The Confidence Code (21 page)

Both of us were mulling over all of the possible examples of our own self-deprecation, when our editor, Hollis Heimbouch, was quick to note a particularly apt one. Even in this very manuscript, we were unable to keep from poking fun at ourselves in various asides: Our scientific chops, our business sense, and our organizational ability were all targets (good-natured, we’d thought). It’s a habit so ingrained we didn’t even notice it. Fortunately Hollis did, and quickly pointed out that a few years of research and writing, not to mention professional speaking on the subject, meant those self-directed barbs weren’t even believable.

Repeat, Repeat, Repeat

Michaela Bilotta grew her confidence along with her powerful biceps one painful pull-up at a time. You don’t get to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy without being chiseled and fit. That was never daunting for Bilotta. She thrives on ferocious workouts, except for the pull-ups. Bilotta hates them, and she measures her own standing against her contemporaries by how many pull-ups they can do in a row: “So-and-so’s a twenty,” Bilotta says of a classmate. “She’s awesome.”

Mastering pull-ups has meant hours of effort and persistence over the past five years. But it’s paid off. Now Bilotta’s a fourteen or a fifteen, and she feels proud of that, and confident about her ability. “I have to work at it, work at it, and work at it to get to my fourteen. But if I wasn’t willing to do that then I should not have chosen this service.”

It’s the same with confidence. You won’t get it if you don’t work at it, because all of our self-generated confidence comes from work, and mastery in particular. (We’ll caution again, that by mastery, we do not mean you should unleash perfectionism. Think “good enough” as you conquer new frontiers.)

No one better illustrates the mastery-confidence continuum than Crystal Langhorne of the Washington Mystics. “My first year I didn’t play at all,” she says. “And I didn’t play well at all. At the end of the season, I was wondering if basketball was even for me anymore.” Langhorne grew quiet for a minute as she remembered one of her toughest professional experiences. Instead of quitting, she told us, she came up with a different plan. More practice. Not just a bit more, but hours of shooting, every day after practice, while she was playing ball in Lithuania during the off-season. She knew she had to completely remake her shooting style. And she did.

The impact was not just noticeable, but remarkable. Crystal was named the most improved player in the league when she returned, and she’s been voted an all-star player every year since. She literally changed her game by staying in endless motion, shooting a ball at a basket.

Practice. A willingness to learn. Those are now her go-to confidence boosters in the games. “When you work on things you think: ‘I know I can do this. I worked on it. I did it in practice.’ It gives me confidence.” Another reminder that the people who succeed aren’t always naturals. They are doers.

Speak Up (Without Upspeak)

The idea of talking to a group of strangers hovers like a dark cloud over most everyone’s confidence, and public speaking is an iconic challenge to female self-assurance. Running Start, the group that advises young women considering a run for political office, has identified the fear of speaking publicly as the number one thing that stops women from getting involved in electoral politics. But because most of us have to do it at some time or another, it’s worth tackling this one. Whether you are in a book club or a boardroom or at a birthday party, at some stage you will need to make your thoughts heard, and that means being able to speak in public with assurance. Like so many other things, it is a learned skill. If you know you can master it, even in an elemental fashion, the confidence you gain is profound.

Let’s take the annual conference. You’re there with thousands of colleagues from your industry, and you are in a packed auditorium to listen to the keynote speaker. At the end of the forty-five-minute speech, there’s definitely something you’d like to ask. But when the speaker inquires whether there are any questions, not a single female hand goes up. The men, confidently, dominate the Q&A session. While the women sit there, mute, thinking—what? That they will seem stupid, ill-informed? That they might stumble? That everyone will stare at them?

