361. Mastering Confidence: Unleash Your Potential with Neuroscientist Dr. Ian Robertson

Welcome to episode 361 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Ian Robertson, author of How Confidence Works. Ready?

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You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello.

Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. In today's conversation, I am joined by Dr. Ian Robertson. Ian is a clinical psychologist, neuroscientist and author of How Confidence Works, the New Science of Self Belief, which we will be discussing today. Ian's focus is on how individuals and organizations can learn to not only adapt to change, but to develop a healthy appetite for it. His research has shown that our brains evolved in order to cope with change and that we can harness this fact to create more flexible, change enabled and ultimately more fulfilled individuals and organizations. He's an expert in how to harness stress, use anger, stress, solve problems, boost confidence, and understand the dynamics of success. He explains how the intelligence and innovation of teams can be boosted far above the individual IQ of any one individual and has analyzed the mind and behavior of world leaders at conferences across the globe. Robertson is Co Director of the Global Brain Health Institute, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin, and T. Boone Pickens Research professor at the University of Texas, Dallas. His multiple translated popular books include How Confidence Works, the Stress Test, Mind Sculpture, the Mind's Eye, Stay Sharp and the Winter Effect. His work focuses on a unique combination of practical, accessible psychology and cutting edge neuroscience and I can't wait for you to hear all about it really quickly. Before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the show notes for everything including related past episodes, links to articles and books including How Confidence Works, A full time stamp, summary of the episode, and more. It's all within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com 361 now let's jump right in. Dr. Ian Robertson, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.

Hello Melina.

Hi.

So excited to be chatting with you today about confidence.

One of my I don't know if I would say favorite things, but something I talk about all the time as being so important important and I'm really.

Excited to share the information and insights.

With all the listeners.

Before we jump right into the book, can you share a little Bit about.

Yourself and your background for everyone who doesn't yet know you.

Sure. So I'm originally clinical psychologist who practiced for 10 years before I got frustrated about the. What I saw as a. The practice diverging from this underlying science. So I wanted to get back into the science. So I moved to Cambridge and worked in the Cognition and Brain sciences unit there for a decade researching how the brain is plastic and how it can be changed by experience. And I applied this in the context of rehabilitation after brain injury. But then I moved to Dublin and I established in Trinity College the there was a founding director of the Institute of Neuroscience there and found myself in my sweet spot which is the interface of mind and brain. And very much a non reductionist, very much persuaded that actually what we do with the software of our mind has huge effects, downstream effects on the physical architecture of our brains and that we therefore have a lot more control potentially over our competencies, performance and emotions than is commonly believed in a culture where we tend to. There's a more common belief that we are determined by our genes and by the physical structures of our brain and less of an appreciation of the fact that that's a bi directional influence.

Yeah, absolutely. We have had someone and we've talked.

A little bit on the show before.

About the difference between the mind and the brain, but it's been a while. You be open to sharing a little bit about your perspectives on that for listeners that aren't familiar with even thinking about those as being two different things.

Sure. So the simplest analogy is the hardware of your computer and the software. And most of the time when something goes wrong with your computer, 90% of the time there's something wrong with the software and sometimes a tiny line of code can sort the problem. And that's true in human behavior as well. Sometimes a tiny change in the line of our mental software can have huge downstream effects on the whole functioning of our brain. Now, mind is not separate from the brain. It arises. There's no mind, in my opinion, without the underlying functioning of the structure of the brain. But nevertheless that's also true of a computer. There's no functioning software without the underlying hardware. But most of an awful lot of the time the problems with functioning computer is the software and less often it's the hardware.

Right, definitely. And yeah, it goes the other way too, right. That the hardware is just a really expensive paperweight without the software in the. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah.

So at what point did you get.

Interested in confidence and like starting to kind of identify that this was something that you were really wanting to focus on and the importance of it.

Well really I have to credit my, my wife Fiona Doherty, she's a clinical psychologist who's ever since we got married, she said, you know, if a child has confidence, basically that's the biggest thing, the biggest determinant of their how they face up to life and succeed in life. And I mean, I guess myself I was brought up in a very working class family in Glasgow in Scotland and confidence was not something that I encountered. I had access to really until I left university and later on it was something I discovered late, relatively late in life and I saw the opportunities that I missed and the things I could have done and the places I could have gone if you like had I had more confidence. As it happens, I was extremely fortunate. You know, I feel fulfilled and grateful for what I've been able to do but I just know there's things I could have done. So I'm very aware of, of what lack of confidence, the consequences it can have and I'm therefore quite evangelical about the fact that confidence is something that can be learned, that it's a state of mind, that it is essentially a feature of the software of your mind that you can rewrite a little bit to become more confident and then the benefits of that are enormous because confidence makes you an influencer, it makes you persuasive, it gives you status and it makes you more likely to do things and more likely to be successful. It really truly is a self fulfilling prophecy.

Yeah, well, I think so building on some of what you were saying there of like your wife said, you know, confident children, you know, they're created and I know in the book you talk about kind of the, the chasm of even if you know, two kids had a very similar kind of innate ability, if one has more you confidence and is reinforcing versus one that doesn't as much, it kind of diverge. Right. They go in different directions. So talking about that is, is great, definitely can expand on that. But it's not to say well if you weren't confident and like you were saying, as we've sort of been conditioned to believe, like if you're not naturally confident, if you're not naturally an extrovert, if this isn't your tendency and you haven't had it so far, you're stuck and you just have to deal with life the way it is. But thankfully that's not the case, right?

