Is it Confidence or Incompetence?
Women tend to make better leaders, but they’re losing out to the overconfident man.
It is the hidden fault line in businesses big and small, a man’s whose confidence doesn’t match his competence. Despite promotions, seniority and leadership’s bias toward this individual, it is only a matter of time before the incompetence shows itself, damaging productivity, profits and morale.
Confidence seems to override skills tests, reference checks and demo presentations. Why? Because as a society, we’ve made the wrong assumption.
“Although we spend a great deal of time worshiping confident people that is only because of our assumption that they are also competent, yet there is only a 10 percent overlap between confidence and competence,” says Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, the CEO of Hogan Assessment Systems and Professor of Business Psychology at University College London and Columbia University.
“Most insecure people are not incompetent,” he added. “Most assertive, bold and confident people are not competent.”
The author of “Confidence: How Much You Really Need and How to Get It,” also points out that low confidence is in many ways a better trait than overconfidence. How can that be? We asked.
Dr. Tomas: The only benefits of overconfidence are hiding our insecurities from others and persuading them that we may be competent, when in fact, we are not. In contrast, under-confidence has multiple benefits. It can motivate you to close the gap between your actual and desired competence state, it almost certainly helps you avoid risks and embarrassments, and it will probably make you come across as humble or modest.
LFH: When a woman gets shut down in meetings or feels she is constantly being overlooked despite excellent performance, this can naturally shake her confidence. The feelings of “it is pointless” also sink in. What message do you have for this woman?
Dr. Tomas: I’m not sure this is much of a consolation, but she should at least know that she is probably right and the people shutting her down are probably wrong. Life is not fair, and that is not just true for women but more true for women than men.
However, time does bring improvements. Things are better for women now than they were in the 1950s, and five or six decades is a really short time in the context of human evolution. So, I think women should stay strong, stoic and keep the faith.
It is also clear that women are fighting a fairly weak enemy. The incompetent men who succeed at their peril are not that hard to beat, particularly if those judging talent can be persuaded to make rational choices.
LFH: If you could give business owners and managers one tactic for encouraging equal listening in the workplace, what would it be?
Dr. Tomas: Rather than specific tactics, I think it’s more about building a gender-blind culture. In most domains of talent if you can learn to be data-driven and judge people for what they can actually do, the distribution of genders will be fairly even.
The main problem with most workplaces is that they overestimate men’s talents.
LFH: We need men to support these efforts, but they often don’t know how to help or they don’t recognize the problem. Thoughts?
Dr. Tomas: Not sure chauvinists will ever be onboard, but there are surely enough open-minded and unbiased men in the 21st century to enlist for this cause. We need to engage them and make them responsible for this issue.
LFH: Right, so less finger pointing and more working together. But how can we work with a narcissist? OK, I am partly kidding. Not all men are narcissists! But you often talk about how society rewards this dark personality trait as strong leadership. Can you tell us more about your findings in this area?
Dr. Tomas: There is basically a big difference between emergent leadership (which is about what gets people to power) and effective leadership (which is about the stuff that helps leaders build and maintain high-performing teams). The big gender divide is that men are much stronger on emergence yet there is no difference, or a difference in favor of women, when it comes to effectiveness. The dark side — narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism — helps people emerge and it advances their own personal careers, but it’s bad for the teams and organizations those people lead. And surprise, surprise, men score much higher on these dark side traits.
LFH: As a result you say it is contradictory to ask women to “lean in” and build skills that might make them seem more confident. Explain this.
Dr. Tomas: It (the idea of Lean In) is missing the point. It equates to asking women to behave more like men. If only incompetent men leaned in less, then we would pay more attention to competent women.
Is overconfidence hurting your workplace or team? Does your company use data-driven hiring and promotion practices? Are you ready to break free from overthinking your “confidence?”
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