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Lessons - Confusing Confidence With Arrogance (Scott) · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  In this lesson's episode, I'm going to show you that most people confuse confidence
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  with arrogance, and that confusion is destroying their relationships and their careers.
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  If your kids go to your partner with problems instead of you, if your conversations feel like
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  lectures, if people avoid deep talks with you, you're probably operating from arrogance, not
• 0:21
  confidence. So I'm going to explain why this happens, what it's really costing you,
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  and how to shift from needing to be right to actually being effective. By the end,
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  you're going to understand the difference between confidence earned through competence and arrogance
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  borrowed from ignorance. Today I want to talk about confidence and arrogance because most people
• 0:46
  think they're confident when they're actually just arrogant and understanding the difference
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  between these two things are going to determine whether or not you succeed or fail at pretty much
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  everything that matters in your life, your business, your relationships, your career, all of it.
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  I want you to think about the last meeting you were in, the last conversation you had with
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  your partner, your spouse, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, last time you gave advice to a friend.
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  Here's my question. In that meeting or that conversation, were you being confident or were you being
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  arrogant? And most people don't realize, and this is going to sting a little, but we've been
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  confusing confidence with arrogance for so long that we can't tell the difference anymore.
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  And that confusion is literally costing us everything. So today I want to talk about
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  what real confidence looks like. Why most people get it completely wrong, and how this one
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  distinction, very important distinction, is going to make or break your career, your relationships,
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  and yes, your bank account. And then we're going to talk about some frameworks for building
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  genuine confidence, some daily practices that actually work. There's also some morning signs that
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  I've seen that are telling you that you're slipping from confidence into arrogance. Now,
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  let me paint a picture for you before we get started. Maybe this sounds familiar. You walked
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  out of your last meeting at work thinking you absolutely crushed it. You had an answer for everything.
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  You shot down all the weak ideas. You explained why your idea, your approach was obviously superior.
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  You dominated every conversation with all your expertise, and you felt good, and you felt
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  confident. But here's what actually happened while you were feeling so good about yourself.
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  Sarah stopped contributing after the third time you interrupted her. Mike started checking his
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  phone when you launched into your brief explanation that lasted about eight minutes. And your boss made
• 2:28
  a mental note about your so-called collaborative skills that weren't so great. And that promotion
• 2:33
  that you were expecting, the one that you've been telling yourself is just a matter of time.
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  It just went to someone else again. Now, I know what you're thinking. You think the problem is
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  politics or office favoritism or people who just can't handle your direct communication style.
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  But what if I told you the real problem is something completely different? The real problem is
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  that you've confused arrogance with confidence for so long that you can't tell the difference
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  anymore. And before you turn this podcast off and you tell yourself, well, this doesn't apply to
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  me because that's exactly what an arrogant person would do. Just hear me out because most people
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  make this exact mistake. They think confident people know everything. They think arrogant people
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  just act like they know everything. And both of these definitions are dead wrong because the truth
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  is that confidence is earned through competence. And arrogance is actually just borrowed from ignorance.
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  And that loan that you've been taken out, it's destroying everything you care about. Now, let's talk
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  about this psychology behind this. I want to explain why this happens in the first place. Why do we
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  screw up confidence in arrogance because understanding the psychology behind this will help you
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  recognize it in yourself. Psychologists David Dunning and Justin Krueger discovered something
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  fascinating about how the human brain works. They found the people who scored in the bottom 12%
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  of competence tests, meaning they were not good at what they did consistently estimated that they
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  were in the 60 second percentile. Basically, that means that they thought they were very good at
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  what they did, even though they scored in the bottom 12%. Now, think about that for a second.
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  The worst people are at something, the better they think they are at it. A little bit strange,
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  right? And this isn't just lab psychology. This is your daily reality. For example, the crypto trader
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  who's been at it for six months and gives advice like Warren Buffett or the middle manager in your
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  company that read good to great and now dismisses decades of industry wisdom or the startup founder
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  who just watches a lot of podcasts never actually built anything real and ends up raising 10 million
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  dollars on pure charisma. See, this is how the trap works. When you know nothing about a topic
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  or a subject, you're accurately pessimistic about your abilities. But as soon as you learn a little
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  bit, you read a few articles, you watch some YouTube videos, you listen to some podcasts, something
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  dangerous happens. Your confidence skyrockets while your competence barely moves and you start to
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  mistake familiarity for expertise and you start giving advice instead of seeking it and you start
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  to confuse this little learning bump. There's a little bit of information that you've accumulated
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  for mastery and a lot of people get stuck right here at this stage. They never push through to
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  genuine expertise because pushing through requires something uncomfortable, admitting how much you
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  still don't know. And this isn't just a psychological quirk. There's actual neuroscience behind this.
