My partner picked up this thought process where she reassures herself she is both confident and competent. These two words are often phrased together in textbooks, where the multiple authors are trying to reassure the student that the book is quality enough to deliver those two metrics. I don’t know if she had any greater exposure to thoughts on this pairing or it’s a cliche she has just chosen to embrace.

It’s seemingly simple though. If you can hold both traits in your day to day, what could go wrong? Your competence informs your answer and the confidence allows you to press it against anyone with a competing answer that has less confidence. Or maybe you’re light on confidence so you’re more open to the competence of your rival. Either way, one guides the other.

So which one is more important? Which do you start with? I say confidence. Always.

Competent people without confidence often do not share their knowledge. Especially when risk is involved. If a ship were sinking, and the only person with knowledge on how to keep it floating was not confident, they would allow people to scramble and try all other solutions before opening their mouths and mentioning that they know how a repair could be made. Why would they do this? Because if their solution doesn’t pan out, they wouldn’t want to be blamed for being wrong. Seems insane because lives are at stake, but that’s exactly why they would do nothing. The risk is too high.

If you’re doubting this, you likely have not operated in a high risk environment. These behaviors occur at all levels of risk to be honest. They become more apparent with decision makers whose choices lead to loss of money or life, or status. Often at those levels, no decisions are made. Confidence, even here can make up for the vacuum of competence, even to the point where incompetence thrives.

Confidence allows you to demand that others provide the competence. What is the pertinent information? Bring it to me, so that we can evaluate it together, and make decisions by committee. Group decisions appear to have no ownership, even though they belong to the chosen leader. A good leader, will use the least confident people in the committee as scapegoats when the results turn horrific.

Confidence allows those leaders to skate from business to business, leading teams to make incompetent decisions, and to not take any personal responsibility or acknowledgement that they are an agent of organizational destruction. These people do much better financially and enjoy much higher status in life than those with competence.

So what about confidence and competence? If you have both traits, where do you land? You’re confident enough to offer your own ideas and competent enough to be open to other people’s solutions whose ideas might be better. You open yourself up to thoughtful dialogue and communication and you seek the best options and push to implement them quickly.

How do these people fair in the world? With confident but incompetent leaders above and competent but unconfident contributors by their  side or below? They push in both directions for what seems to be the best decision but they’re pushed back against from both sides. Good leaders know that these people are blockers of cheap progress, as they waste time and resources making meaningful yet costly decisions and they upset the doers of work with their persistent burden of process change.

With confidence and competence you can be successful in this organizational vice, only until you find that decision that becomes a costly mistake. 93% success, 7% catastrophic incident. Likely your competence will allow you to recognize the mistake as your own, and your confidence will allow you to be honest about it. You’ll earn yourself a walk out the door and a reputation for being the person who blew it.

Or will you? Is that the irrational fear that drives business people to avoid calling the shots? Or is it rational? I like to think of myself as a confident and competent person, and the people I work for who avoid decisions all have significantly more and more expensive education than I possess. Do Ivy League schools have this data? Have they crunched the numbers and determined that being a decision maker is a fools errand? To always plan a scapegoat and an out to protect your reputation? What is more efficient? Making or skirting responsibility? Which is a better driver of growth? Risk vs reward? Am I too old to go back to college? Would they let me in?

Be competent. Be confident. It sounds reassuring until it doesn’t. I don’t know how else to attempt to be. Let’s hope the battles are worth it.