One of the biggest obstacles to maintaining grounded confidence is the war between opposites: arrogance and humility. We see this war everywhere, both internally and externally in our society. We have pressures to be humble which can lead to self-dismissal, not speaking up when needed, and not honoring our gifts and skills. We have different pressures to stand up for ourselves, which can lead to pushy, arrogant behavior. Most people tend towards one of these extremes more than the other, but everyone swings between them at least some.
The truth is, there is a better, middle way. It starts with radical honesty.
The Radical Truth About Your Gifts and Skills
Your gifts and skills are the things that you use to contribute to society. They may be things you were born with, cultivated, or learned through challenge. The radical truth is that they aren’t about you.
You are you. Your skills and gifts are simply functions that can provide value to others. Stepping back and seeing your skills and gifts dispassionately can be liberating. It doesn’t mean you’re perfect or awesome. It means that you, like each human, have skills and gifts that are wonderful, useful, and powerful in the right circumstances.
Here’s a practice that can help you see your gifts more clearly:
List your gifts, skills, talents, and superpowers. See them dispassionately, like features listed on a new car. The make and model of the vehicle of Life Called You comes with these particular gifts and experiences. That doesn’t make you a good or bad car. It just is. And your gifts, skills, etc. make you more aligned for some roles than others, just like I wouldn’t drive a Fiat when I want to go off-roading, or I wouldn’t want to drive a giant pickup if I need to save money on gasoline.
Celebrate with gratitude that you have these gifts; just accept them. And don’t make more out of them than you need to. They just are. You will continue to develop more skills and gifts. You will continue to face new limitations that encourage the development of new skills. This is just life.
When you accept this, you can stand in more objective clarity and speak the truth without having to swing into self-dismissal or self-aggrandizing.
Represent Your Limitations With Honesty and Clarity
Just as your gifts and skills aren’t really about you, your limitations aren’t really about you either. They are just ways you haven’t learned or been given the capacity to meet certain situations or conditions.
Here’s the great news: Your limitations are someone else’s superpowers! I’ve often thought it’s a brilliant function of evolution to require collaboration. It’s a gift to empower others to use their superpowers when you can benefit from their help. It can encourage mutual trust and collaboration among your peers or staff.
Sometimes, your limitations become the next frontier of growth, and possibly an avenue for a new superpower to develop. The path of “disaster to master” can be one of the most rewarding ways to grow. But you can’t get there without being objectively honest about what you don’t know, haven’t yet learned, or just aren’t that great at doing.
So, representing your limitations can be liberating. Just like representing your gifts and skills, you can reflect upon your limitations dispassionately and honestly. You can represent them when and how it’s most appropriate.
Defensiveness around limitations can come across as arrogance. Owning what you aren’t good at – with fearlessness and curiosity – can come across as self-confidence and self-awareness.
I once reported to a company founder who cheerfully acknowledged how little he knew about business. He had the vision but not the experience or skill to run an organization. He said that’s why he hired us. I found his honesty both endearing and clarifying. I knew exactly what role to play, what to do, and how to advise him. He still brought tremendous wisdom to all the discussions and decisions we had to make, and I loved collaborating with him.
Be Like a Tree – Centered and Strong
As someone who had chronic self-dismissal years ago, I had a shocking realization while hiking. Trees don’t apologize for being trees. They have unconditional self-acceptance because they don’t doubt themselves to begin with. Equally, they know their limitations. If they didn’t have limitations, they’d take over the forest.
I realized that both self-dismissal and arrogance are distortions of reality. I don’t need to dismiss myself to be humble. I don’t need to dismiss myself to represent my limitations. Similarly, I don’t need to brag to be clear about my gifts or respect my hard-won knowledge and experience. I also don’t need to hide or lie about my limitations. I can just stand strong, centered, and rooted in the truth.
I learned that if I orient in my body like a tree – strong, solid in my center core, rooted to the earth, and stretching out to grow – I could find effortless confidence and speak with authority equally about what I know and don’t know.
This is a practice. It doesn’t happen overnight. As your career challenges you, you will have new opportunities to practice these mindset shifts.
Once you get comfortable with a centered, balanced way of honoring gifts and limitations, you will feel clearer, freer, and less burdened by self-doubt. Your team and peers will benefit too.
Years ago, several colleagues, one by one, told me a secret – that they felt safer with me than anyone else at the company. I found this strange, at the time. I wasn’t even thinking about their safety. So why was I getting this consistent feedback?
Then, one day in a staff meeting, I watched one person come in late who was feeling insecure and anxious. I watched how their fears traveled across the room like a fast-moving virus. The whole room changed. Fascinated, I recognized how sensitive humans are to fear and insecurity. And this led me to an important ah-ha; my colleagues felt safe with me because I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t bringing my insecurity and fear to them, so their fear and insecurity weren’t getting activated. Of course, they felt safer and probably relieved to be in a room where insecurity wasn’t the common currency.
Ultimately, balanced and confident leaders – who don’t swing to arrogance or self-dismissal – tend to empower others and create strong growth environments. Being radically and compassionately honest with yourself about your gifts and limitations is a gift to others. It’s a worthy skill to practice for leadership and to face any new challenge in life and your career.
Stay tuned for the next article, “Grounded Confidence Part 3: You Are Not Your Work.” If you haven’t already, check out “Grounded Confidence Part 1: Reconciling Impostor Syndrome.”
If you would like 1:1 support to gain new clarity in confidence, schedule a free 30-minute intro session with me. I look forward to talking with you.