7 ms·

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

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.

pdpi 11y ago
Given that the situation was not ideal, what can we do to improve it? From the captain's point of view, he should learn to accept answers from less assertive people. From Linda's point of view, though, wishing that the captain would accept her answers is pointless. The only course of action available to her, if she wants to change things, is to be more assertive herself — Don't hope for change in others, effect change yourself.
- silverbax88 11y ago
  I don't think that was the scenario laid out, although I believe the overall article has merit, the anecdote is not a good one for representation of confidence as it impacts success. Linda is smart enough to know she might not be right; smarter quiz players (pub quizzes, Jeopardy, etc) don't blurt out an answer to every question. Claiming someone should 'be more confident' in this case indicates that she knew for a fact that she had the right answer but wasn't assertive. This ignores the more likely scenario: she didn't actually know if she was right. Yes, the article is stating Linda needed to be more confident - but out of context, what if Linda had tried being more confident and assertive in previous games and had been completely wrong, costing her team the match?
  - philipov 11y ago
    In fact, it is often the case that people achieve high accuracy because they are not confident, causing them to be more critical of potential answers. Forcing such a person to be more confident would deprive them of the advantage that makes them successful. Confidence inspires complacency.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
m52go 11y ago
> 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. That's exactly what the article is saying, if you follow it to the end: "What matters is that one's confidence be properly calibrated - neither too high, not too low. Very few of us achieve this." The point is that without proper confidence, there's no chance of success. With proper confidence, there's at least a chance. Hence the parallel to the "faint heart never won fair lady" aphorism: you're never guaranteed success in love without confidence, but you're guaranteed a shot you never otherwise would have had.
- spangry 11y ago
  Individual success anyway. Without leaders who have the ability to recognise competence in others (and incompetence, despite how confident a person sounds), the team/organisation/country has no chance of success. However, confident sounding individuals definitely thrive in this sort of environment (until the whole place goes belly-up because it's filled with confident sounding stupid people).
beobab 11y ago
I agree with your larger lesson, but it's worth noting that you don't get feedback about your answers being right or not until the end when no further answers are required, so the captain did not have empirical evidence of Linda's correctness. He will next time, however. :)
- abetusk 11y ago
  This is not necessarily true. In may pub quizes I've been part of, there are multiple rounds of 5-10 questions each where the answers are given after each round. This keeps teams engaged and heightens the mood since there are running totals for each team. Had the captain been better, he could have picked out which teammates (presumably, Linda) had been better predictors of the correct answer. Instead he chose confidence as the metric.
exelius 11y ago
> 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. Key word here is "can". In many leadership circumstances, it is impossible to know the right answer definitively. In those cases, it is best to choose what appears to be the best answer, and stick with it until you have overwhelming evidence otherwise. You need confidence to do that -- and in many cases, unwarranted confidence. Leadership is all about putting yourself out there to be wrong. Many people are very risk-averse without someone else giving them permission, so you give them permission. But ultimately, who gave you permission? At some point down the chain, the answer has to be "I give myself the permission". Like it or not, leadership is 90% confidence, 10% competence (and the 10% competence is largely around how well you learn from failure).
spangry 11y ago
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...
- js2 11y ago
  I was startled at how quickly incompetence spread throughout the organisation, like a metastasising cancer. Sounds like an example of the law of crappy people in action. http://www.terrencebrown.net/the-law-of-crappy-people/ http://www.terrencebrown.net/the-law-of-crappy-people/ https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2015/02/ben-horowitz-the-law-of-crappy-people/ https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2015/02/ben-horowitz-the-la...
- nostrademons 11y ago
  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.
jt2190 11y ago
> 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. How should the coach have audited the correctness of answers that he himself didn't know the answer to? Should he put his confidence in answer that the person answering wasn't confident in? I'm reminded of the film "The last King of Scotland": [Idi Amin] I want you to tell me what to do. [Nicholas Garrigan] You want ME to tell YOU what to do? [Idi Amin] Yes, you are my advisor. You are the only one I can trust in here. You should have told me not to throw the Asians out, in the first place. [Nicholas Garrigan] I DID! [Idi Amin] But you did not persuade me, Nicholas. You did not persuade me! It's really not enough to be right. You must convince others that you are right.
- unfocused 11y ago
  If Idi Amin and Nicholas Garrigan had the "fight it out!" rule in my pub quiz night, Nicholas should've won. Of course, in their context it's a bit more complicated. :)
- Retra 11y ago
  Those who are making decisions should spend more effort listening to those who know how to make them. Otherwise, what is the justification for having executive power? It's not your fault you don't know how to make the decision, and it's also not your fault that you don't know how to listen? Then what is your fault? Why should you have any power at all, under those circumstances? There's not much value in picking advisors who you prefer to ignore.
js8 11y ago
As far as I understand it, there are ways to remedy this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management

pdpi 11y ago

Given that the situation was not ideal, what can we do to improve it? From the captain's point of view, he should learn to accept answers from less assertive people. From Linda's point of view, though, wishing that the captain would accept her answers is pointless. The only course of action available to her, if she wants to change things, is to be more assertive herself — Don't hope for change in others, effect change yourself.

