How Confidence Really Works
[Music]
have you ever found yourself wondering
things like
why am i confident with most people but
there’s this one person
who throws me off and leaves me
unsettled
why do i feel less than certain people
why do i sometimes behave like a
complete jerk
well if you resonate with any of those
questions
here’s one more what is it about
managing our confidence that makes it
such a universal challenge
when i was in my early thirties the
struggle with some of those questions
brought me to a place where i hated
myself
my wife’s father and i started a
furniture factory together
in reality he started it with his money
and then he put me in charge as a young
man this was a great opportunity but it
was
also saturated with pressure i dealt
with
my fear of failure by becoming a tyrant
the power went to my head
and i became the boss from hell so i’m
four years in and disgusted with myself
in my heart i believed i was a nice guy
but as a boss i was controlling verbally
abusive and hurtful
i remember laying in bed several nights
a week promising myself
that i would be different the next day
but by noon when i was screaming again i
would just give up
around the same time i was also
volunteering on the board of a
non-profit organization and like with
the factory i
saw the success or failure of the
organization as my own
i remember sitting around a table with
the board one evening
passionately making a point and pretty
much being
ignored i felt the success of the
organization was hanging in the balance
and i was
furious but there was one big difference
when i was at the factory i used to lose
my temper and become a complete jerk but
with the board i was able to control my
temper and be respectful
up until this time i used to claim i
cannot control my temper
that evening i realized i was wrong
i went home at asking myself this
question
why can i control my temper with the
board
but can’t control it with the factory
the answer changed my life over time i
discovered that despite being angry in
both environments the difference stemmed
from how i perceived myself
compared to my audience while i regret
to admit it when i was at the factory i
thought
i was better than everybody else i
thought i was smarter
i thought i was always right and of
course nobody’s work was
ever as good as mine but with the board
i regarded my colleagues as equals
well you might be wondering what in the
world does any of this have to do with
managing our confidence
and as it turns out pretty much
everything
we often think of confidence like a
switch on or
off either we have it or we don’t i
discovered
it doesn’t really work like that instead
of a switch that we turn
on or off confidence works more like a
dynamic continuum
with pride or arrogance on one side
insecurity on the other
and that perfect place that desired
place of
confidence right in the middle
confidence
not overconfidence confidence
not under confidence navigating this
confidence continuum is a lot like
trying to fly an airplane
we can turn the controls to the right or
to the left
but if we want to make any significant
forward progress the goal
is to steadily hold the controls in the
middle
that’s why i like to call this
confidence continuum
the cockpit the cockpit is not as simple
as
only being proud insecure or confident
it’s a number line with varying degrees
of pride
or insecurity with confidence at zero
right in the middle as it turns out
where we fall on the continuum at any
given point in time has a huge
impact on several things first whenever
we talk
people do not just hear us they
experience us we communicate at least as
much
through our tone and the micro
communication of our body language as we
do with our words
one of the greatest things people
experience from us
is the leak from our cockpit let me
illustrate
think of the most arrogant person you
know
does that person’s arrogance leak out of
most
everything they do the way they walk the
way they talk
their tone their body language how do
you
feel when you are with them
take the opposite extreme think of the
most insecure person you know
does that person’s insecurity leak out
of most everything they do
maybe they won’t look you in the eye
maybe they’re a pushover
how do you feel when you are with them
well the same is true for us hopefully
we’re neither severely to the pride side
nor severely to the insecurity side
but the fact remains that wherever our
cockpit is
at any given point in time it’s leaking
and other people are experiencing us and
forming
impressions of us on the basis of that
leak
so if that’s true what does that mean
for you
how do you think other people experience
you
what do you think you are leaking
they experience you as arrogant
as insecure and how does that make them
respond
our cockpit is also a key driver of
observable behavior
my horrific behavior as a boss was not a
subtle leak
it was much more than that observable
behaviors like
interrupting being argumentative or
verbally abusive
and consuming too much air time in a
conversation
are often the result of a cockpit toward
the pride side
similarly behaviors like not pushing
back when we have a different opinion
or regularly conceding to another
person’s point of view
often traced back to a cockpit toward
the insecurity side
so you can see there really are two
things that result from our cockpit
how other people experience us from the
leak
of our microcommunication and tone and
much of our observable behavior
if our cockpit plays such a significant
role in our behavior
how then can we manage it it’s one thing
to know that our cockpit is out of
balance
but how do we bring it back to the
center
remember the question i asked myself why
can i control my temper with the board
but
can’t control it at the factory and the
answer
when i was at the factory i thought i
was better than everyone else
but with the board i regarded us all
as equals equal is the key
to managing our cockpit when we consider
ourselves better than others
we think we are greater than our
audience
and when we are insecure we consider
ourselves less than our audience
but when we neither think we are better
nor less than our audience
we see ourselves as equal
and the simple truth is the key to the
whole equation
first we need to know where our cockpit
is
when i am in this environment is my
cockpit toward the pride side
the insecurity side or roughly in the
middle
and then we need to have a conversation
with ourselves to correct the deviation
if our cockpit is toward the pride side
we essentially believe
that we are greater than our audience
so that conversation tends to sound
something like