This is not made up. Remember the studies we mentioned in chapter 1? When men are in the majority, women speak 75 percent less. We both give speeches, and we see it time and again. If it’s an audience largely made up of women, it’s different; women usually have no qualms asking questions in front of other women. But when we give talks to male-dominated audiences, or mixed crowds, the women always seem to struggle to make themselves heard. Katty says she was amazed to learn that even her uberconfident sister Gigi is one of them. Gigi is a world-renowned veterinarian, one of the few dealing in donkeys and mules. In fact, she’s often asked to give speeches about her work with equines and she really enjoys it. She has no problem taking a stage before an audience of several hundred peers. Recently, though, she noticed something really odd. When it comes to attending other people’s speeches and asking questions, no longer the expert, in her mind, she gets really nervous and has to force herself to raise her hand. It makes no sense.

We were both bowled over by the confidence of a young woman we met socially at a dinner recently. Somehow, what had been an easygoing conversation turned into a combative argument about, of all obscure things, women and their place in religion. A man at the end of the table kept insisting he was right. One by one, the other guests gave up arguing with him, but the twenty-eight-year-old refused to be intimidated. He was almost twice her age, but she wasn’t remotely cowed. So often, women in social settings, even more than in professional arenas, back down at the first sign of a conversational challenge, but she had no problem arguing her position, and then sticking to her guns. She wasn’t rude, indeed she was charming, but she didn’t give up. It was impressive.

The ability to advocate for ourselves in smaller office settings or around dinner tables prepares us for those critical moments when we need to speak to a huge crowd, or maybe just to an important audience of one, asking for a better deal.

Wherever it is, projecting yourself effectively is a constant test of confidence. Often you have to steel yourself, overcome your natural self-consciousness, and command your vocal cords to follow your will. But think it through: When you do, what actually happens? Worst-case scenario, you blush and mix up your words; maybe dark circles appear under your arms. But the ground does not open to swallow you whole. The sky does not fall on your head. No, you’re still there, intact, and alive. There are loads of wonderful books on speaking, so we won’t hijack that specific advice. But we’ll share with you a few points we came across in our confidence excavation that are new and useful.

First, use your own style. You do not need to emulate Nikita Khrushchev, shoe in hand, pounding on a desk. Peggy McIntosh, the Wellesley professor, writes persuasively about something called our “home selves,” a state where women really do feel in command. When we can bring that level of comfort, and that style, to our professional lives, even though it may not feel pinstriped, she believes we project more authority.

Second, you will feel power speaking on behalf of others, as OSU psychologist Jenny Crocker found; so use that as a tool for crafting your remarks. A focus on the lofty goals, or the accomplishments of the team, will imbue your performance with a natural sense of mission.

Finally, banish upspeak. Christopher Peterson was greatly loved by his students in Ann Arbor, where he taught psychology at the University of Michigan for years and was honored with the Golden Apple Award for outstanding teaching. He was also one of the founding fathers of positive psychology. He died suddenly, at the end of 2012, but we were fortunate enough to have absorbed some of his wisdom in an earlier interview. He had a pet peeve. Peterson hated the way so many of his female graduate students talked. Time and again he’d be in lectures, listening to very bright young women answer questions, and they’d be using what he called
upspeak
. It’s that habit we know you’ll recognize (and perhaps even suffer from yourself): raising the tone of your voice at the end of a sentence in a way that suggests what you are really doing is asking a question, not making a declaration. Read this out loud—“We went to the movies, and then we got ice cream.” And now this one—“We went to the movies? And then we got ice cream?” Or worse, try this one—“I think we should go with the online marketing strategy?” Awful, yes? It may come as no surprise that linguists report upspeak is most common among women in Southern California. But it’s now Valley Girl gone mainstream. Researchers say the questioning style serves a clear purpose for women: It is a psychological safety net; it discourages interruptions and encourages reassurance. So, when we’re unsure of ourselves—not because we don’t have the knowledge, but because we are nervous about sticking our necks out—we unconsciously make our comment sound like a question in order to deflect criticism.

Upspeak made Peterson cringe because he heard it as a conversational hedge that revealed a lack of confidence on the part of his female students. He described it as a way of saying, “Don’t challenge me because I’m really not saying anything; I’m just asking.”

He told us most of those same grad students had great potential, but that the upspeak was so distracting it was getting in the way of their progress. When they always seem to be hedging, it detracts from the validity of their argument.