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  And hopefully if you understand what happens in your brain, this helps you recognize when you're
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  slipping from confidence into arrogance. So there's been studies done with FMI scans and they reveal
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  something incredible. Genuinely confident people, they show enhanced activity in brain areas
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  associated with long-term thinking and collaboration. But arrogant people, their brains light up
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  in threat detection regions, which means they're not confident, they're scared. So think about that
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  colleague who dismisses every idea that isn't theirs, who interrupts constantly, who takes credit
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  for the wins, but blames other people when something doesn't go so well. Their brain is literally
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  in fight or flight mode. They are actually scared. They are treating collaboration as combat.
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  And this explains why arrogant people are exhausting to be around. You're dealing with somebody
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  whose nervous system interprets your very existence as a threat to their self-image. Meanwhile,
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  genuinely confident people's brains operate in a state that promotes curiosity over defensiveness.
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  They ask questions because they are genuinely interested. They're not just gathering ammunition
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  for their next argument. So this is the psychological and the neuroscience behind it, but here's what
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  really matters. What is this actually costing you in your real life? If you are arrogant, okay,
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  so what does this mean, right? Because understanding the problem is one thing, but feeling the pain
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  is what actually motivates change. So let's talk about what this is really costing you, what
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  arrogance. Yes, I'm calling it arrogance is costing you right now today in your life. So for work,
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  or if you're an entrepreneur, remember that project that failed last quarter of the one where you
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  blamed maybe the market conditions are bad timing or a team that couldn't execute your vision.
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  Here's what really happened. You were too arrogant to listen when three different people told you
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  about the same critical flaw in your approach. Three different people, same flaw, but acknowledging
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  their concerns would have meant admitting that you missed something obvious. So what did you do? You
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  doubled down, you defended your position, you made the failure bigger and more expensive than it
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  needed to be. And your colleagues, they noticed, they always noticed, but that's why they've stopped
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  bringing you problems. Not because you can't solve them, you probably can, but because working with
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  you feels like being cross-examined by someone who's already decided you're wrong. And that's why
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  the promotion went to someone else instead of you. Not because that other person is smarter,
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  not because that other person is more qualified, it's because people actually want to work with her.
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  Meanwhile, they're trying to avoid working with you. You've become the person others talk about,
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  not too. But the career damage is just the beginning. The real devastation happens in your personal
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  life, where the costs are harder to measure, but infinitely more painful. Because your romantic
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  relationships follow the exact same pattern. Your last three partners, and be honest with yourself
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  here. They didn't leave because you weren't successful enough or attractive enough or interesting
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  enough. They left because being with you felt like slowly disappearing. Every conversation
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  becomes a lecture. Every story they try to share got corrected or one-uped. Every feeling they express
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  gets analyzed and solved instead of just simply being hurt. And I bet one of them, at some point,
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  even said something like, you don't see me, you see an audience for your monologue. And they were
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  right, weren't they? You spent so much energy being the smartest person in the relationship,
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  that you forgot to be a person in the relationship. And now you're alone, and you're wondering why
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  you can't find somebody who appreciates your intelligence and isn't intimidated by your success.
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  But the truth is, the problem isn't finding the right person. The problem is that you've become
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  the wrong person to be with. And then the relationship damage doesn't just stop with the romantic
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  partners. If you have kids, this pattern is probably affecting them too. Because if you have kids,
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  this one's gonna hurt. Because I want you to do something right now. If you have children,
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  I want you to think about how they interact with you versus your partner. When they have a problem,
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  who do they go to first? When they're excited about something, who do they want to share with?
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  When they make a mistake, who feels safe to tell, right? And if you're arrogant, it's probably not
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  you, is it? And it's not because you don't love them. Of course, you love them. But your
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  version of helping feels like being graded. And your version of sharing their excitement feels like
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  being taught. And your version of handling their mistakes feels like they're being prosecuted.
