Definitions of confidence are hard to pin down, but you might think you know it when you see it. You hear words like gravitas and presence to describe it. While that’s okay for informal conversation, for hiring and coaching we need to be precise. Heavey and colleagues (2022) define it as an executive’s generalized or domain-specific conviction in their capability to complete tasks, influence events, and/or achieve outcomes. It includes parts of hubris, narcissism, core self-evaluations, optimism, and humility.
Existing research focuses on overconfidence and mostly ignores other levels. It looks at whether executives think they can achieve goals, rather than beliefs about the superiority of their skill or beliefs about the likelihood of events. It treats confidence as a single idea when it has many parts. It doesn’t adequately distinguish confidence from related concepts. The authors explore these issues and examine the ways confidence affects executive behaviour.
Source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01492063211062566
