The Crisis Of Confidence Among The Competent - Inspirational Anecdotes From My Life

Over the course of my life, I have come across a few people whose breathtaking confidence has remained with me, and I always seek to draw inspiration from them. I believe I'm fairly competent at what I do, and I'm not a particularly diffident person either, but I know I could achieve a lot more if I had even greater confidence in myself.

According to the Ramayana, Hanuman was the only one of the vaanara army with the ability to jump across the ocean to Lanka. Yet he did not realise his own capability, and had to be strongly encouraged by his fellows before he could find it in himself to make the leap. The episode is a metaphor for the plight of the competent in every culture and in every age.

Here are some examples of people who impressed me enormously with their confidence.

1. "I will hit all ten, da"

When I was 18 and in the National Cadet Corps (NCC) in India, I attended a camp called the Vayu Sainik camp in Dodballapur (Karnataka). There were NCC units participating from all over India. Each unit sent 10 cadets to the camp. There were 5 units from Tamil Nadu. The IIT Madras unit I belonged to was called the "4 TN (Tech) Air Squadron".

There were many competitions during the 2 week camp, and one of them was skeet shooting. Competing cadets had to shoot 10 clay pigeons that were fired from a machine (or as many of them as they could).

An NCC Air Wing cadet skeet shooting

The evening before the competition, a cadet called Vasant from 2 TN Air Squadron came to visit us in our tent. He was the only cadet representing Tamil Nadu in this national event, so our unit was rooting for him to do well.

I remember asking Vasant if he was nervous before such a big and tough competition, and I'll never forget his answer.

"I will hit all ten, da!"

He wasn't faking his confidence either. i could tell from his general manner that he was relaxed and genuinely confident.

In the event, he only got 8 out of 10, but if I remember right, he did get one of the top 3 places in that competition.

8 out of 10 was pretty creditable of course, showing that his confidence in himself was not entirely misplaced. I've seen other people whose confidence in themselves wasn't at all matched by their ability, but Vasant was obviously not one of them.

I find his example inspiring because I believe that level of confidence can make a difference in the areas where one does have decent ability. Holding oneself back when one can actually do a great job would be a waste of potential.

2. "I have now reached the stage when I can work on any machine"

I had just started working at CMC Bombay in 1987. A senior of mine from IIT Madras, Suresh (nicknamed "paTTai" for the prominent horizontal stripes of vibhuti (ash) he used to wear on his forehead), had joined CMC a few years before me, and had become a respected expert on IBM mainframes.

Sometime in 1987 or 1988, Microsoft made history by advertising in Indian newspapers for US-based positions. Such an opportunity for Indian software professionals (to be directly recruited by a US-based company) had never arisen before, and the advertisement sent ripples of excitement throughout the Indian software industry.

I was working late at the office one day, and a bunch of us went to a restaurant for dinner. Pattai was with us that day, on a short visit from his base in CMC Calcutta. One of our colleagues, Rajeev Dhanavade, broached the topic of Microsoft's ad with furtive excitement, and said, "I wonder if any CMC people would have applied..."

Pattai spoke up, loudly and clearly as was his wont, "I've applied, ya, I've applied!"

"But your experience is in mainframes. Microsoft is in PCs and microprocessors..." Rajeev said, implicitly expressing his opinion that the job perhaps wasn't a good fit for Pattai's expertise.

Pattai drew himself straight up in his chair and said, "See, I have now reached the stage when I can work on any machine!"

Epilogue: Pattai got the job with Microsoft and relocated to Redmond.

I've also seen Pattai walk into the CMC Bombay computer centre as if he were the boss, demand of the operators to see what jobs were running on the mainframe, and then question the Divisional Manager (the top IT executive in the region) about them. I've seen the DM answering him apologetically.

Of course he was competent, but that level of confidence which enabled him to open any door and walk in as if he owned the place got him results above and beyond what mere competence would have. It's something that other competent people can learn from.

3. "If I get a letter from HR, I will think I must have got a promotion or an increment"

When I was working at the National Bank of Dubai, I once got an internal letter from the HR department. It turned out to be nothing very important, but the moment I got the letter and saw where it was from, I was filled with dread.

I turned to my colleague Swastika Shukla, who was seated at the desk to my right, and confessed to her that letters from HR always filled me with dread. "I always think I'm about to lose my job."

Swastika scoffed. "If I get a letter from HR, I will think I must have got a promotion or an increment," she said.

I believe her. She had a pretty unflappable attitude. On another occasion when she heard me being overly polite on the phone with a user who had called to complain about a problem with one of the applications I was responsible for, she asked me whom I was talking to. When I told her, she once again replied with contempt, "Users? You should shout at them!"

To this day, I struggle to have that calm attitude of entitlement, and often use Swastika's statements to put myself in a stronger frame of mind.

4. "I'm a B.Com.!"

This didn't happen to me but to my wife Sashi. Sashi is highly qualified in her field. In addition to Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Commerce, she is also a Chartered Accountant. The Indian CA exam is notoriously hard to pass, and only about 3% of the candidates qualify in any given year. (Subsequently, Sashi also passed the Australian CPA exam after migrating to Australia.)

When Sashi joined me in Dubai in mid 1995, she responded to a local job ad for the position of an accountant. When she was seated in the lobby waiting for her turn to be called into the interview room, she struck up a conversation with another Indian girl who had applied for the same job.

Feeling a bit nervous about the job, Sashi asked the other girl if she felt confident about being able to do whatever was listed in the job description. The girl's reply to Sashi was a classic, and something we laugh over to this day.

"Of course! I'm a B.Com.!"

I tease Sashi whenever she expresses diffidence about any new assignment at work, "You're only a CA. Now, if only you'd been a B.Com., you could easily have done it."

As it happened, Sashi got a much better job at Schlumberger a bit later, so we never did find out if the other girl got that job that she was so confident about. I'm sure she did.

Confidence has nothing to do with qualifications. The most brilliant and well-qualified people can feel terribly diffident, and those with barely enough qualifications can be supremely confident.

These are the people I remember every now and again. They inspire me and fill me with awe.