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  You've accidentally trained your own children to see you as the parent who always has something
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  the correct instead of the parent who just listens. They're learning that being around you means
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  being told what they're doing wrong. So they're learning not to be around you. I think about that
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  for a second. Just really think about it. And this extends beyond your family. It goes into your
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  professional and your social circles. And some of these changes, if you're an arrogant person,
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  they're gonna be so gradual that you don't even notice them until it's too late. And if you don't
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  believe me, do a quick mental exercise. Look at your calendar from five years ago versus today.
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  How many spontaneous social invitations do you get now? How many people just reach out to you
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  just to catch up? How many relationships do you have where you're not doing most of the talking?
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  Right? Your network isn't growing. Is it? That's because you're arrogant. People invite you to
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  events where your expertise is needed. They don't invite you to events where your presence is
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  wanted. You're the person they call when they need specific information. You're not the person
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  they call when they need a friend. So you've optimized for being useful instead of being enjoyable.
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  And for being impressive instead of being connected in the result is a professional network full
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  of transactional relationships and a personal life that is feeling increasingly hollow. Now,
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  if we zoom out even more, what does arrogance cost you not just in your career, not just in your
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  family, not just in your social circle, but what about your business? Because if you're an entrepreneur,
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  being arrogant doesn't help either. It gets very expensive. And in business, arrogance compounds in
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  ways that can destroy everything you've built. You make decisions with incomplete information because
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  asking questions feels like admitting ignorance. You ignore the market signals and you
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  contradict your assumptions because changing course feels like you're admitting failure.
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  And you hire people who agree with you instead of people who challenge you. And you create cultures
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  where being wrong feels dangerous. So people stop taking risks and they start covering their asses.
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  And then your competitors, they're not just beating you because they're smarter. They're
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  beating you because they're learning faster while you're defending yesterday's assumptions. Again,
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  because you're arrogant and all your competitors, they're just adapting to today's reality because
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  they don't have the ego. They don't have the arrogance. And how does this play out in real business?
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  Well, there's some names that you're going to know that sound familiar. Elizabeth Holmes,
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  she was arrogant. You know this story. She raised $945 million for Theronauts based on technology
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  that fundamentally didn't work. And instead of admitting the problems and pivoting,
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  she doubled down. She created a culture of secrecy and fear. She started lying to investors and
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  patients and employees. And her arrogance didn't just destroy her company. It destroyed lives.
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  Patients got incorrect medical results. Investors lost hundreds of millions. Employees had their
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  careers ruined. And now she's serving 11 years in federal prison. Adam Newman convinced investors
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  that we work was worth $47 billion dollars while burning cash with no sustainable business model.
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  And his ego told him that normal business metrics didn't apply to his revolutionary idea and
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  his revolutionary vision. And when investors finally demanded basic financial transparency,
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  the valuation collapsed under 10 billion in a matter of weeks. Thousands of employees lost
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  their job. Billions and investor money just vanished. So yes, we get it. Errogance is very bad,
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  right? But let's talk about the solution. The solution to arrogance is genuine confidence. It
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  helps avoid all of the things we just spoke about. But what is genuine confidence? Why is it so hard
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  for people to be genuinely confident? Why do we fall into arrogance? Well, genuine confidence
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  actually follows a very predictable, developmental pattern that most people never complete because
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  they get stuck trying to skip steps. So I'm going to talk about what this means in a second.
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  But researchers have actually mapped out confidence. Like how do you actually become confident at
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  something? And when you understand this framework and when you understand the steps and the stages
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  to confidence, and then you understand not just where you think you are in terms of confidence
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  on a subject, but where you actually are, this can actually change how you approach growth. And
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  technically, it can change how you approach life too. So there are stages to true confidence.
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  And there's four stages. And the stages are conscious incompetence, conscious competence,
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  unconscious competence, and then meta competence. Let's break down what these mean. And just to be
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  clear, again, these are the four stages to actually become confident and competent at something.
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  Because competence equals confidence. This is very important. So stage one is conscious
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  incompetence. So this is where most people start anything, a new job, a new relationship,
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  anything at all. This is where you know that you don't know. So this is where you're asking a lot
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  of questions. You're just consuming a ton of information. You're making a ton of obvious mistakes.
