Finding the Sweet Spot of Confidence - Think Again Series - Chapter 2

Robert Greiner 0:05

Yep, we're recording.

Tiffany Lentz 0:06

Awesome, awesome. Well, I thoroughly enjoyed this chapter. And it was a great timing is perfect too because in the next couple of weeks, I think maybe two weeks, I'm getting ready to do a an internal presentation for an office at our company. And they had specifically asked me to talk about impostor syndrome. And being a woman's, a women leader, female executive in tech. And if I've ever really was funny when he even asked, Have you ever dealt with impostor syndrome? I laughed out loud. Because it's like a state of being right. So it was really, really good timing on this one.

Robert Greiner 0:44

Yeah. Now when I read the chapter, title, which is the arm armchair quarterback in the imposter, I'm much more armchair quarterback than imposter. I got very rarely feel that way. And maybe we can get into some of the reasons why. Or we can pontificate on it. I have actually, I've no idea. And so there's a, I'm gonna bring a level of ignorance to this conversation today. Because I don't, it doesn't quite resonate with me as much as others. And I do want to talk to you about it, though, because I did recently have a conversation with one of the managers on my team who just had a new manager just got promoted, doing a fine job. Planning is good, issues and risk management is good. He cares about his team. The client likes him projects going well, and in fact, had recently just gotten some very good feedback for some contributions he made to, like a big planning exercise. And so I'm, I'm like, yeah, it's always good when you advocate for someone's promotion. And then months later, they're proven you, right? And so I'm talking to him about it, giving him some of the feedback that I've been hearing. And he's totally, like, I don't deserve it. I don't feel like I'm doing a good job kind of mentality. And he used the term imposter syndrome. And it had come up a couple of other times before, but I found this test on psi com.net. Have you heard of that? Before? I hadn't. Okay, so what maybe we'll get to in a little bit. But there are some questions like sometimes always, rarely, never. And if you answer, always often to some of these questions, and there's a chance that you suffer from, let's call it like chronic imposter syndrome every now and then I get that you can feel like you don't quite stack up. But I think some people deal with this, like regularly. And so maybe we can get into that in a little bit. But it's timely for me. I didn't have I don't know, if I had great advice other than encouragement at the time, this person really was doing a very good job. So it was a little bit easier to have the discussion. I think when there's when there's positive feedback involved, but I have a, I have a stake in this a very near term need to beef up on the topic. So I'm glad we're getting to talk about it today.

Tiffany Lentz 2:59

Yeah, that's cool. I'd love to see that test too, as I can think of some younger folks in my life, who could benefit greatly from taking it, even just for the sake of making sense of it, of having kind of an awareness. Just being being honest about where you are is the first step to some kind of recovery. But but you're also right, I know we're jumping right into this. But you're you are right in that one of the most powerful tools for overcoming impostor syndrome, or uncovering or overcoming a an unhealthy relationship with it, which is the concept I thought was so interesting in this chapter, that we don't swing too far away and say everything about imposter syndrome is awful and wrong. But establishing a healthy balance is proof points. It's it's logic, it's proof points, its reasoning. It's it's showing someone that their opinion of themself doesn't line up with reality. And that reality is actually much better than the way they're thinking.

Robert Greiner 3:59

Yeah, and that resonates with me, right? What are the objective standards, not your self imposed standards, which, again, is a balance, because I think some of the highest performers in the world across any discipline, have hold themselves to insanely high standards. But there's a difference between I did this, I did these three things poorly, I can do better, I'm going to work hard and do better. Versus I did this and I didn't measure up and I'll never measure up. I'm not good enough. And I do think that it's a lot of mentality. And I'm hoping that you're gonna say something around the lines of there are ways to mitigate or train your way or at least behave in ways that move you in a more balanced, healthy direction.

Tiffany Lentz 4:44

Sure, sure. Knowledge is power. Right? I think. Yeah. For the for the majority, the vast majority of people. The answer is yes. There are always going to be situations where someone's behavior is so deeply rooted in fear or some sort of have trauma, childhood trauma, adult trauma is something that makes them not be able to really absorb reality and absorb data and let it affect you. There's always extremes. But for the most for the majority of people, yes. And just a slow steady progress. Yeah.

