
Costs of under-confidence - sergeant3
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2015/12/costs-of-under-confidence.html
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arbitrage
I don't like the tone of the opening anecdote

> Had Linda been more confident, we'd have won.

It appears that Linda kept being right. Regardless, the captain kept not
choosing her answers. Perhaps being a poor captain led to the team's defeat,
not Linda failing to assert herself properly. Afterall, a good captain should
have experience in the world of pub quizzes, and one would expect that he
might have seen this sort of situation before. Failing that, based with the
empirical evidence of Linda being right often, he probably should have picked
her answers more frequently.

I think the larger lesson here is that confidence is a good thing, but relying
on it solely can fail miserably as a substitute for having actual knowledge
about something.

~~~
spangry
Couldn't agree more: if people think team outcomes would improve "if only the
smart people spoke more confidently", it's a sign of incompetent leadership to
me. This problem is as damaging as it is pervasive, and scales from pub trivia
to national elections (where voters are the collective team captain).

However, the most fascinating example is found in large hierarchical
organisations (i.e. large corporates and government agencies). Poor managers
have no relevant domain knowledge. So the only basis they have for decision
making is 'who sounds the most confident', because they lack the ability to
judge who is actually correct. Worse still, the 'captains' (managers) decide
who gets to be the 'sub-captains' (and therefore future captains).

I watched it happen in real-time once. I worked in a relatively young
organisation that put 2-3 incompetent guys in upper management. They made bad
hires and bad decisions, because they had zero domain expertise (IT). I was
startled at how quickly incompetence spread throughout the organisation, like
a metastasising cancer. Within 6 months they had virtually ruined the place,
and the (few) competent hires they had made were rapidly jumping ship.

It was like they'd read the Netflix Culture slides
([http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664](http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664))
and decided to do the exact opposite...

~~~
nostrademons
That's the big problem with the modern workplace, right? It's impossible to be
an expert in everything, and so you need to quickly judge _who_ the experts
are and defer to them. And it's made doubly difficult because competence and
confidence are often inversely proportional: once you've put in all the
detailed study necessary to actually become an expert, you understand just how
much you don't understand.

Anyway, I'm actually with the article on this one: it's on Linda to learn to
speak up and become more confident. Why? Because of game theory. The situation
where everyone projects a realistic assessment of their own confidence is not
an evolutionarily-stable strategy. It is trivial to "defect" and project high
confidence in an area of low competence, the cost (to the individual) of doing
this is low, and the chance of detection is also low in most situations. That
means that any large population will tend toward being filled with blowhards;
statistically, somebody is gonna do it, and then once they do it everyone else
has to become a blowhard to keep up. And so analyzing this rationally, your
only choice is to become a blowhard yourself, ideally while also keeping
factual discipline so your ideas are themselves usually right.

