Is self-confidence a duty?
“Are you using humility as a shield to cover your cowardice?” This recent question from a coach triggered this note.
I’ve often thought of humility, and even my impostor syndrome, as a badge of honor. I’ve been irritated by over-confident behaviors that border on arrogance: people who don’t listen, lack compassion, or confuse conviction with being right. Yet I fear I’ve used humility as a shield to cover my cowardice and indecision. I’m starting to realize self-confidence isn’t necessarily a personality trait; it’s a personal discipline. In the best case, self-confidence is self-awareness and operational rigor, and compatible with humility.
Let’s unpack this.
There are two broad things I need to do to increase my self-confidence. First, know myself. Second, improve my operational rigor.
Knowing myself means understanding my strengths, motivations and aspirations, and also my limitations and weaknesses. “Know thyself” requires humble and realistic reflection. It means being honest about what gives me energy, what I’m good at, what I avoid, where I get scared, and where I’m not yet strong enough.
Operating with rigor requires a well-calibrated understanding of what I’m capable of doing now, given my abilities and resources, especially time and energy. It also requires planning, expectation setting, clear communication, and asking for help.
People who act with self-confidence radiate clarity and simplicity, and are easier to work with because they make their goals, boundaries and expectations explicit. At the same time, we’ve all witnessed overconfident and arrogant behaviors, where confidence comes across as not listening, lacking compassion or teamwork.
I believe humility and arrogance are orthogonal to self-confidence. Arrogance says “I don’t need to listen.” Humility as a shield says “I can’t decide because I might be wrong.” Self-confidence can say “I can decide and act while listening and remaining open to being wrong.” I love Adam Grant’s phrase “confident humility:” believing in one’s capacity without pretending to have all the answers.
So why call self-confidence a duty?
Because lack of self-confidence can harm me and others. When I’m unclear, others absorb my ambiguity. If I don’t state my goals or boundaries, others have to guess. I may believe my self-doubt is humility when in reality others experience it as confusion.
Self-confidence is work, actually, which is why I think it’s worth treating it as a duty.
Acting with self-confidence requires constant discipline. One must periodically introspect to stay in touch with one’s motivations and limitations, calibrate against reality, and then communicate and act with enough clarity that others are not left carrying the burden of one’s unmanaged doubt.
Self-confidence, at its best, is not the absence of doubt. It is the discipline of knowing oneself, seeing reality clearly, and acting with enough rigor and humility to be useful to others.