Peterson found no evidence of this pattern in men. If anything, his male students erred on the side of overconfidence. They could be abrupt and direct, and prone to wagging their finger in the air. He wondered if he should just let the issue slide, but he saw it was holding back his female students and that it could be easily fixed. Upspeak, after all, is not hardwired in a woman’s DNA. So he was always, good-naturedly, nagging the upspeakers.

Here’s the wonderful advice Peterson gave shortly before he died: “Say it with confidence, because if you don’t sound confident, why will anybody believe what you say?” After that interview both of us were appalled to hear the occasional lilt in our own sentences—we weren’t even aware we were doing it—and in those of our daughters. It’s something we don’t hear in our boys. “Say it like you mean it” has become our mantra for our girls and for ourselves.

Micro-Confidence—Dos and a Don’t

The big confidence habits offer a broad prescription for getting more self-assurance. Make them yours, and you can even rewire your brain to become more reliably confident for the long term. But sometimes quick fixes can help. We have uncovered some small-scale, granular wisdom and quirky tips worth sharing, and we’ve unearthed one old confidence chestnut you should try to avoid.

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Meditate.
A calm brain is the ultimate confidence tool, and meditation is so common and valuable that it’s being taught in some of the military’s basic training courses. Remember what we wrote about how much healthier a brain looks on meditation? It is literally rewired. Your fear center, the amygdala, shrinks. You have an increased ability to control your emotions and to be clear, and calm, about your goals. Claire tries to do it regularly, though she often fails (not the sort of failure we’re after). When she does do it successfully though: “I have such a calm power over my acrobatic thoughts it’s amazing.”

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Be grateful.
New research shows that gratitude is one of the keys to happiness and an optimistic mind-set. Find it in the tiny things: As someone lets you merge into traffic, notice, and be grateful, instead of just zipping ahead looking for your next maneuver. And again—just say thank you. Believe and be grateful for the kind words said about you. It will transform your mood, and simply saying, “Thank you, I appreciate that” will also make the other person feel good.

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Think small.
Battle feelings of being overwhelmed by breaking it down. Teasing out the individual parts of a challenge, and accomplishing even one-tenth of it, can give you a confidence boost. “I’m a very logical thinker. My degree is in systems engineering, which is all about taking complex problems and breaking them down to their component parts,” says Linda Hudson. Simplifying all that lies before her is what helps Hudson confidently solve problems. “When something’s daunting, even in my personal life, I say, ‘Okay, let’s break this down into pieces I can manage and take it one step at a time.’
 
”

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Sleep, move, share—in any order.
Yes, we sound like your mother, but it’s true. A lack of sleep and exercise produces an extremely anxious brain. (We’ve tested and retested the theory, and there’s no getting around it.) And being close to our friends boosts our oxytocin levels. So indulge in guilt-free girlfriend time.

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Practice power positions.
Sitting up straight will give you a short-term confidence boost, according to a recent study conducted by Richard Petty and his colleagues. Try it now. Abs in. Chin up. Astonishingly simple, woefully infrequent. Try nodding your head. You feel more confident as you talk when you do it—and you’re sending a subconscious signal that makes others agree with you. And, yes, always sit at the table. Otherwise, you’re handing power away by not sitting with those who have it.

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Fake it till you make it.
Okay, here’s the one to avoid. Attempt this bit of pop psychology at your peril. Originally an observation made by Aristotle, “Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a certain way,” the modern version has become tainted by its suggested swagger, and if performed in that fashion, can easily go wrong. The very notion of straying far from our real selves is at odds with the central premise of this book. Confidence isn’t about pretending, or putting on an act; it springs from genuine accomplishment and work. Jenny Crocker told us, in fact, that not only does faking it not work as a confidence booster, but it almost certainly makes us feel less secure, because knowingly masquerading as something we’re not makes us anxious. Moreover, as good as we might be at faking it, we’ll certainly project those subtle false signals described by Cameron Anderson, and that won’t help us much, either.