The Science and Art of Confidence

Anecdotal evidence has long suggested that women tend to underestimate their abilities while men tend in the opposite direction. In the workplace, this would suggest that existing discrimination with respect to wages and promotion is exacerbated by women’s own reluctance to ask for pay raises and greater professional responsibility, while their male colleagues don’t hesitate to put themselves forward.

What is confidence? This was one of the trickiest questions Claire Shipman faced in researching her book, The Confidence Code, when she first discovered what it decidedly isn’t: a passive self-valuation, aka “self-esteem.”

The confidence gap between men and women is a statistical reality but, for many male managers, hard data doesn’t offer much in the way of helping them support women in overcoming it. In fact, Claire Shipman found there’s a general reluctance among male managers to broach the subject at all. They’re hesitant to make assumptions about a woman’s existing level of confidence, and to offer coaching where it may not be welcome or expected. But when the confidence gap is swept under the rug, the fu...

For Claire Shipman, the process of writing The Confidence Code included the unexpected journey of understanding how she lacked confidence herself. A tendency toward perfectionism, an aversion to risk—behaviors she didn’t previously attribute to self-confidence were indeed related and, as she discovered, commonly shared among women.

The tendency to ruminate upon past actions or to overthink future scenarios is surprisingly common. And as with other confidence-eroding tendencies, it’s unfortunately more common in women than in men.

In general, “be prepared” isn’t bad advice. The trouble is that no bell rings when you’re prepared enough. As a result, it’s easy to become mired in the quicksand of research, editing, and consensus-gathering to the point where opportunity passes you by. Tending generally to be more socially aware and methodical than their male counterparts, women are especially vulnerable to this pitfall. The solution? Less preparation, more action.

In Mad Men, a TV series about the mostly male advertising execs who dominated Madison Avenue in the 1960s, confidence had no shortage of swagger. It embodied the male bravado that many women feel compelled to emulate in meetings, discussions, and any situation that requires self-assertion.In reality, taking on the “armor” of someone else to convey confidence is too heavy of a burden to sustain over time, particularly given the fact that confidence in women doesn’t always look the same as it d...

Historically (and still today) women have found themselves silenced in all kinds of ways, from explicit discrimination to the self-doubt and self-censorship discrimination can teach. So let’s be clear at the outset; this lesson is not about feeling ashamed of “upspeak” or silencing yourself if you’re an upspeaker. Upspeak—the habit of upward-inflecting the ends of statements so that they sound like questions—is both generational and, it seems, an outgrowth of women’s social tendency to se...

Perfectionism holds you back. It seems like a paradox, but the mechanism’s simple; confidence and growth come through risk-taking, mistake-making, and the habit of picking yourself up and trying again. Perfectionism, on the other hand, sticks within safe, predictable boundaries—it confines success to very narrow margins and doesn’t dare stretch them for fear of failure.