silverbax88 11y ago
I don't think that was the scenario laid out, although I believe the overall article has merit, the anecdote is not a good one for representation of confidence as it impacts success. Linda is smart enough to know she might not be right; smarter quiz players (pub quizzes, Jeopardy, etc) don't blurt out an answer to every question. Claiming someone should 'be more confident' in this case indicates that she knew for a fact that she had the right answer but wasn't assertive. This ignores the more likely scenario: she didn't actually know if she was right. Yes, the article is stating Linda needed to be more confident - but out of context, what if Linda had tried being more confident and assertive in previous games and had been completely wrong, costing her team the match?
- philipov 11y ago
  In fact, it is often the case that people achieve high accuracy because they are not confident, causing them to be more critical of potential answers. Forcing such a person to be more confident would deprive them of the advantage that makes them successful. Confidence inspires complacency.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

m52go 11y ago

> 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. That's exactly what the article is saying, if you follow it to the end: "What matters is that one's confidence be properly calibrated - neither too high, not too low. Very few of us achieve this." The point is that without proper confidence, there's no chance of success. With proper confidence, there's at least a chance. Hence the parallel to the "faint heart never won fair lady" aphorism: you're never guaranteed success in love without confidence, but you're guaranteed a shot you never otherwise would have had.

spangry 11y ago
Individual success anyway. Without leaders who have the ability to recognise competence in others (and incompetence, despite how confident a person sounds), the team/organisation/country has no chance of success. However, confident sounding individuals definitely thrive in this sort of environment (until the whole place goes belly-up because it's filled with confident sounding stupid people).

beobab 11y ago

I agree with your larger lesson, but it's worth noting that you don't get feedback about your answers being right or not until the end when no further answers are required, so the captain did not have empirical evidence of Linda's correctness. He will next time, however. :)

abetusk 11y ago
This is not necessarily true. In may pub quizes I've been part of, there are multiple rounds of 5-10 questions each where the answers are given after each round. This keeps teams engaged and heightens the mood since there are running totals for each team. Had the captain been better, he could have picked out which teammates (presumably, Linda) had been better predictors of the correct answer. Instead he chose confidence as the metric.

exelius 11y ago

> 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. Key word here is "can". In many leadership circumstances, it is impossible to know the right answer definitively. In those cases, it is best to choose what appears to be the best answer, and stick with it until you have overwhelming evidence otherwise. You need confidence to do that -- and in many cases, unwarranted confidence. Leadership is all about putting yourself out there to be wrong. Many people are very risk-averse without someone else giving them permission, so you give them permission. But ultimately, who gave you permission? At some point down the chain, the answer has to be "I give myself the permission". Like it or not, leadership is 90% confidence, 10% competence (and the 10% competence is largely around how well you learn from failure).

spangry 11y ago

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...

js2 11y ago
I was startled at how quickly incompetence spread throughout the organisation, like a metastasising cancer. Sounds like an example of the law of crappy people in action. http://www.terrencebrown.net/the-law-of-crappy-people/ http://www.terrencebrown.net/the-law-of-crappy-people/ https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2015/02/ben-horowitz-the-law-of-crappy-people/ https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2015/02/ben-horowitz-the-la...
nostrademons 11y ago
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.

jt2190 11y ago

> 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. How should the coach have audited the correctness of answers that he himself didn't know the answer to? Should he put his confidence in answer that the person answering wasn't confident in? I'm reminded of the film "The last King of Scotland": [Idi Amin] I want you to tell me what to do. [Nicholas Garrigan] You want ME to tell YOU what to do? [Idi Amin] Yes, you are my advisor. You are the only one I can trust in here. You should have told me not to throw the Asians out, in the first place. [Nicholas Garrigan] I DID! [Idi Amin] But you did not persuade me, Nicholas. You did not persuade me! It's really not enough to be right. You must convince others that you are right.

unfocused 11y ago
If Idi Amin and Nicholas Garrigan had the "fight it out!" rule in my pub quiz night, Nicholas should've won. Of course, in their context it's a bit more complicated. :)
Retra 11y ago
Those who are making decisions should spend more effort listening to those who know how to make them. Otherwise, what is the justification for having executive power? It's not your fault you don't know how to make the decision, and it's also not your fault that you don't know how to listen? Then what is your fault? Why should you have any power at all, under those circumstances? There's not much value in picking advisors who you prefer to ignore.

js8 11y ago

As far as I understand it, there are ways to remedy this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management