What Does Confidence Look Like?
Conventional indicators of confidence misleadingly pick out extroverts. Introverts’ confidence is less obvious but no less real or valuable.
In the popular imagination, someone standing with their arms uplifted and outstretched, their feet rooted firmly while apart, is the very picture of confidence. For a time, some claimed that this so-called power pose could boost the poser’s inner confidence, but that purported effect has been vigorously challenged within the field of social psychology. Nevertheless, few would dispute the relevance of coming across to others as confident, especially at work. And what counts in our culture as a confident performance falls decidedly on the extroverted end of the behavioral spectrum.
In other words, if you asked the average person to point out either a stranger or a known colleague who is confident, they’re highly likely to indicate someone who acts like an extrovert. This follows from scads of stereotypes that pile praise upon extroverts, including these conventional indicators of confidence:
Verbal fluency. Someone whose words flow easily, up to and including the master improvisational bullshitter, is taken as more confident than someone whose words come out with pauses to express ideas with precision and thoughtfulness.
Initiative. A confident person is supposedly the one who steps forward, volunteers and leads others – not someone who stays studiously silent.
Expressiveness. Animated gestures, words and actions that strongly convey emotions are another element in this cluster of confidence markers. Restrained or reserved people don’t fit this image.
Comfort with attention. According to common pigeonholes, confident people take up lots of space, enjoy being seen or heard and become positively memorable without much effort. Less confident people can be found in the back of the room, removing themselves from any spotlight.
These conventional benchmarks for confidence overlook or misinterpret our quirks and strengths as introverts. Most importantly, confidence can be an internal characteristic that comes out only in subtle ways. For instance, think of an environmental expert who stands up at the end of a public meeting dominated by emotional testimony that’s in favor of a new city ordinance. So quietly that she has to be asked to repeat herself closer to the mic, she explains that the measure failed when tried in Houston, Nashville and St. Cloud, Minnesota. She knows her stuff, and listeners can tell that she does. She has rock-solid inner confidence even though she may not be an impressive speaker, charismatic, assertive, a born leader or comfortable in the large group.
Introverts’ confidence can also show up in personal decisions they make that go against the crowd, without fuss or fanfare. I am thinking of the people who had the clear moral compass to refuse invitations to hobnob with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his crowd, when so many other movers and shakers fell over themselves to join his bacchanalian games. Or consider the successful person who chooses not to carry a smartphone, believing he can more easily reach his goals without constant connectivity and interruptions.
Confidence can also involve maintaining boundaries, tolerating anonymity, remaining calm during conflicts or persevering in private ways. Picture someone who knows how not to be fooled but doesn’t go out of their way to flaunt their knowledge in public. The introvert who doesn’t perform wouldn’t be picked out of a crowd as the confident one – and is happy to let showboaters bask in the attention.