Robert Greiner 5:17

So let's get into it. I love the tagline of the chapter finding the sweet spot of confidence, which is super important.

Tiffany Lentz 5:25

It's great. I actually love the quote, the Darwin quote.

Robert Greiner 5:28

Yeah, the Darwin quote, yeah. Why don't you go for it.

Tiffany Lentz 5:30

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.

Robert Greiner 5:33

Boy, is that true?

Tiffany Lentz 5:34

Yes. And amen. Yes, it does.

Robert Greiner 5:37

Absolutely true. And so there is a spectrum here, where you either highly self confident, very low self confidence, neither of those are good. Having more self confidence in certain situations benefits you having more, I don't know if Humility is the opposite of self confidence. That's not right. But there are if you have an abundance of confidence, if you're out of balance in that direction, there are lots of situations in life that will surprise you, you're going to have some fairly negative outcomes, lose relationships, get fired, whatever, because you think your mental model of how things are going is heightened, elevated, incorrect, and you think it's better than it is. And then on the on the downside, you may be holding yourself back from career advancement, taking chances in life going and achieving your dreams and goals, because you don't think you're good enough. And so I think this is a key thing for all of us. I'm I'm glad we're talking about in chapter two here.

Tiffany Lentz 6:37

Yeah. And what the other thing that's interesting about this chapter is that they, the author goes back and forth between one's own personal fonces and proud mentality. So the the examples of politicians, for instance, who project confidence that they don't have and project experience. And yet even in the face of facts, people vote for them anyway. That's a whole that is a I'm almost surprised he didn't break this into two chapters. Because there that is, that's a completely different concept. To me. That is, how, how am I, as an observer, a reader, a consumer, unable to accept truth when I see it or read it? Versus how am I as a human, professional, female, partner, parent, etc, able to pull myself out of a set of behaviors? I don't I don't know the answer. I mean, I listening to the reading the examples through of even the example they gave of the Iceland elections from a number of years ago, I just can't imagine myself seeing facts about certain candidates, and then supporting someone who had a track record of failure. I just don't, I don't know how that I, maybe I don't. Maybe I'm weighing too heavily on my own logic, but I don't I don't understand how masses of people ignore facts. But then again, we're also living through one of those scenarios right now, aren't we?

Robert Greiner 8:11

nk, again, these are, this is: 1000

Tiffany Lentz 9:59

Hear I don't know, I'm sorry. I was like, not so good. I'm reading too. I like everything you said it was like, I don't know where to go from there. I love this ignoble the ignoble prize piece, but I don't I don't really know how it works in here other than it's just or the the Dunning Kruger effect, I guess is the the assumption assumption, I guess the assumptions that we that we make. When we don't, we don't think we don't think deeply about the details, but maybe it doesn't really fit as much in here. For our Well,

Robert Greiner: 10:29

They do have the survey of managers who tend to overrate their abilities. And that is true across geographies across cultures. So this is a human condition. This is not an American thing or a European thing.

Tiffany Lentz: 10:46

Well, it was this. So this, this management survey, having a look at this, managers tend to overrate their abilities. The graph, we're referring to measures, self evaluation versus data. This is I found this information very interesting. But then it also caused me to go and look up more recent articles about gender, and gender levels of confidence, gender in the way, the way women describe their areas of expertise, versus the way men describe their areas of expertise. So I would love to have seen a secondary graph here that even compared those two things, because what we have is a country,

Robert Greiner: 11:25

right? Or two dots for each country.

Tiffany Lentz: 11:28

Yes, yes.

I don't know. I think it is pretty interesting. I'm not not making any sort of assertions with this. But very interesting to see that the self evaluation, comparative to data, not in a positive way. It does air pretty heavily on in into Central and South America. That's, that's interesting to me. I don't know why that is. It's not surprising to me that we see some representation from Asia, further down on the self assessment category. Because that's such a, such a familial culture, a culture that even from a naming standpoint, puts family name before given name. Just some interesting observations of the little bits I know about some of these countries, not sure how much I believe that the United States is smack in the middle, that we're like, perfect. We're accurate with our data, and also our self assessments. I'm not sure I buy that. But that's interesting.

