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Mastering The Confidence Code: Self-Reflect on Your Journey with Confidence, with Claire Shipman, Journalist and Co-author, The Confidence Code
I think the most interesting thing for me about confidence and my personal journey with confidence, if you will, is that I never understood I didn’t have a lot of confidence until I started to do the research for this book. I knew there were times when I felt like an imposter. I knew there were times that I was too perfectionistic. I knew that I could be risk-averse. But what I didn’t realize is that a lot of these behaviors that women share – obsessive thinking, rumination, perfectionism, shying away from risk – I never thought of those things as reflecting a lack of confidence. But I started to see…my aha moment was when we were doing research for this book. There’s a lot of research that shows that men in general have a natural overconfidence. It’s not a show, it’s natural. And I started to think about in my own career, and especially in the last 10 years, I’ve been on a lot of political talk shows. I’ve been on panels, and This Week, for example, I was appearing on regularly. I would routinely leave my appearance on that show and say to myself, I don’t think I talked as much as the guys. Then I would think, well, I didn’t want to butt in and there was a lot of ground to cover. But I just had this nagging feeling that I was not speaking up as much. So I went back and I measured the whole year’s worth of shows and sure enough, on average, I had talked 30% less than the male panelists on the shows. When the book came out I said that to George Stephanopoulos, who was interviewing me. I said George, I talked a lot less on your show. He said, I’m sorry! I said, no. In fact, you were calling on me every bit as much but I was self-editing. I kept thinking, I’m not prepared. I shouldn’t go into that territory. There’s only so much time left. I better think about the other panelists. Meanwhile, the guys were talking about whatever – things that had nothing to do with the question. It made me realize that, not that I necessarily wanted to talk 30% more but I probably could’ve talked another 10% and made some interesting points. And I think more importantly for me, pushed myself outside of my comfort zone. I think that’s something that a lot of women have trouble with. We can be incredibly successful but we like to just stick where we feel very comfortable, and that keeps us from a lot of opportunities.