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  Think about when you start a new job, right? You don't you don't know anything. Now this stage
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  feels really vulnerable because your ignorance is visible to everyone, obviously, including yourself.
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  And most people hate this stage because it's uncomfortable. But here's the thing. This discomfort,
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  it's the price of admission to real competence and confidence. Everybody has to go through the stage.
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  If you start a new job, you don't know everything day one. Then come stage two. Conscious
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  competence. So stage two is when you start to develop some skills through deliberate practice.
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  The results become predictable, but they do require a little bit of focused effort.
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  You're building systems, you're building processes, you're learning, you're making mistakes,
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  but you're just making few fewer mistakes. And by the way, this is applicable to your business,
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  your career, your relationship. These are things. This is how you approach all of life, right?
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  You start something. You're not great at it. You're not good at dating. When you first start dating,
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  you're not good at your job. When you first start your job, you're not good at building a business.
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  When you first start building a business. But then you start to try things. You start to figure out,
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  okay, how do I become a good partner? How do I become a good employee? And over time, you get
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  better. And it takes a little bit of effort, but you do get better. And this is the second stage,
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  conscious competence. This is where the real work happens. Because it requires some humility.
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  Because even though you're learning things, the more you learn, the more you realize that you
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  actually don't know. So when you start a job, you learn a few things. You're like, oh damn,
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  I'm going to need a lot more to become. I'm going to need to know a lot more to be good at this job.
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  You start a new relationship. You're like, wow, it's going to take a lot to not only date and sort of
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  be a good partner, but to marry this person and be a good partner, not just for a year, but for
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  the next 30, 40, 50 years, right? It takes a lot. Now, after stage two, then come stage three,
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  which is unconscious competence. So stage three is where skills start to become automatic. Intuition
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  kicks in. You can start to recognize patterns instantly. And then you can start to teach others.
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  And that feels natural because you've gone on this journey. You've put in the reps. You understand
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  not just what works, but why it works. Why does this work in your career, in your job, in your
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  business, in your relationship? You start to just intuitively know how to do things in life. And
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  this is also where most people think that expertise ends, but there's actually one more level,
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  which is stage four, which is meta competence. So meta competence is when you don't just understand
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  your subject, but you understand how you learned your subject. And this allows you to break down some
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  of the most complex ideas and skills for others because you understand learning itself, which
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  also helps you build new competencies faster because you've developed a system for developing
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  systems, again, in every part of your life. Now, this is what separates confident people from
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  arrogant people. Confident people consciously go through these four stages. They start off with
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  conscious incompetence. They go to conscious competence. They eventually go to unconscious
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  competence. And then if they really pay attention, they can go to meta competence. They go
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  through these days. They don't skip shit. They don't skip anything. Eregant people, they don't
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  like going through the stages because if you if you go through these stages properly, it requires
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  removing the ego and admitting what you don't know at each stage. Eregant people, they try and skip
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  stage one entirely. They're never they're never incompetent. And then they jump straight to
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  pretending that they're at stage three or stage four. And the result is they never actually even reach
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  stage two. So they really never develop competence at anything, but they act like they do. They act
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  like, you know, investing is just second nature because they watch a couple YouTube videos.
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  But they never learned the basics. They act like they're a great partner just because
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  they've been dating and they've been toxic their whole life, but they've been dating so many times
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  that how could they not be a great partner? Even though they never even put in the work and
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  actually learned how to be a good partner, they're just going to say, hey, I must be a good partner.
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  I must know how good relationships work because I've just been doing it for so long. No, time in
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  the game does not actually mean that you're good at it. Just because you've been in a job for 10
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  years, for some people, it means they're good at it. It doesn't always mean you're good at it.
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  If you never go through consciously go through these four stages, if you are arrogant, you are jumping
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  stages. And this is also why genuinely confident people are comfortable saying, I don't know without
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  being all stressed out because they've said it thousands of times while building real competence.
