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While history tends to lend its figures undeserved amounts of dignity, people haven’t changed much. In 1891, Mark Twain wrote a short story called Luck, in which a venerated war hero is revealed to be a complete fool. The reason for his success was a combination of random good fortune and the confidence only a fool can have. The past few years have popularized understanding of what’s known as the Dunning–Kruger effect: the smarter you are, the more you are aware of your own limitations, and vice versa. Smart people can’t help knowing every little thing they’re not good at, and every little bit of knowledge they don’t know. It’s no surprise that high IQs are also associated with higher levels of anxiety and imposter syndrome.
Perhaps the most common and unjust plague of the best business minds is the tendency towards self doubt. Even more unjust, colleagues who are not adept thinkers tend to be overflowing with an inappropriate amount of confidence in themselves, and sometimes will be promoted all the faster for it. But armed with this knowledge, if you find yourself frequently doubting your own abilities, it might be a sign that you’re far more qualified than you believe.
Doubt has its good points for business leaders. You’re less likely to make decisions in haste, and you’re more likely to take the time to explore relevant data, instead of just forging ahead with gut instincts. But when doubt is getting in your way, it can impact your bottom line.
Today’s environment has only been harder on those who struggle with self doubt. Social media’s algorithms, automatically programmed to boost content for the level of reaction it receives, has inadvertently unleashed a flood of hostility on anyone who dares to stand out in any way. Not that human beings haven’t always behaved this way. Crab theory explains it very neatly: when crabs are placed in a bucket, their own toxic behavior keeps them trapped inside. Just when one crab attempts to climb out of a bucket to escape its limited environment, the other crabs instinctively pull it back down with them.
Bold marketing necessitates standing out to reach the next level; but do it, and get ready for the “crabs” trying to pull you back down. Kris Lindahl, CEO of Kris Lindahl Real Estate, one of the largest and most successful independent brokerages in the United States, has encountered this toxic behavior time and time again, as his enormous billboard campaign started to dominate the greater Twin Cities area. “Everyone else was posing with their arms folded across their chest, and so I wanted to do the opposite. I threw my arms out wide, like I was about to give a hug,” he explains. And oh, the rabid mean tweets followed. It didn’t make him take the billboards down. Instead, he accepted that the specific negative attention he received–for standing out–was a sign that he’d actually done something right. “I’ll take the billboards down when they stop working,” Lindahl adds. They worked so well, however, that he surpassed $1 billion in sales in under two years.
Lindahl also recently started a Facebook group called Scale with Kris Lindahl, specifically designed to encourage entrepreneurs, and at times, to prod them out of their comfort zones. Like anything, shaking off unnecessary doubt gets easier with practice, and while Lindahl gives regular tips to help normalize, say, posting casual videos on social media as a way to boost engagement with clients, he also encourages entrepreneurs at any point in their journey to support each other on his page. In just a few weeks, the group became so popular it swelled to thousands of followers, and hosts lively discussions on a variety of topics, from marketing to dealing with self doubt.
Just knowing you’re not alone is a big help, and so is having people in your life, both in the workplace and outside of it, who believe in you. Finally, when you’re a leader, Lindahl recommends normalizing feelings of doubt and discomfort. “It’s normal to experience doubt,” he concludes. “There were a lot of times I wanted to quit. But I kept telling myself this isn’t the time to stop. These uncomfortable moments are actually the best growing opportunities.”
You may never have a fool’s confidence…but you may find something even better: an appropriate level of self doubt, and the knowledge that this uncomfortable little nugget is always found alongside the most amazing treasures.
