledge us as experts, to pay attention, and to listen to our solutions. But the reality is sometimes the other party is not ready to hear it, or they can't hear it, because our behaviour to be acknowledged is drowning out the intended message we're trying to convey.

"I don't know"

The most confident and competent people I've ever had the pleasure of working with are problem solvers. Figure it out-ers. Lifelong learners. They know they don't know everything, and they don't see themselves as experts in anything necessarily, but they do have confidence that if they run into a problem they don't have the answer to, they'll figure it out. THAT is what grows confidence. What we know is finite. It eventually runs out, or someone comes along and knocks us off the top rung. But being comfortable not knowing everything AND willing to learn and problem solve...well that keeps you climbing for years to come. As a leader myself, I was always most happy when I came with a complex problem and the first words I heard from my team were, "We don't know, but we'll figure it out...what priority is this and when do you need an update?" and they went to work learning, researching and experimenting. Then, even if they did know, I was also assured that they were willing to attempt to better the solution they thought they knew and the outcome was going to be even better than anything I had originally imagined.

Finite knowledge breeds ego, infinite learning breeds confidence.