Robert Greiner: 12:27

Yeah. And it's also so you see these, these clumping, these groups of ethical areas, or cultures or whatever. But it we're all in the same like area of the graph, which is, so what we're perceiving maybe as a great overconfidence of Americans might be relatively more but not an order of magnitude more,

Tiffany Lentz: 12:50

right. It's also an interesting grouping of humanity overall, like, we're generally pretty confident in what we think we know about ourselves. There's not a single country below below the mean, but not one. Yeah. I also wonder what there would be some relationship here that there would be around GDP around relative wealth of these, the clumping of these countries.

Robert Greiner: 13:14

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And then the thing, there were all above the 45 degree line, but if I'm reading this, right, and the the x axis here is your objective score, so you're rated across some dimensions, which we could probably also nitpick is very hard to manage, are very hard to assess. But if our average score seems to be around a three, and are, the y axis is what what we self score is around like a 3.5 or four. So we're, we're all clumped together and we're all overconfident in our abilities. And that's true for everything, right? You've been in a room, I think, where someone has said, Okay, raise your hand, if you think you're an above average driver, and 70% of the room raises their hand. Would you raise your hand on that, by the way? I would?

Tiffany Lentz: 14:02

I would. You would, I would. Yeah. Okay. No matter what they say about women drivers, I would, I would not have said that 10 or more years ago, and then after living in Manhattan, and like getting experienced driving there, as well as observing firsthand so many taxi drivers. Now I would raise my hand.

Robert Greiner: 14:23

Yeah. So

I played a

Tiffany Lentz: 14:24

trial by fire.

Robert Greiner: 14:26

I played a ton of racing games as a kid, and I do think that helped, maybe. So I think I'm, I think I'm above average, but who knows? Okay, so, we, we have these sort of like a dichotomy here of individuals and people on teams, very competent people thinking that they're not good enough to be where they're at or to go and their goals and dreams and then you have this, this sort of systemic overconfidence. You did mention gender earlier, so I've done little to no research on this, it has been my, I guess I'll call it professional observation that women tend to display less overconfidence than men, their confidence to competence, gap or whatever it's called in the book is a little more imbalanced than then with men. That's my observation. What do you what do you think about that?

Tiffany Lentz: 15:21

I believe that is true. I've done a little more research than you have over the years, for what I think are obvious reasons, just for the the just because of my own place in a technology industry, and then the different audiences I tend to interact with. And it's it is both a confidence gap expression, but there's another layer to it. Where, I don't know the I think the the statistics are almost impossible to measure from a percentage standpoint, there is a, there's a, there's a point where women have to reach a certain very high actually belief in their own confidence before they will claim expertise. I heard one expert a number of years ago cite this as around 90%. So a woman, a person as a human, they have to as an individual have to believe their expertise is around 90%, before they will claim it where men will claim expertise on something at around the 40%. So it isn't, it's more than just the way they express it or even say in an interview, talking about their experiences, they actually won't talk about them. If they're not so confident that they won't be wrong. Yeah, if that's making sense, where men have one or two experiences with something and instantly claim expertise in that area, especially in an interview situation. So yes, it's it's it, you'll see bits and pieces of that throughout all interactions with men and women. But it's it's blatantly obvious in an interview process. And if one does not look carefully, one can fall into the trap of thinking that you're evaluating two candidates equally, and just listening to what they say. But if you're not digging a layer deeper, you're not realizing that one candidate is over emphasizing and one is intentionally leaving things out.

Robert Greiner: 17:25

Right? Because you just blindly are asking the same questions, and you're taking responses at face value. Now, would you say though, is it too much of a leap to say that this is not a these are not behaviors that are just limited to interviews? An interview is a high stakes, interpersonal discussion about professional aptitude. Let's say you're in lots of high and medium stakes professional conversations every week. And so my fear here because I have a daughter, right? I have my wife is a scientist, right? So I have people I care about deeply in my life that are headed for or carved already in this mix. And B, you want everyone to have an equal shot. Right? And if you are in a meeting in a discussion, and you hold back, like you said, and you do that 1000 times over the course of 10 years in your career, maybe the first 10 years, like the formative 10 years, that creates a flattened growth trajectory. And so the I think this is, this is like a daily thing.