Interestingly, I've seen some very good managers make their careers off of
"confidence arbitrage". Basically, they learn to recognize and surround
themselves with people who have low confidence but high competence. They then
take the opinions of these individual contributors (which are often right, but
often stated equivocally) and then repeat them to upper management with zero
doubt, basically providing a confidence boost to other peoples' opinions. This
helps viewpoints that are _right_ but imperfectly stated get heard, and it
makes the manager seem like a genius. Win-win for everyone.

~~~
spangry
As you point out, it's interesting how this problem is amplified by the
dunning-kruger effect. I've also observed this issue to be worse in
environments when success or failure is difficult to measure (or is only
measurable far in to the future).

And I very much agree with your last paragraph: good managers and leaders are
people who recognise competence and use it to further an organisation's goals.
I don't mean that in the "take credit for your subordinate's idea" kind of
way, as that's clearly an unsustainable strategy (the uncredited start
withholding information and ideas, eventually).

On the game theory/evolutionarily stable strategy side of things though, I
think it depends on context and perspective. If the context is one with a
ubiquity of good managers, the pay-off for 'unjustified confidence' is
probably pretty low or even negative. Also, as this is a multi-round game, the
pay-off for 'unjustified confidence' gets lower and lower with each successive
round (as good managers will factor past experience into their estimation of
subordinate competence).

On the flip side, in a context with mostly incompetent managers, I'd agree the
dominant strategy for individuals, competent and incompetent alike, is to 'act
confident'. Although, as mentioned before, the competent are hobbled by the
dunning-kruger effect here. Even if they weren't (i.e. competent and
incompetent subordinates display equal levels of confidence), the outcome for
the organisation would be indistinguishable from random decision making. In
other words, you could replace managers with a coin (or a n-sided die, for
problems with n possible solutions). And you don't have to pay coins or dice
six figure salaries, making it the better option...

From the organisation's perspective, it seems crazy to rely on getting the
competent people to 'be more confident'. In fact, it seems impossible. If your
organisation needs to rely on 'confidence' to determine who is competent, then
by definition it cannot directly discern which employees are competent. So how
would it know which employees to encourage to be 'more confident'? This seems
to reduce back to the '(at best) random decision making' outcome in the
previous paragraph.

Funnily enough, if you factor in the dunning-kruger effect, in the 'bad
managers' context the best way to make decisions (on average) would be to
follow the advice of the 'least confident sounding' employees.

The only viable (albeit less hilarious) solution from the organisation's
perspective (and therefore dominant strategy) is to try very hard to only hire
competent leaders and managers.

~~~
airhadoken
> If your organisation needs to rely on 'confidence' to determine who is
> competent, then by definition it cannot directly discern which employees are
> competent.

That's correct specifically because in the absence of the ability to judge
competence (the original research by Dunning and Kruger showed that those low
in competence overestimated the competence of others as well as their own),
confidence becomes the stand-in. So over time if you don't start with the most
competent people in positions of leadership, and maybe even if you do, you end
up with the most confident (and probably least competent) people in them over
several refresh cycles.

Longer form piece on the subject: [https://hbr.org/2014/07/the-dangers-of-
confidence/](https://hbr.org/2014/07/the-dangers-of-confidence/)

------
roldie
I think the over-confident people are not necessarily more sure of their
abilities, but rather, less afraid of being wrong or making a mistake.
Mistakes are just shrugged off, whereas for the under-confident, mistakes can
be crippling and cause further under-confidence.

Having a culture where it's ok to fail is very important for the under-
confident to progress. Knowing that a wrong outcome is little more than an
opportunity for learning can be incredibly empowering.

~~~
vonmoltke
Unfortunately, the hiring process (in general, but particularly in the tech
industry) is biased towards the overconfident and strongly against the under-
confident. It then becomes hard to build that sort of culture because you are
actively filtering out the people who fit it.

------
unfocused
This is an interesting article since he cites a pub quiz and sports -
something I participate in.

I've been playing for about 4 years in a pub quiz. We've won once and are
considered a strong team. However, the difference between the a strong team,
and the better team in a night, is the fact that our team fosters a "no
suggestion is a dumb suggestion" policy. No matter how stupid you think your
answer is, you are encouraged to say it. In fact, if we see body language from
a person hesitating we're quick to jump in and say "Spit it out! Just say it!"

We essentially create a safe zone for our team members to not worry about the
consequences of a wrong answer. There were so many times where a completely
wrong suggestion makes another teammate say, "Hey! Wait, I think I remember!"

We also have a policy of if a person has a different answer than the rest,
then he/she has to "fight for it". That is, you have to convince the rest of
the team. By having a "fight for it" rule, we put controlled confrontation on
the centre of the table and let people hash it out. There is no regret, or
fear, or worrying about feelings. It's just a normal part of our evening that
is done with humour and friendliness. Firm, but friendly!

By doing the above, we instil confidence in every team member. Those that are
more confident by their nature, can still be challenged by anyone and keeps
them in check, and the weaker confident ones feel safer to step forward when
they need to. It balances out and our team has absolutely great chemistry
because of it.

I've also played team sports for most of my life and some of the best teams
I've played for had former professional athletes. Since they were stronger
than the rest and more confident, they always raised their hand and took the
blame for any mistake! It was quite funny because we knew my screw up was not
their fault, but they would make an excuse about how they should've done 'X'
and I wouldn't have screwed up.

Needless to say, that allowed players like me that weren't former pros, to be
at ease and to be more confident and give my best, knowing that the strongest
player on the team wasn't going to look down on me for every mistake.

It was a very interesting dynamic where the more confident person ensured that
the less confident person is playing their best and it raised their
confidence. Again, it is a kind of delicate balance that can change on any
given night.

------
steven2012
It is shocking how far being self-confident can carry you, despite having very
little skill or being completely wrong. I've worked with several engineers who
are extremely confident in themselves, talk with complete confidence and
authority, and are generally wrong. One engineer I worked with recently almost
took down our entire company with his terrible code. And yet, everyone keeps
going to him for answers, etc.

I think it's just human nature. Underconfidence is the exact opposite.
Conducting you with underconfidence will lead to no one taking you seriously.
Unfortunately, moving up in your career requires for you to convince people to
have confidence in you, so this is a skill everyone needs to learn.