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  So it doesn't threaten their identity anymore. But if you're arrogant and you are scared of saying,
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  I don't know, it's because you never really built any competence. So by saying, I don't know,
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  it's threatening your identity. It's threatening your ego. Now, this is great. It's theory and
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  understanding theory is one thing. But how do you actually rewire years of arrogant thinking patterns
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  and communication? It requires a framework. It requires some deliberate practice. You can't just
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  decide to be more confident and more competent. You need systems that gradually shift how you process
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  information and how you interact with others. So this is the framework. These are the ideas to help
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  you move from arrogant to competence back to having true confidence. So I'm going to break
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  these ideas down. You don't have to do all of these, but these are great ideas that can help you
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  move from your arrogant thinking and your arrogant communication again to true competence,
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  which will lead to confidence. So things that you can do daily, you can do a daily ignorance
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  audit. So you can write three things down that you don't know, but you should. It's not for self
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  punishment. It's just to identify the opportunities for you to learn. Next thing you can do in your
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  conversations daily is flip your question ratio, meaning you should ask more questions than you
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  make statements. 70% of the time when you're speaking with somebody, you should be asking questions,
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  30% of the time you can make statements, but you want to be asking more. You want to be learning
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  more. And lastly, every single evening, if you journal, I want you to go through an exercise
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  of asking, what did I learn today that I didn't know this morning? What assumption did I have
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  that was challenged? So you can do these things daily. They take two seconds. Weekly, here's three
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  ideas that you can take with you. First, you can seek out feedback. So once a week in your relationship,
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  once a week in a professional context, ask somebody, a boss, a mentor, a peer, a spouse, a partner,
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  a friend, just ask somebody, what's one thing that I could do better? And the hard part for
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  arrogant people will be to listen without defending or explaining what that's what you have to do.
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  You have to listen to the advice. What's one thing that I could do better? The second thing you
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  could do weekly at the end of every week, you could just confront the mistakes that you made during
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  that week. So, whoa, because even if you're arrogant and you outwardly act and communicate your
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  arrogance, you still know when you screwed up. Doesn't mean you're ignorant just because you're
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  arrogant. It just means that that's how you portray yourself to the world as somebody who knows
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  everything, but you still know when you screw up. So, at the end of every week, write down,
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  what did you believe? When were you wrong? What was actually true? And what caused you to believe
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  the wrong thing? So, I just want you to start to be aware that not everything that you know
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  is 100% accurate. And lastly, do an audit of your expertise. What does this mean? Throughout the
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  week, you're going to give advice, you're going to make statements, you're going to say that
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  I'm 100% sure that this thing is right or that thing is right. So, every time you do that,
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  I want you to look inside, reflect a little bit and say, hey, this advice that I gave, have I
• 22:45
  actually done the thing successfully? Have I shown repeatable results that would allow me to give
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  that piece of advice? Would I bet money on this advice? Or am I just saying it with absolute
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  certainty and arrogance because whatever reason? Ignorance, I don't want to sound wrong. There's
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  a variety of reasons why we give bad advice, but have you given advice? The answer is probably yes,
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  and is that advice that you really should be giving? So, you can go through these sort of little
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  self-reflective tasks weekly. And monthly, a couple things you can do monthly. First, you can do
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  a skill assessment. So, pick one thing that you're really good at or that should be your core
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  competency. Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10. Then find someone who's a little bit better at it,
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  been doing it for longer. I mean, there's a variety of ways to measure better, but somebody's been
• 23:35
  doing it for longer, more successfully than you, whatever, and ask them to rate you at that thing
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  and then compare your scores. Just see if how you perceive yourself is the same as how someone else
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  who's a little bit better at that thing perceives you. The second thing you should do is a relationship
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  health check. So, look at your closest relationships. Your work relationships and your personal ones.
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  Are you doing most of the talking? Are people actually bringing you their problems? Or are your
• 24:00
  friends, your peers, your boss, your spouse? Are they avoiding all the difficult conversations? So,
• 24:05
  just to get a barometer and a sense of how healthy your relationships are. Are they transactional?
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  Or are they true, genuine relationships? If you are arrogant, there's a good chance that people
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  are shying away from bringing you problems, are shying away from difficult conversations,
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  and you're probably doing most of the talking. And if that's the case, it's a good red flag that
• 24:28
  you have a lot to work on. And lastly, do a little bit of a learning portfolio review. Remember,
• 24:34
  how do you beat arrogance? You actually become competent at things. So, monthly, what are the new
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  things that you're actually working on? What are the skills that you're developing? Versus what are
• 24:45
  you just talking about developing? Are you talking about going to a therapist to improve your
• 24:50
  relationship? Are you talking about learning how to sell to close more business in your company?