Tiffany Lentz: 18:30

yes, thing 100% I agree that's a great way of seeing it. It's not just high stakes, it's it's it's minute by minute interactions. I think that now, that's what takes us back to this this particular instance, in the book where we're talking about the difference between humility and confidence and finding that sweet spot is the more fact based one can be the more honest we can be with ourselves than the more honest we are with other people. On a minute by minute basis, am I good at something or not good at something? Am I on a journey with it or not? Just the ability to be that transparent, would change the way we we speak about any topic?

Robert Greiner: 19:15

Yeah.

So so I'm trying to put myself in the situation if I'm in an interview, and in my head, I'm thinking, I may not be the best at this thing. But I'm certainly better than you bozos. And I'm better than the standard that is around here. And so I'm gonna I could figure it out. It's gonna be fine. Yeah, like, that's kind of that's in my head. But but also I do suffer from the Dunning Kruger kind of thing where like with golf, for instance, were and chess where I learned a little bit I watched some YouTube videos, I feel like I understand like mentally, how things are working and what's the dynamic plane and all of this stuff and then danger levels and whatever. And I, I get into it. And the but then when I go when I'm sitting at the chess board or I'm standing over the ball to hit it, what happens in my head before I make a move is vastly different than what happens in real life. Like I'm terrible at golf. Horrible. But I think I'm much better than I am. And if I and I haven't played in, like a year, right, and if I went out today, I guarantee you I would, I would be getting upset at how poorly things are going. And so I do think there's everything that this book is saying is true in subsets of our lives. No one's an expert in everything. And we all are we all I would argue, if I'm, if I'm betting I'll put chips in here, that we all are overconfident in a lot of areas that we may not recognize. And we're maybe not as confident in in areas that we we actually should be.

Tiffany Lentz: 20:53

That's so awesome. When you were talking I wasn't I was trying to relate like what what are the things that I where, I operate like that. I think cooking is one of them. I'm a pretty good cook, I like to experiment in the kitchen. But there are lots of times when I get over not not like a like, I wouldn't I wouldn't claim to be a chef and not that I'm not educated and I just like to play around. But there are times when I when I I get overly confident and I'll put something together with spices that I think that I think are just right and it's not and I'm surprised that like why didn't that work? What but I'm

Robert Greiner: 21:29

Tiffany, why did you put cinnamon on shrimp?

Tiffany Lentz: 21:34

Interestingly enough, make because I lived in the Middle East for a long time cinnamon in like ground turkey or ground beef is really good. Really? Yes, dude, it's so good. That's so funny that you use cinnamon as an example. Because I did that just the other day. I make this whole recipe with cinnamon and basil and fresh basil and tomatoes and Turkey and celery salt. And it's amazing. But I did the I did the some of the ingredients wrong. I just switched out a few things and wasn't really paying attention to what I was doing. And then I tasted and I was like, surprised at my own ineptitude. Like why isn't this any?

Robert Greiner: 22:11

But the thing Okay, so the thing about golf and cooking, which are relatively well known spaces, when I'm out on the golf course, in the moment, my confidence competence gap is out of whack. I just think I'm, I think I can do things I really can't do. But as we're talking, I'm the first to admit like I'm terrible at golf. I have an objective measure there. Which is score, right. driving distance, fairways and regulation, greens and regulation, how many putts it takes to, to fall apart how many times I put off the green, which happens an alarmingly high number of times. Right. And so even though I have all the same tools as people who are on the PGA Tour, right, I buy all the same clubs that they use, right. And so it's easy for me to say, I'm terrible at golf. In professional life, though, and Ira Glass from NPR, This American Life, right? He has a really great saying where you get into creative pursuits. And I don't mean like painting, although it can be what we do is a creative pursuit, right? If there's some art and science involved, you get into those because you have this, like killer taste. And your taste outpaces your skill. And so everything that you create, in an area that you're passionate about is terrible to you. Because you can, you can see things you can perceive excellence, better than you can create it and it takes a long time to, to catch up to that. So I think that could be the case. A little bit of the case here as well. But I do think bringing in is all this to say bring in as much objective standard as you can, what really is the measure here, because a lot of times it's not that high, and you're probably an order of magnitude or a standard deviation, like above it. But you're just not quite where you want to be. And I think understanding those differences is very important.

