Confidence

Don’t undermine your impact

All of us know someone in our lives that’s particularly charismatic. When they open their mouths, whether to tell stories or make presentations, everybody listens. And I don’t know about you, but personally I don’t feel myself being one of those people. And I always look at those folks and wonder how do they do it? And it turns out, some insight into that question can come from a little bit of an unlikely place. And that is a recent president of the United States. He’s done a great job, whether you like him or hate him, of convincing his audience to sell his ideas. 

Trump speaks with a great deal of certainty, a great deal of confidence. The thing that he’s doing is the same thing that transformational leaders do, is the same thing that great salespeople do, is the same thing that noteworthy entrepreneurs do. He uses linguistic certainty to communicate his ideas. He speaks in fact with a lot of what some people might call definites. Something is absolutely true. It’s obvious. Everyone agrees. The answer is clear. He doesn’t just say, “America doesn’t have as many victories as they used to.” “We don’t have victories anymore.” He speaks with a great deal of certainty, but not surprisingly, this certainty makes him more persuasive. 

Some very nice research looking at financial advisors, for example, having people choose between an advisor that speaks with certainty and one that doesn’t, finds that people prefer the advisor who speaks with more certainty even though they’re not more right. And in fact, even though in some cases they’re overconfident. When people speak with certainty, it’s hard not to believe they’re right because they seem so sure of it. But contrast that with the way that most of us speak most of the time. I don’t know about you, but when I speak, I tend to use a lot of hedges. It’s a simple linguistic device, a crutch we use when we’re not completely sure of something. I could say something like, “this might work,” “this is probably a good idea.” But unfortunately, that crutch often undermines our impact without us even realizing it. 

We’ve done research in a variety of different contexts, and we found the more people hedge, the less persuaded others are by what they have to say. Because, said very simply, the more we hedge, the less certain we seem about what we’re saying, and so the less likely other people are to listen to us as a result. If you’re not sure the strategy’s going to work, you think it only might happen or it could be a good idea, well, why am I going to take your advice? And in fact, if you’re not sure, maybe I’ll find someone else who is. 

And so one simple takeaway here is: ditch the hedges. Yes, there are times for hedging and there are some situations where we might want to communicate uncertainty, but let’s not just hedge because it’s convenient, because when we hedge because it’s convenient, we undermine our own impact. 

When you must hedge, own it

So we definitely shouldn’t hedge unintentionally because it can undermine our impact. But sometimes people wonder, well, how then can I communicate uncertainty? How can we deal with those situations? And I’ll say a couple things. The first is to own the uncertainty. Imagine there’s a strategy and someone’s asking you whether you think it works, and you think it could work, but certain things need to happen for it to be effective. You could say, “Well, I’m not sure if this is going to work.” But contrast that with saying something like, “I think this is a great strategy, and I think it could be really effective. But for it to work, these three things need to happen.” Notice what you’ve done in that second example. You’ve owned the uncertainty. You’ve made it very clear that you do think this is a great strategy. You’re not completely uncertain, but you also have made it clear that it’s not a guarantee. 

Another way to communicate uncertainty without undermining our impact is to use the right type of hedges. Imagine you’re not sure about something. You could say something like, “It seems like this might work.” Or you could say something like, “It seems to me like this might work.” You could say something like, “This could be effective,” or “I think it could be effective.” In one of those cases, you’re adding a personal pronoun – “I,” “me” – attaching yourself to what you’re saying. Seems to me, or I think something is the case. And it turns out our research shows that those personal hedges, those ones where we own using “I” or “me,” we take ownership of what we’re saying, makes us seem more certain or confident. If this person’s standing by what they’re saying, if they’re attaching their own identity to it, well, now I’m more likely to think that they’re confident or certain about what they’re saying, and it’s less likely to damage persuasion. 

Read the situation

You might be wondering how to apply this in the workplace context, right? Should I express certainty? Should I not express certainty? And how do I know when to do one versus the other? It’s all about understanding when to use it, right? There are times where we want to convey certainty. If we’re in a meeting, for example, we want to persuade other people, and we think that by seeming more clear of the answer, we’re a leader, we want people to get on board, seeming more certain can be good. And so we want to ditch the hedges. 

In other situations, maybe we’re having a difficult conversation as a leader or a boss. We want to show vulnerability. We want to bring people closer to us. Well, that’s a situation where we might want to use more uncertain language. Avoid those definites. Hedge a little bit more to show that we’re receptive to other opinions. 

Similarly, it depends on who we are within an organization. There may be some conversations, some situations where we have a lot of status and so seeming confident can be good. There may be other situations where we don’t have as much status, where we don’t want to seem overconfident, where we think a boss or a colleague might bristle. That’s a situation where we might want to hedge a little bit more because we recognize that’s a better way to make that other person feel more comfortable. And so by understanding the context and the situation we’re in, even the cultural context we’re in, there are times for hedging and there may be times to avoid those types of things.