Confidence, Credibility, and The Relentless Pursuit of Competence

Dear Friends,

I'm excited to be getting away for several days to spend time with two of our children, whom we don't see nearly enough of these days. The challenges of coordinating busy lives and complicated work schedules make the time we can get together truly precious.

Even though I live my life in a relative state of "preferment" - spending my time with whom I want, when I want, and where I want. I find it difficult to pull myself away from my work, selfishly, because I derive enormous joy from what I accomplish daily. I've worked most of my life to get here, and realize at the same time that making time for the people we love is always more important than anything else. It's just easier when you feel you need a break from your daily grind than when you love what you do nearly as much as the people you care most about.

I've noticed that many of the most successful CEOs I've worked with prefer work over almost anything else. It may be that they love what they do, but it's also true that they are more competent as CEOs than as husbands, parents, homeowners, neighbors, and friends. They might be good at those things, but the sense of accomplishment in their professional lives feels more satisfying. But they eventually discover that unless they reconcile the non-work areas of their lives, the work side suffers. All work and no play - and all that.

Leaders need to be congruent; when the person others see at work is different from the person they know outside of the office, the ability to be an effective leader diminishes. To be credible, we need to be seen as congruent. That is the topic of today's essay, which is presented below.

Next week, I'll report back on how well I take my own advice!

Have a great week!

prl

Confidence, Credibility, and The Relentless Pursuit of Competence

For several years, I traveled across the United States and Europe, speaking with business leaders on the topic of competence. The title of my CEO presentations, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Competence,” was a clever attempt to explain that happiness is the result of our accomplishing meaningful things. That is how leaders can stem dysfunction in their organizations and cultivate high performance.

The central theme of my thesis is that leaders improve performance when they cultivate the joy people experience when they accomplish things that are meaningful to themselves and beneficial to others. But simply understanding this doesn’t drive change. Leading change requires first becoming more effective at influencing those you lead.

When I reflect on why most people weren’t adopting the program recommendations, I realize that being highly confident didn’t necessarily make me credible. By my own definition, not accomplishing what I aimed for meant I was incompetent.

My audiences generally found my program fascinating and insightful. But they didn’t tend to return to their companies and put them to use. Concepts are simply tools. They are useless unless employed by people who know how to use them effectively and have a compelling reason to learn how to do so. I may have succeeded in convincingly showing them what was possible, but didn’t convince them it was necessary.

At the time, I hadn’t realized that the issue wasn’t the material I was presenting; it was me. People need to recognize me as a credible expert for them to believe it is necessary to change how they lead their organization.

I have spent the past two years working to enhance my credibility through my writing. It has meant challenging my assumptions about what I am confident about and why. I have learned that my ability to project confidence with too much ease undermines my cause in life.

Humility wasn’t exactly my strong suit. I could behave humbly and still harbor a cloaked sense of superiority that was noticeable to anyone looking closely. However, verbal sleight of hand enabled me to disguise my inauthenticity and lack of congruity. I may not have been trying to be intentionally deceptive, but faking it until you make it requires fooling yourself. I’ve stopped doing this and now acknowledge that I’m learning, trying to do my best, and occasionally failing.

Acknowledgment is always the first step towards redemption. Living in knowing mode is stifling and exhausting. Learning mode is much more energizing and satisfying. Choosing to be vulnerable, not because it wears well, but because it informs congruency and allows people to trust in what I think and have to offer. Learning to present more nakedly will enable people to trust how I think and who I am.

I’ve learned that credibility is essential to being competent. Instead of attempting to manage others’ impressions of me, I focus on who I need to be. What makes me credible isn’t what I know or what I do; it’s who I am.

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