[5] Do we value intelligence or confidence?
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Hope you had a fantastic weekend! Our piece today is about intelligence vs confidence and which one does society value more? Of course there are no right answers. As we were writing this, we see this as the first piece to unpack these big topics over time. 😄
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We grow up in a world where the education system preaches being “smart.”
Everything is about grades. Everything is about accomplishment. Everything is about awards.
We try to assign numbers to things, and usually, regardless of the topic or subject, we are taught higher is better. There are entire cultures that are obsessed with how smart their kids are. As we get older and become adults and enter the workforce, it’s the same message wrapped in different words. We call it critical thinking; we call it analytical. Society talks constantly about valuing intelligence. And we can go on and on about this topic.
So there is obviously rhetoric about intelligence being the most important thing. If you are smart, everything should be fine, right?
That’s the story we’ve been told.
But is that what society rewards, or is society just telling us that intelligence is rewarded?
Let’s take the example of a job application. Most job applications are written to screen for “intelligence.” The obvious metrics are GPA and where you went to school.
But who actually gets the job? Is it the person who is “intelligent” or is it someone else? Is there another unseen factor?
Enter CONFIDENCE, a nebulous word that is hard to define but is thrown around all the time. We just know it when we see it.
Even though we cannot really define what “it” is, we tend to admire “it”. The pinnacle of this is how we describe heroes (whether in real life, on the internet or on the movie screen). We usually admire heroes for their boldness, willingness to take risks, being avant garde, and being different. We rarely admire a hero because they got good grades in school.
People look up to those who are bold, who are willing to “go after it”, those who take risks and get rewarded for their risks. We don’t watch superhero movies where the movie is about the hero doing conventional intelligent things; we watch the movie for their ability to take risks and overcome challenges. Superhero movies are stories about confidence.
You can replace “superhero” in the last paragraph with “entrepreneur”, “CEO” or people you admire in society and it’ll still largely hold true.
To be clear, we are not saying intelligence is irrelevant (of course it’s relevant), but if you have a lot of confidence … intelligence seems to matter less. This isn’t a spectrum either; if anything, the best and rarest breed of leaders and people exhibit both intelligence and confidence.
Relationship between intelligence and confidence
To unpack intelligence vs confidence and the nuances, we can look at intelligence and confidence on a 2x2 matrix. We named each quadrant with superheroes (for you Marvel fans 😄 )
For the purposes of this post, the “less confidence, less intelligence” group is not so interesting (most people have some flavor of one or the other…whether they know it or not). The “more confidence, more intelligence” group is also not really worth explaining because you have the best of both worlds. The remaining two, where you have more of one and less of the other is interesting.
Group A “Less confidence, more intelligence”: This group probably describes a lot of naturally Type A individuals who suffer from a healthy dose of imposter syndrome. They usually know the right answer, but they haven’t gone around to advertising it. In companies, they are the people you spend time with to really understand the business, but you probably wouldn’t put them in front of a customer or a leadership team to explain a topic. They know the answer, but it stays within their mind.
Group B “More confidence, less intelligence”: These people end up being the ones closer to the top than you think. They are the people who get deals done without really understanding all the details and analysis behind a problem. They are comfortable living in uncertainty and ambiguity and are okay diving into an uncertain situation because their confidence allows them to “figure it out” (or at least they believe they will figure it out). Confident people seem to be very good at “going with the flow” … they don’t obsess with details … and they thrive in uncertainty. They almost need it. Because in high certainty environments, they find themselves very bored.
Conventionally, “more intelligent” people do well in structured environments like school. When they are presented with a multiple choice question they are quickly able to pick the right choice. They thrive in being able to memorize facts and recall them.
Conversely “more confident” people hate this…they see it as being put in a box. They find structure boring, and they really hate the certainty and the box that is drawn around them. They would rather cut school, go outside and explore the world, or tinker with things.
This of course begs the question, which one would you rather be?
The more intelligent says: It’ll be easy to learn to be confident because I’m smart.
The more confident says: I am confident I can learn to be more intelligent.
Most of us are likely somewhere in between: we are naturally good on one and (hopefully) working on developing the other. Some problems require you to know the details, for example when you are making a data driven decision and trying to understand risk. Other situations require you to lean on confidence to influence and mobilize a bunch of individuals to act towards a common cause.
One is not better than the other. Like most things, ultimately having a balance of both and knowing when to flex one over the other to the situation at hand is the key. ⚖️🔑