How to be both Confident and Humble: Follow Through

Yes, this is yours truly (more than 15 years ago  - boy have digital cameras improved since then ...)

Much has been written on confidence, and especially in regards to confidence in women.  Of course, overconfidence can be a very bad thing; especially when perceived of as arrogance by colleagues or peers.   In fact, much has also been written about humility, and especially with regards to leadership.  Turns out humility is a primary factor in strong leaders, which is actually not all that surprising, considering.  Everyone makes mistakes and it is much more inspiring to follow someone who acknowledges that, learns from his or her mistakes, and moves on.

However, in the workplace there is definitely a fine balance between demonstrating enough confidence to assure others that you will get your work done on time and well; and enough humility to recognize when you need help to accomplish these things.  Furthermore, if you want to be a leader, others need to trust you and your abilities.  This is where follow through comes in.

I googled “confidence humility follow through” and got about 1.3 million hits.  In the first page, however, nothing came up on the strategy of follow through.  Google suggested a similar search on “how to be humble and confident at the same time” which yielded approximately 1.6 million hits, but still did not have anything on the first page about using the strategy of follow through.  Not to be overconfident here, but I’d like to offer a potentially little-discussed strategy that may help one toward the ever so delicate balance of being humbly confident: the strategy of follow through.

Follow through, as the phrase suggests, is the act of admitting you don’t know something or are not done with something, but offering to either find out or complete the work and get back to the requestee/group with the results or confirmed action closure.  It is so simple that it is often overlooked; “Have you done XYZ?” “No, but I’ll do it this afternoon and confirm to the group that it is done.”  “What do you know about ABC?” “Not much, but let me look into it and I’ll get back to you.”  These types of conversations happen daily in a workplace.  The key to instilling trust as a leader, of course, is in actually closing out the follow through cycle.

To illustrate:  when I was just starting out in my career as a Process Engineer at a very large semiconductor company, one of my Ph.D. colleagues asked me how it was that I always knew the right answers for the floor technicians who asked me for direction.  I distinctly remember saying, “I don’t always know the right answer, but I have confidence in my ability to find out.”  I went on to describe that when I didn’t know something, I would look the technician in the eye, admit that I did not know right then, but that I would get back to him or her with the answer or course of action soon.  Then I went about learning whatever I didn’t know and – you guessed it – got back to that person.  Over time, technicians, engineers, and even managers would come to me more and more with questions or requests, and I gained a reputation for getting things done.  Rarely, however, did I actually have all the answers immediately. 

Indeed, even now as a consultant offering process improvement services – I don’t know exactly what to recommend for any given client without research, learning, analysis, discussions, and a lot of collaborative effort.  What works for one company won’t always work for another; it is part of the fun to learn and explore new situations, devise strategies and use tools, both old and new, which will work for each unique circumstance.

To summarize, this is my humble advice: be honest and humble when you do not know, have confidence in your ability to find out; and always follow through with those around you.  Over time, this will help you become a true leader.