x is equal to me if our cockpit is
toward the insecurity side we believe
that we are less than our audience
and that conversation often sounds like
i am equal to x let me share
two real world examples the first person
i’d like to tell you about is susan
not her real name susan was part of an
executive leadership
program i was running and her cockpit
generally leaned
toward the pride side as a result the
leak of that pride
affected all of her interactions in our
first executive coaching session
susan expressed that she wanted to
change
the dynamic between herself and her team
so i gave her an exercise i said susan
i would like you to identify ten people
whom you
think are absolute morons
well as you can imagine her face lit up
she knew
that was going to be easy and then i
gave her the difficult part
i said susan for each of those 10 people
that you think are morons
i’d like you to identify at least three
ways that each of them
are better than you
after three weeks we had our next
session and susan reported mike that
exercise was so difficult but you’re not
going to believe this
the other day my team came to me and
they said
susan what happened to you she said what
do you mean and they said
we don’t know you’re you’re different
somehow you’re you’re nicer
if that were not enough even more
significantly susan continued
she said i went to my mother’s house for
lunch on sunday
and she said the same thing
what were we doing through that exercise
susan’s cockpit leaned towards the pride
side
and other people were experiencing the
leak of her pride
the exercise forced her to acknowledge
that
other people were equal to her
and when she reflected on other people
being equal
her cockpit automatically shifted back
towards the center
the people in her life experienced the
difference
the second person i want to tell you
about is steve
in an executive coaching call i asked
steve what he wanted to work on
steve said mike i have a sales pitch to
mukesh ambani tomorrow
and i need your help to prepare for the
meeting
mukesh ambani is one of the richest men
in the world
our conversation went like this steve
are you ready he said yes mike i said
okay steve here it comes
mukesh ambani puts his pants on the same
way that you do
he puts in one leg and then he puts in
the other leg he does not
miraculously appear in his trousers
what was i saying equal
i was suggesting that for steve to be
successful
in that sales call he was going to have
to be
confident and to be confident he
had to see himself as equal
i’m very happy to share that steve
managed his cockpit the next day
and he and his company won that contract
so the name of the game when we are
trying to manage our cockpit
is to see ourselves and our audience
as equals take a moment
and think of someone who makes you feel
insecure
what would happen if you saw yourself as
equal to that person
how do you think that might change the
dynamics of your relationship
the last thing i’d like to share was
perhaps my biggest discovery of all
we’ve said that confidence works like a
dynamic continuum
with pride on one side insecurity on the
other
and confidence in the middle we’ve said
that our confidence
or our lack of confidence leaks out
through our tone
and the microcommunication of our body
language
and that other people experience us
on the basis of that leak we’ve said
that our cockpit
is a key driver to our observable
behavior
and we’ve said that whenever we notice
our cockpit is swung to the pride side
or to the insecurity side one of the
most
important things that we can do to
manage our confidence
is to see ourselves is equal to our
audience
but why why does our cockpit swing to
one side or the other
and why does it change depending on the
context
imagine you trip and fall and you’ve
crossed that critical
angle where you know you’re going to
face plant
in the ground you throw your hands up to
brace yourself
against the fall i want to invite us to
face
a critical reality the truth
is that most of us are deeply
insecure deep down emotionally
we feel like we are falling and it’s
only
natural for us to look for things to
prop ourselves up
we’ll call these things we prop
ourselves up under
crutches crutches are essentially the
paradigms
upon which we define human value
they’re the measuring sticks we use to
assess our own value
and the value of those around us our
crutches
fuel those greater than less than
conversations which drive
our cockpit and they determine which
context impact our confidence the most
to illustrate imagine a person props up
their self-esteem
on a value system of a crutch of
intelligence
that crutch of intelligence will govern
their cockpit
if they walk into a meeting and believe
they are the smartest person in the room
their cockpit will swing to the pride
side with
all of the ramifications thereof
but that same person can walk across the
hall
to their next meeting believe they are
not the smartest person in the room
and become deeply insecure the cockpit
can swing
in a matter of seconds what’s
interesting about
crutches is that they are unique to the
individual
some of us prop up our self-esteem with
knowledge or iq some with our wealth or
our income some with productivity
physical fitness our positions of
hierarchy
our relative spirituality and so on
crutches originate from at least three
places
our personality type our family of
origin
and even our traumatic experiences
from my observations people have at
least three crutches but it’s not
uncommon to have six or seven so
as we go deeper can you identify
at least one of your crutches
it will be one of the value systems you
use to evaluate your
and others worth it will be the reason
you get proud or insecure and the lens
through which
you judge other people
each of us have a unique set of crutches
that we
use to determine our value and the value
of others
when we believe that we are better than
our audience
in the paradigm of those crutches our
cockpit will swing to the pride side
that pride will display itself through
our observable behavior
and through our leak people will
experience us
and respond accordingly when we believe
that we’re less than our audience
in the paradigm of those same crutches
our cockpit will swing to the insecurity
side
we will display insecure behaviors and
leak
that insecurity people will experience
us and respond accordingly
so as i close let me ask you how do
people
experience you
what crutches deep inside of you
cause you to see yourself as less than
or greater than others
when we are able to go to that level
we will not only have confidence we will
have confidence
at the core
[Music]
you