Tiffany Lentz: 24:05

Well, so this is this is a really good point, because you mentioned earlier about the two axes of humility and, and confidence. And I love that the author reminds us in the book where the word the word humility comes from, because we what you're really talking about when you're when you're talking about having an objective understanding of the standards is really what you're grounded in. What is your what's your basis for reality or your your your objective, your objective standard, that is not, it's not variable. And I think sometimes this is not the first time I've read something like this and thought, I can't think of an example off the top of my head. Maybe you can but it's not the first time I've realized that often. Because English is such a derived language. It sometimes words take on a meaning that they didn't actually come with. So if the word humility is not the way we understand it, it's not this wallflower over overly quiet backward person who doesn't

Robert Greiner: 25:12

timid or weak

Tiffany Lentz: 25:13

yes, who doesn't speak up for themselves. It's it actually is a reality of knowing where you are grounded in that you come from the earth, that we're flawed and fallible. And we all and then another layer of grounding of what am I grounding my thinking in? We just use the word humility, differently in 2021, than what we're what it originally means. If we thought about it in its real true meaning, then the opposite of humility is confidence. And there is there's a nice balance in between. Yeah, actually, the combination of the two is the right answer. It's the confident humility.

Robert Greiner: 25:54

And I think confidence and like ambition, for instance, and the desire to achieve and build things and, and progress a career. And having goals and objectives is such a wonderful thing. Like you're moving towards an objective, struggling against it, it's, again, it's the balance things, these things get out of balance consistently, right? You can be balanced today, tomorrow, you're not. It's like a constant adjustment constant. Driving a car,

Tiffany Lentz: 26:20

you often hear I often hear people it like, oh, it makes me cringe when I hear them even say it to their children, where they're comparing drive, and ambition, to humility, don't if you have too much of these things, if you're a confident speaker, or you have a lot of drive and ambition, you're clearly not a humble person. Wrong. I think I suspect that too much of that communication. And that sort of training over over a few generations is what has led to so much impostor syndrome, like the unhealthy kind, where we don't know how to be confident in our own competence, or the the the two or three things we're really gifted at, and not be perceived as arrogant. When really confident Humility is the answer. There's a more of a a gracious demeanor or something that is the right answer. But it doesn't mean that one is also not ambitious and driven. Those are great things.

Robert Greiner: 27:23

So the way I view sort of healthy competence is a trust in one's ability. Right? You take something on, yes, I can do that. I can see that through. And almost a commitment to persevere past like the struggle points, to get something done. Humility, I think it has to do with like your view of how important you are not so much your view of I can go and crush that thing. Because you want people that run into burning buildings, for instance, to have supreme confidence in their abilities, right? There's no, there's no room for second guessing. And so I do think this competence becomes maybe pride when you or arrogance when when you get a little bit too self important, I think is really, and so going back to some of the earlier podcast episodes, when you're when you can define success based on Team outcomes or the success of those around you. That's a good thing. Right? Because I would tend to trend more towards that they're prideful, overly competitive zone. leaf blowers, they're really good at those leaves. Because I'm, I'm just hyper competitive, right? And so it helps me for instance, to put myself in environments where I'm measured based on the the team success, and then I can channel that competitive energy towards something that benefits others. Otherwise, if it's just left unchecked, then I'll on doing something stupid, you know?

Tiffany Lentz: 28:55

Yeah, that's, that's really good. I like that you went there. I'm really sorry about the leaf blower out my window. See how much I liked that you went there with this the unhealthy view of importance, because right on the cusp of that, then is this this delusion of grandeur, right. Where you, you see yourself as something so unique and so so cutting edge, that you've actually stepped another bit another step away from reality into this overconfidence, that causes that just puts you at extreme risk.

Robert Greiner: 29:35

Yeah. And I like actually the last paragraph of the book, the last sentence of the book, right is arrogance leaves us blind to our weaknesses. So that's if you if we're in that pride zone, that arrogant zone, that overconfidence zone. If our confidence outpaces our competence, then we're blind to our weaknesses. That makes sense. Humility is a reflective lens. So So we can see our skills for what they are more clearly. And then he says confident Humility is a corrective lens. It enables us to overcome weaknesses. And I think that that's really the key there is if you want to get better and you want to improve, it's the combination of confidence and humility, that allows you to see weaknesses and the confidence to overcome them, and to do to put the work in to become better at the skill that you want improve on.

