Of course, teachers are not to
blame for this; taking chances
based on limited information is
necessary for human beings to
just get through a typical day. This
is partly because we don’t want to
appear ignorant and lose social
standing, but also because we
create mental shortcuts out of a
need for efficiency and rarely have
all the information we would like
before making a decision.
For example, even though we
know there is a slim chance a
driver may not see the red light
as they approach an intersection,
most of us still step boldly onto
the street when that little green
figure appears on the other side
of the road without a moment’s
hesitation. The ‘confidence’ we
exhibit in other people’s social
conformity, however, can get us
into rather a lot of trouble.
Just how much of an issue our over-confidence can
be is explored in detail in the book Confidence:
Overcoming Low Self-Esteem, Insecurity, and SelfDoubt. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a professor
of business psychology at University College London,
writes that lower confidence is in fact necessary for
gaining competence, which obviously sits at the base
of genuine confidence. In other words, overconfidence
gets in the way of us being curious, asking questions
and developing our skills such that real confidence is
justified.
But the issue is larger than that. When you consider
that, statistically, for any endeavour humanity has
turned its hand to, half the people involved possessed
a less-than-average competency, you begin to
understand just what the scale of the over-confidence
problem may be.
The dilemma really lies in what over-confidence robs
us of. Of course leaders must convey some sense of
certainty in order to engage their team to at least
attempt to prove a hypothesis right or wrong. It also
makes sense that they have a reasonable amount of
confidence that their hypothesis is probably correct.
However, over-confidence stops us looking too closely
at blind spots and possible errors. It has us ‘hope for
the best’ and ‘keep calm and carry on’ rather than
dealing with issues that may completely derail our
objectives, regardless of our confidence levels.