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I'm Adam Grant I'm here with caty K co-author of The Confidence Code welcome
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catd thank you Adam so what drove you to write this book you know we wrote another book six as so often happens you
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write one book and you end up writing another book so we wrote a book about six years ago on the value of women in
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the workforce and for that book we interviewed a lot of senior women in business in the military in politics and
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we were struck by phrases that they would use phrases like I'm just lucky to
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have got where I've got to or I was in the right place at the right time or you
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know I think I'm not quite ready for that promotion yet and it occurred to us
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that we never heard men say things like this and what was going on how could this be what is it you all think you
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deserve that next promotion immediately and uh it just struck us that something was happening with women in the
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professional space that was not happening in their home lives when you ask them about their kids or their
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friends they think they're great you know they're they're totally confidence
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of their ability to make friendships or be great mothers or supportive wives but
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get them into the professional space and we wondered if it was just anecdotal or
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if there was actually data behind this and what led you to the initial idea that it was a confidence Gap as opposed
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to humility let's say because they were whole it wasn't just words they weren't saying one thing
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and doing another they genuinely believed they weren't good enough and when you start looking into all of the
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date warton's done some of it uh Columbia business school has done run numbers on men overestimate their
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abilities by some 30% women routinely underestimate their abilities you talk to all the psychologists who are working
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in Business Schools who will put men and women in front of scientific reasoning qu quizzes the women will routinely
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think they've done less well than they've done the men will think they've
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done better than they've done in reality they've done about the same so it's that
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women's perception of their ability excuse below their actual ability it's
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not that they're just saying I'm not very good but actually thinking they're
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really good they don't believe they are as good as they are and that's why
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that's what the confidence Gap is women don't believe they are as good as they
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are and you point out that it's not just women but that as a BBC journalist you'd
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actually experience this oh yeah I'm you know riddled with this and have been for
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the last 30 years of my career I my favorite was I spent years in America saying that the only reason I've been
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successful in America is cu I speak the way I do I it can't possibly be my talents right or my ability or my hard
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work and that is preposterous it had to be some external factor and in my case it was the fact that I speak with a
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British accent which makes people think I'm smarter than I am and I actually
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believed this Adam I mean for years I believed this CLA will tell you my co-author she's been banging on about
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this one for years and we all find Claire's thing that that she had was that she only became moscow's CNN's
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Moscow correspondent because she happened to be in the right place and that is very common for women and what
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did you do when you noticed that there were people with British accents here who weren't
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successful well you that that would violate the theory at some level you always find some reason they must have
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some problem okay so um so you identify the Gap no one's ever asked me that before
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good well the the the confidence Gap um you know a lot of data behind it right um so what what do we do about it where
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does it come from and and how do we start to to solve the problem it led us to then on this rather uh tangential uh
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quest to find out what confidence is we thought that if we were going to try and
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grow confidence we were better off if we knew what we were dealing with so we would we interviewed dozens of
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neurologists and psychologists for the book and we would always start off with this simple question can you define
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confidence for us and inevitably we'd be met by a pause hm well it's complicated and we went into this with a
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couple of misconceptions first of all we thought that confidence was the same as
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self-esteem a general feeling that you're a valuable person I have high self-esteem I think I'm a valuable
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person the universe is a friendly place um it's an almost sort of moral emotional quality that is pervasive to
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who you are as a human being we all we were wrong confidence is not the same as self-esteem we also
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thought and this was wrong too that confidence is a Manor a mannerism it's a
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Bravado a sense of swagger it's that thing of dominating meetings or speaking
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loudest and longest we were wrong as well confidence is nothing to do with a manner it's to do with a belief that you
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can succeed at something so we' ask all these neurologists and psychologists
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what is confidence and finally it was Richard Petty who's a psychologist at Ohio State who said to us that he
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thought the best definition of confidence was this confidence is the stuff that turns thoughts into action
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which is beautifully simple and the great thing about that idea is that not only does it turn thoughts into action I
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want to introduce myself to that interesting looking person at a party but I feel nervous about doing so
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confidence gets you across the room to shake somebody's hand and introduce yourself when you do it when you take
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the action you grow your confidence so it's a wonderfully virtuous circle it's
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about confidence is about action even when you take the action ineffectively though so you make the introduction it's
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a complete disaster what happens then yes even if you fail even if you meet a you have to meet hurdles when you try
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something new it's inevitable right you're always going to meet hurdles you
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introduce yourself to that person they brush you off think to yourself what's the worst
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that's happened did the sky fall on your head did the earth open up and swallow
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you whole because that person brushed you off no you're still standing you're
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still there and in a sense even if you fail you've learned that you can take a
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risk try something hard even if you fail you're still there now if you keep doing
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that eventually you'll succeed if you introduce yourself to the next person the chances are pretty slim that they're
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going to brush you off as well you've learned that you can do something and that your world doesn't fall apart