• 24:54
  Are you talking about learning how to be more collaborative in meetings? Are you actually learning
• 24:59
  the skills? Are you actually doing the things required to be better at all of these things? So,
• 25:04
  what new skills are you actually developing and the actions that you're taking to become better at
• 25:09
  things become more competent at things versus what are you just talking about developing? Saying,
• 25:15
  oh, I'll get better at sales. Oh, I'll get better at collaboration. Oh, don't worry. I'll show up
• 25:20
  better in my relationship. So, these are some daily, weekly, and monthly practices. Again,
• 25:25
  you don't have to do all of them, but they all will help you understand if you're arrogant,
• 25:31
  understand how to become more competent and ultimately help you become more confident. Now,
• 25:38
  what's the point of getting this right? Right? Beyond personal fulfillment, I mean, there's a lot
• 25:43
  of benefits to being truly confident and not being an arrogant asshole, but there's a real
• 25:49
  compelling business case for choosing competence over just performance and arrogance. Because in the
• 25:54
  world that we live in right now, a lot of people are optimizing for looking smart and genuine competence
• 26:02
  is becoming disproportionately valuable. And what a lot of people miss is that in a world full of
• 26:08
  overconfident, looking smart, sounding smart people, genuine competence becomes a massive,
• 26:15
  competitive advantage. While everyone else is just defending their position because of their
• 26:19
  ego, their arguing online, their pretending to know everything, they're optimizing for the looking
• 26:23
  smart. You can focus on learning from your mistakes, on building real skills, on admitting knowledge
• 26:30
  gaps, on optimizing for getting smart, not just looking smart. Jensen Huang, right? He's the CEO of
• 26:37
  Nvidia, a $2 trillion company. But one of his famous quotes is that no task is beneath me. And he
• 26:44
  jokes about cleaning toilets and this isn't false humility. It is genuine confidence that doesn't
• 26:50
  need superiority for protection. Satya Nadella transformed Microsoft's culture from know it all
• 26:56
  to learn it all. When he made public mistakes early in his job, he apologized openly and he used
• 27:01
  them as huge learning opportunities. And fast forward, Microsoft is a $2 trillion company. Warren
• 27:08
  Buffett, one of history's most successful investors, built his fortune by admitting when he doesn't
• 27:13
  understand something. His famous rule is never invest in a business you cannot understand. This
• 27:18
  constraint, and it's born from this intellectual humility, it's made him one of the richest people
• 27:23
  alive. Remember, the humble learner, the person who values competence and becomes confident
• 27:30
  beats the arrogant expert every single time. So the way that I see it, you have two choices here.
• 27:35
  If you are arrogant, you can keep doing what you're doing. You can wonder why that promotion went
• 27:40
  to someone else again. You can wonder why people seem to cut conversations short with you, why
• 27:46
  every piece of feedback feels like a personal attack. Or you can do something that's going to
• 27:51
  sting a little bit. You're going to admit that you've been getting this whole thing wrong.
• 27:54
  That the way you've been approaching learning and just interacting and speaking with people,
• 28:00
  it's not actually working. And when you do that, you have to realize that you're going to have to change
• 28:04
  a few fundamental things. Instead of always having the answer, you can start asking better questions.
• 28:09
  Instead of teaching everyone around you, you can start learning from them. And instead of trying
• 28:13
  so hard to be impressive, just try being genuinely curious about other people. And this isn't about
• 28:20
  becoming some doormat who never speaks up. It's about becoming someone people actually want
• 28:24
  to work with. Someone who can get things done without steamrolling everyone in the process.
• 28:30
  When you really just look at confidence versus arrogance, it's quite simple. Confidence equals
• 28:37
  accurate self-assessment plus skills to improve what needs improving. Erragance equals
• 28:42
  inaccurate self-assessment plus ego to defend your inaccuracies. One compounds positively over time.
• 28:49
  The other collapses under its own weight. And the people in your life, they're not asking you
• 28:53
  to be perfect. They're asking you to be real. Real enough to not know things. Real enough to be
• 28:59
  wrong. Real enough to grow. So that arrogant person that you are pretending to be is preventing you
• 29:06
  from becoming who you could actually be. And the hardest part about transitioning from arrogance
• 29:12
  to confidence, it's not admitting that you don't know things. It's admitting that you've been wrong
• 29:18
  about thinking you knew them. But that admission is where the real growth begins.