Tiffany Lentz: 30:31

Yep. Yep, that's so good. Yeah, an ongoing struggle, right? It's a minute by minute, it's not even day by day, it's just a minute by minute constant beat constant awareness. That's a great analogy used of driving a car, just a constant awareness.

Robert Greiner: 30:45

Awesome. So do we have any advice for overcoming impostor syndrome?

Tiffany Lentz: 30:52

I think so. I think from the book, providing yourself or using others that you trust, to provide you with that mirror of reality, using humility, as a reflective lens, and all con, you're keeping your confidence in yourself rooted in, in any ways that you can measure comparative metrics, or that's your that's where the lens of other people comes into play. I think that was certainly true for me, getting over impostor syndrome, the negative aspects of it at an earlier in my career, having people in my life who could who could speak that truth into me and show me more facts. I think that I think those are, those are big ones. also realizing that not everything about imposter syndrome is bad. So there is a nice picture in the book that talks about when impostor syndrome, we should expect it to be common, like if we're giving a speech or something that pushes us into extreme places of nerves. Also, just the realization that it is prevalent prevalent in marginalized groups. So not just we've talked about women, but minorities, often people who are who are living working in the US and are not are not native English speakers, just a raised awareness of who we're talking to the whole person, and what we're maybe seeing and not seeing in them. So there are times when it can be helpful, I think, I think not throwing the baby out with the bathwater on that one, and then creating spaces for ourselves to have to have constant small loops of feedback around both humility and confidence.

Robert Greiner: 32:30

I love it. Yeah, I'll add one more so So Lori Dupree, who's our chief people officer, when I started at the company, Gosh, 10 years ago, almost, I remember this slide in our onboarding, training around, it's called the learning edge, which, if you graph sort of your ability in an area and the challenge of work, if your ability outpaces the challenge, you're just going to be bored. If your ability is way lower than the challenge, you're going to be stuck. I think it's called the arrested development. But it just, it's so you're so in the deep end, that you're just struggling to take breaths, and you can't make any kind of progress. And then there's this sort of sweet spot just like everything else. And so I might say, if you're feeling feelings of impostor syndrome, and on the quiz, we'll put in the, in the show notes, let's I believe the success I've had as a fluke, even when I do well, well, I don't think I really deserve it. I worry about feeling overwhelming shame if my incompetence is ever revealed, I worry that people will find out. I'm not as smart as they think I am those kinds of things, right? If you are feeling areas of feelings of imposter syndrome, or, or not good enough, maybe that's maybe that's a good thing at times, though, if in the book, he talks about Dunning Kruger effect, like the only way to know if you're a victim of it is to feel like you're incompetent, right? And so, if you can redefine in your head when you feel uncomfortable, or feel like an impostor, if you can say, Good, I'm doing something that matters. That could be helpful. Maybe reframe the feeling as a positive indicator that you're growing and growing and stretching, growing is painful, right? It's difficult. And maybe you can say, Oh, this is I know, I'm doing what I should be doing. Because I feel like I'm a little bit out of place. What are some objective? Then to go back to your advice? What are some objective things that I can put together? Who can I trust to give me feedback, so that I can push past this and then look back and say, Hey, I really, I really grew there.

Tiffany Lentz: 34:32

Right? Oh, that's good. What a positive trigger. That is, to when you when you have that feeling to just have a set of that. That sense. You have a set of other responses for it. That's good. Awesome. Thank you.

Robert Greiner: 34:44

I think we're over on time. Thanks for sticking with me.

Tiffany Lentz: 34:47

It's a good chapter.

Robert Greiner: 34:48

Yeah. Yeah. Chapter Three next week,

Tiffany Lentz: 34:51

the joy of being wrong

Robert Greiner: 34:52

the joy of being wrong. Excited about that? Yeah.

Tiffany Lentz: 34:55

Awesome. Well, thank you.

Robert Greiner: 34:57

I have a degree from Harvard whenever I'm wrong the world makes a little less sense Frasier Crane that's an underrated show

Tiffany Lentz: 35:05

oh it is I love that yeah

Robert Greiner: 35:07

okay cool well I'll see you next week

Tiffany Lentz: 35:08

take care

Robert Greiner: 35:09

bye

bye