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It’s no secret that my interpersonal and social development was stunted growing up and then further stunted by my own coping mechanisms around that – avoiding social interactions and focusing on the quality of my technical work. Here are three quick lessons I learned over the years. They may be intuitive to most people but for those us that are more technically oriented and less socially adept it sometimes help to spell them out.
Don’t mistake confidence for competence
I’ve found over time that there’s actually very little connection between the confidence a person projects and that person’s actual ability to execute. Now, it’s important to recognize that some people can become confident because of their success but more often than not success and confidence are not linked.
I’ve found it to be common for very competent people to appear unconfident because they’re constantly questioning their own skill level and constantly identifying and reflecting on their own mistakes — and learning from them.
Similarly, a person projecting confidence may be coasting on the image they create. Because they rely so heavily on that image they don’t actually do much because they’re afraid of failing and doing damage to the image they’ve crafted.
At a tactical level, this means you need to always probe for specific expertise when interviewing people or bringing on a consultant. This can take many forms but you need to question and probe by asking specific questions with specific answers and take note if they hand-wave away those answers or speak in general terms.
In a broader level, you’ll often find that confident but incompetent people move up quickly in organizations with broken hierarchies. This is true in businesses and government. If you see an organization with confident but incompetent people at the top then you should recognize their advancement hierarchy is not based on merit but on something else.
Don’t mistake charisma for character
Simply put, just because you’re drawn to someone due to their sparkling personality doesn’t mean that it’s someone you should trust. Many sociopathic, toxic, dangerous, treacherous and untrustworthy people [“cluster b personalities”] will develop charisma as a trait to lure in and take advantage of the unsuspecting people.
When you meet someone new and they seem to have a magnetic personality, watch that person carefully and observe how they treat others and be aware of how you’re being treated. Do they just use people or do they help people in equal measure. More importantly, how do they treat people below them in their operating environment?
Similarly, just because someone’s dull or a little abrasive doesn’t mean they’re untrustworthy. The same guidance holds true – observer how they treat others and pay attention to how they treat you.
Don’t mistake competence in one area for competence in all areas
Often times it’s easy to look at an expert in one field and assume that they’re equally skilled and knowledgeable in all fields. Mentally we transfer their “expert” status from a specific domain to all domains knowledge without even thinking about it. A quick examination of this proves it false: would you take construction advice from a medical doctor? Yet, even so we often still do it without thinking about it.
Don’t mistake communications ability with expertise
In many respects this follows the earlier advice “Don’t mistake charisma for character.” What I want to draw attention to here is that many people are poor thinkers but expert writers or speakers. Similarly, there are many people with tremendous expertise and knowledge but poor ability to communicate that knowledge effectively. The latter case is a tragedy but the former case is dangerous.
Don’t assume someone is an intelligent actor just because they’re well-spoken or an excellent writer. Many terrible ideas have been adopted despite being obviously terrible ideas because the person advocating for the idea was a good writer or a good speaker.
Be aware of people who rely on the “magic words” (sophistry) instead of on the quality of the underlying knowledge and ideas being communicated.