~~~
taurath
A simple record of getting things done well and accurately will make people
take you seriously in good organizations more than any amount of confidence.

~~~
mswen
Those of us with engineering or mathematical background wish that what you
assert would be consistently true. My own experience in medium to large
corporations indicates that this is only partially true and often requires
substantial endurance and sub-par compensation before it begins to work out.

I like Jason Roberts article on Luck Surface Area
[http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-
surf...](http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-surface-area)

This rings much closer to the truth in my experience. The best results are
some combination of what you suggest plus the confidence and ability to
communicate about the good work that you have done.

~~~
taurath
True - having absolutely no communication is a good way to get put into the
back room and fired in a round of budget cuts because nobody knows what you
do, but I consider that to be relatively uncommon rather than the rule. A
minimum amount of soft skills are required for almost any job.

------
jabagonuts
> There are two elements to this. One is knowing what you don't know - not
> being overconfident. The other is knowing what you do know

This reminds me of my musician days, when we sometimes talked about the four
stages of progression from beginner to pro.

1\. You know you don't know (beginner) 2\. You don't know you don't know
(cocky amateur - over confident) 3\. You don't know you know (talented amateur
- under confident) 4\. You know you know (seasoned pro)

~~~
percept
5\. You know you don't know, and nobody else does either (fully realized)

~~~
1_player
"I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know
nothing."

\- Socrates

------
crimsonalucard
Over confidence is related to self deception. In fact research shows that
over-confidence is the biological norm. It is normal for people to lie to
themselves. In fact the strange thing is, people who are under-confident tend
to be diagnosed as clinically depressed.

source:
[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100008723963904433437045775489...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390443343704577548973568243982)

~~~
spangry
The phenomenon you're talking about is known as 'depressive realism'
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism)).
The evidence is fairly inconclusive, but it's an interesting (and IMHO,
plausible) hypothesis on depression. The prevailing theory is that depressed
people have a more accurate perception of reality (as opposed to the non-
depressed, who have a positively biased perception).

There's some (disputed) evidence that Winston Churchill suffered from
depression. Perhaps this is why he was such an effective war-time prime
minister: in a time of war, if your perception of reality is inaccurate,
you're less likely to survive.

It's interesting to contrast the speeches of Chamberlain and Churchill with
this in mind. On the one hand you have Chamberlain's "Peace for our time"
speech after concluding the Munich Agreement:

"My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister
has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace
for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a
nice quiet sleep."

And on the other you have Churchill's first speech to the House of Commons
after becoming Prime Minister:

"I would say to the House as I said to those who have joined this government:
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an
ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of
struggle and of suffering.

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all
costs—Victory in spite of all terror—Victory, however long and hard the road
may be, for without victory there is no survival."

------
PaulHoule
A side effect of the narcissistic disturbance which you see a lot today is an
unstable self image. One minute you think you can do anything, then you have
some slight reversal and you think you are useless.