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because you try something that's outside your comfort zone I read the news every
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night to millions of people around the world it doesn't test my confidence working at Wharton business
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school would terrify me I'm absolutely convinced I'd be useless at doing what
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you do the only way I would ever find out would be to try that's how you build
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confidence you take something that is challenging to you that seems difficult that is new and hard and outside your
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comfort zone a small thing or a big thing and you keep going and overcome hurdles and you succeed to some degree
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and that's how you build confidence what I like about this a lot is it's an
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interesting Counterpoint to the self-esteem movement right which which we all know from mountains of evidence
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did almost no good and a lot of harm um and this is different right this isn't
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about looking in the mirror and saying I'm really great it's actually about
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increasing your ability as you said convert thoughts into action so do you have any other favorite strategies for
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boosting confidence then okay so here's another reason that there's a confidence
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Gap one of the reasons that there's a confidence gap between men and women women find action often harder than men
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because we are more risk averse because we the fear of failure is enormous for us seems to be bigger than it is for men
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the other thing that women do is we think a lot we run around inside our own heads I sent Adam that email he didn't
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get back to me after half an hour maybe he's mad at me I did maybe the Hall of
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Warton is mad at me maybe everyone at Penn is mad at me because I didn't get
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back to them that's the way women work we extrap we take one small thing a a
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small slight a small criticism a small thing we've done wrong and it holds us
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back from acting and trying hard things because we're running around in our own
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heads and one of the things we think about in The Confidence Code is you have to think less you actually have to draw
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a line under those thoughts women dwell on the things they've done wrong it's
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what happens in review processes uh it's what happens in negotiations with bosses and what
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happens when we're there's one piece of work we didn't manage to hand in on time
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that day even though we've done five other good pieces of work we'll remember
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the one piece of work we didn't do so well we need to find a way to draw a red
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line under that it's interesting though because everything you say to me sounds
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like a list of desirable attributes and for everybody yeah and so is isn't isn't
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a possible solution here just to get men down to the level of reasonable confidence you know we're asked about
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that and and and some and counter point is we're asked well aren't we trying
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aren't we at risk RIS of pushing women into overconfidence I don't think we're
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at any risk of pushing women into overconfidence I see no evidence that we're going to suddenly become um you
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know Leeman Brothers Redux all of us I just don't think that's going to happen
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ideally everyone needs a little bit of overconfidence and it's interesting that
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psychologists disagree about most things but the one thing they actually do agree
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about is that a little bit of overconfidence is better than a little bit of underconfidence men probably have
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too much and it might be better for all of us if some of it came down particularly if you're thinking of a
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cultural environment in the office space right if you're thinking of meeting
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environments or uh employee employer relations that is to some extent a mannerism but I think the priority is to
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get women over this hump of underconfidence because that's what's stopping them from part of what's
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stopping them from taking action and getting to the next level mhm so you've
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talked a little bit about stretching outside of comfort zones um if you were going to create sort of your wish list
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of a couple of of steps that women and also men lacking confidence ought to take what else would go on that list be
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prepared to fail get over the fear of failure that the sort of techie Buzz phrase fail fast is a great one for
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women women hold themselves to a very high standard we know this women are 25% more prone to perfectionism than men are
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we're perfectionists at work we're we're perfectionists as wives we're
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perfectionists as mothers we're perfectionists in the yoga studio You Name It We Want to Be Perfect at it if
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you're going to try and be perfect you're never going to get there it's an
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impossible standard right no one is ever going to be perfect but this pursuit of perfection
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is something that holds us back from taking risks because it makes us very scared of failing and I think one one of
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the first things that people who are underc confident need to do is give up trying to be perfect it'll be the single
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biggest thing that they can do to help them take risks and be prepared to fail in closing is there a point that you
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feel has been misunderstood or oversimplified that you want to set the record straight on okay yes one is the
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idea some people have said to us well aren't we just trying to make women like
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men and we wrestled with this when we were writing the book basically do you have to be a jerk to be confident
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because I think a lot of women look around at them and they see a a very male model of confidence in the
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professional space that frankly is unappealing and in accessible to us because it's downright foreign and it
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was Christine lagard uh the head of the IMF who was who was really helpful to us
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in explaining this she said it essential for women to be authentic don't give up the very
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qualities that make you valuable an ability to listen ability to build consensus a high EQ that's good at
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reading a room warmth warmth is an amazing quality to have it's a very powerful quality don't give up all of
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that in the pursuit of a mannerism bravado and Swagger which doesn't really suit you and when you try it doesn't
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work for you anyway so you want to be confident in that you want your voice to be heard you don't want to apologize you
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don't as Cheryl Samberg says want to lean back but you want to do it in a way
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that is authentic to who you are as a woman and that's critical I think for people we're not asking people to become
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somebody different we just asking them to bring their perception of their abilities in line with their abilities
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and when you're there you're in The Sweet Spot okay thank you caddy thank
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you [Music]