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The Trap of Confidence

A lot of innovators fall into The Trap of Confidence, where they assume that at the beginning of the journey, yes, they will experience, you know, kind of insecurity and self-doubt. And over time, they would hope that as they got better at the job, they become a lot more confident. What we find from the data is almost literally the opposite of that, where we find that, at the beginning of the journey, people are at the highest level of confidence ever. As they realize just what it takes to succeed or to do well, they get a serious hit in confidence. Over time, yes, that confidence does increase, but we find that it never returns back to the same level as when they first began.

It’s easy to understand why our confidence is highest at the beginning. You almost need to be overconfident to even start on a very difficult journey. If we all knew just exactly what it would take, the true cost of success, we would never get started.

Developing Confident Humility 

We find from the most effective founders in our data set that they tended to have this kind of confident humility. It’s confidence in the mission, in the team that will deliver on the mission. But there’s a kind of humility that they bend towards where they’re very clear about the weaknesses and the shortcomings that they bring to the work. And they then surround themselves with people who can then help support them and complement those weaknesses. These are people who know how to ask for help. All of this to say that if you find yourself feeling very confident, it’s probably a sign that you’re not seeing the full picture. And this is where you want to lean on some of the most perceptive and capable people in your team and give them license to challenge your ideas.

A leader that I write about in the book turns this into a game. They will come with their point of view in a one-on-one conversation, lay out their idea, and at the end of that, say, “Show me where I got this wrong,” or, “Tell me where this could go completely wrong.” And by really eliciting people’s feedback, you then can start to penetrate this kind of overconfidence you might be approaching your work with.

2 Ways to Battle Self-Doubt

So if you find yourself in a place where self-doubt kind of has taken over you, you might consider one of two things. One is it’s so important to have relationships outside of your team in your personal life where you can be just completely honest and completely vulnerable. These are not oftentimes your spouse. Perhaps there’s a close friend or even a distant colleague who you feel like you can just lay things out plainly and talk through some of the challenges and self-doubt you’re experiencing.

The second thing you might consider doing is, you know, spend time helping other people through their own journey. When you help other people, somehow you remind yourself of the distance you’ve so far traveled and that you do have something to give to other people. The paradox of that is just one of the most beautiful things about being human, where by helping other people, you actually inadvertently help yourself.