Confidence?

Before walking into a meeting with a senior government official, a colleague (and now also friend), Karthik, once said to me: “So this is one rare time I’m not going to be the most confident person walking into the meeting”.  I was pretty taken aback by that statement because (1) he’s a very smart and confident guy and (2) I’ve never thought of myself in that way.

On #2, especially, I’ve never thought of confident as an adjective that I’d use to describe myself. To be perfectly honest (because that’s what I am in these blog posts), there’s often a sense of insecurity around whether I am doing my best or whether I’ve got enough seasoning to handle a particularly difficult situation in the best possible way.

So, Karthik’s comment has stayed with me for those two reasons. I’ve reflected on whether it’s a good thing for someone to have that perception and whether I’d like someone to use that adjective to describe me. For a long time, I thought it was probably not a good thing because, to me, confidence can often border on arrogance.

However, I’ve begun to feel differently about confidence. Confidence is important. When you think about confidence being a positive trait, I think it should come from a deep-down belief that you’re doing your best and believe in your abilities. I think it will come naturally when you feel that you have prepared for a meeting, have a strong trust relationship with your collaborator (often the government in my case) and are jointly (and genuinely) working towards an outcome that will be of maximum social benefit (I use the term social benefit because I work in the non-profit space).

One doesn’t need to feel defensive about confidence as long as you are also a good listener. When the confidence goes hand-in-hand with a belief that you are mostly right all the time, that comes down to being just plain arrogant.  

More recently, I think it’s particularly important for women professionals and leaders to be confident in their abilities. I don’t like to generalize (and I won’t) but I’ve had a couple of conversations with men recently where their attitude and responses have been pretty outright patronizing. I should have called them out on it but I thought to respect their stature and experience – they also probably didn’t realise they were being patronizing.

So, as a woman, I think it’s particularly important to be confident in your abilities and your points of view because you are your best advocate and champion. Women need to be heard and that extra dose of confidence will help you get your point across in a strong way (especially if you’re in a room full of men!).