Why overconfidence is risky both for you and your organization?
As a new member in business life, you have specialities make you better than other people. But be ready to face the reality! Everything is different than theory in practice!
You have graduated from one of the best universities in the country?
You got an A from the course on this topic?
You attended to a training or workshop?
You have heard people talking about this topic?
Your previous company did a similar project?
You have an internship experience?
You read an article on this topic?
You have an idea?
You have competence?
...
The list can continue forever but "so what"? None of these excuses or explanations make you an expert on a specific topic. You might have tendency to learn and develop more than other people but still you have to give effort and practice. It is time to gather knowledge and experience for you now, not to pour the single drop you have. If an expertise is a glass of water, what you can gain with experiences listed above is just a single drop which can hardly reach the mouth of glass to impress a real expert. So do not be arrogant! An expert can easily understand your level of knowledge and your attitude towards the topic.
The single drop you have is the chance you can benefit to obtain new chances to gather additional drops. By thinking as you are the best on something and being arrogant, you lose your single chance to improve yourself. Instead of listening people who are trying to teach or explain you something, if you claim that you already know what they are explaining, you express an attitude as "closed to learning". People who come across with this attitutde will stop trying to share knowledge with you. At the end of the day, you are alone without any support and actually with nothing in your glass. On the other hand, if you have an attitude as "know something but need to learn more", people will try to share all knowledge they have with you and you will start to fill your glass very easily and quickly. Do not hesitate to say you do not know something and ask questions even the most silly ones. People will forget about your unexperienced period when you start to fill your glass.
You might still think as "I realy know a topic and why not to tell that I already know?". If so, again listen people and make additional comments on the topic. If you just say you know it but cannot express your knowledge in your comments or outputs you produce, I am sory but you have overconfidence problem!
In the first sentence of his article "How to Handle Your Investing Overconfidence" in TheNewYorkTimes, Carl Richards states "overconfidence is a very serious problem" and followingly he states what is tricky about overconfidence as "the people who are most overconfident are the ones least likely to recognize it". I strongly agree with this idea. I am aware about assurance from past success might lead overconfidence and long term experience might cause business blindness. However, if you are smart enough to control your confidence and instead of focusing on what you have learned, if you try to imagine what else might be staying still to learn, you will be on the safe side. I strongly believe that as people gather knowledge, they become more aware of how less they know and how much knowledge still exist to learn and can prevent themselves from overconfidence problem.
You can find some examples how overconfidence is risky for companies and economy in Richard's article. Different than direct economical risks I want to focus on risks on company brand and other employees and how they might have indirect economical impacts. If you are especially working in a proffessional services firm (e.g. in consulting) and reflect your overconfidence to a client, they will start questioning expertise and quality level of your company and you will possibly cause loss of new business. Additionally, when your colleagues notice that your glass is empty and not in a way to fill up, they will start to think that their knowledge and effort to improve further are undervalued by company and they will change their jobs. In the long term, this will create a cycle going worse and worse and affect the human resources quality of the company. I am sory but a proffessional company does not retain such a risk so all these might be a risk for you to lose your job.
No matter what you did, no matter what you succeed. there are still vast of knowledge around you that you will never be able to know them all. Be self-confident about your ability to learn and enjoy pleasure of learning new things even though your self-satisfied level of knowledge, which is actually a single drop of water which will be dried trying to reach mouth of glass ;)
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