It's not the case. I mean it's harder, much harder. So just yet, two, five Year old girls with equal abilities, but one has slightly more confidence than the other. That slight increase in confidence means she's more likely to ask a question, to try something new and therefore to get a skill or to get an advantage that the other one didn't. And then that multiplies itself in an exponential way like compound interest. So that by the time these two girls are in the 30s, there's a big gap in all sorts of dimensions because of that difference. And that means when these two girls meet in their 30s, one of them will have a natural, this quite big advantage. Because confidence is a status symbol. It gives you status and that then in relationships gives you a dominance over other people. So people who haven't had that benefit of confidence can feel diminished or less capable in the presence of more confident people. So that means it's harder, it's hard, but never, it's never too late to gradually start building the skills and the habits that are related to confidence.

Yeah, I think we've seen maybe enough movies and, or you know, read the book of the person at any time that like finally saying no and I'm just going to do, I'm going to go out confidently and that everything around them sort of changes. There's the, I think it was, it's a movie with Rebel Wilson or no, Amy Schumer. I think they both have these actually recently where you know, things have been not going well for them for a long time and then, you know, you get the knock on the head or whatever and then you wake up feeling very confident and everybody reacts differently to you sort of. And then things start to go really well when your outlook shifts.

Yeah, I think that's much less common because the knock in the head or the sudden switch to high confidence is probably a fairly unusual event. What these narratives don't convey is actually confidence is about the critical thing about confidence is it's linked to specific behaviors. And so you have to do stuff and you have to do stuff that's proximal goals that stretch you a bit but are not too hard and gradually climb up by little success experiences that increase steadily. So it's that kind of rather boring, slow goal setting and progressive sense of achievement that builds confidence. So it's quite difficult to become suddenly confident in the abstract. That generally is very hard to do because you know, if you haven't got tangible, your brain hasn't registered tangible successes experiences, then it's very easy for the brain to say, hold on a minute, you're, you're kidding me.

Yeah, fair Enough for the sake of the movie, they have to make it a very clear shift.

But.

And if we could just forget all of what we've conditioned ourselves on for a long time, perhaps maybe that it would work that way. But like you said, those small edits are important on, on the adjustment up. So. Well, you mentioned, you know, some of the behaviors and I know there's some mindsets and I feel I want to let you introduce this in the way that you think is best. As we talk a little bit more about confidence there, I'm thinking of the, you know, can do can happen. Seems like a good transition here if you want to go there.

Yeah, yeah. So confidence is a belief. It's a belief that you can do something and it's the belief that if you do it then there's a good chance you will get the outcome you want. Now that's a belief. Confidence always has to bridge uncertainty. It's never 100% certain. If it's 100% certain that you won't need confidence. Confidence is that bridge to uncertainty. But it's a belief that you can, in spite of the uncertainty, do it. Marissa Mayer, the first female head of a big tech company, she said this about success, but it's also true about confidence, which is it's about doing things before you feel quite ready. You don't have all your ducks in a row. So anyway there's these two things can do and can happen. So the first one the jargon for its self efficacy and the second one it's outcome expectations. And that gives you four states of the mind. So there's can't, do, can't happen. And that's a state of apathy. And apathy eats into the brain. You can actually see its effects in using positron emission tomography scanning. And apathetic people have lower levels of dopamine, of tonic dopamine in their part of the brain called the ventral striatum, the reward network. So their mood is lower, more likely to be depressed and they're less motivated, less likely to take action. So there's a kind of passivity and an apathy. It's a terrible state of mind. But very bad experiences and experiences of severe poverty and all the bad things that go with that can, can put people through no fault of their own into a state of apathy. But that state of apathy makes it, it's the opposite of confidence. And the confidence is, if you like the other diagonal can do, can happen. That's a self fulfilling prophecy. Why? Because it has Four effects. When you believe you can do something, your brain treats it as if you have done it. And so it generates that little success response, which is increased dopamine in the brain reward network. That is a natural antidepressant. It lifts your mood, lowers your anxiety. It also links to the action systems of the brain. So you're more likely to do something to take that step forward, and also makes you a little bit smarter because of the effects of dopamine in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. And that's why confidence, the can do can happen, is a self fulfilling prophecy. The other two sides can do can't happen. I could get that college degree, but from where I come from, it's not going to get me a better job. That sense of frustration can make you angry. And then there's a can to do can happen in the bottom left if you like. And that's, you know, I can't get that college degree, I just can't study, I can't discipline myself. If I could, I know I'd improve my prospects. And that leads to depression and anxiety. Okay, so that's the secret sauce of confidence is it's a brain changing action, affirming action, creating going forward impulse that actually will create success. Not inevitably. You have to price in the fact that sometimes the world is uncertain and sometimes even though you're confident that things don't happen, you can't do it. But the more you do it, the more you'll be able to bridge such uncertainty. And dealing with failure, of course, is one of the big habits and mental tricks that is critical for confidence. And that's a separate issue we can maybe talk about later.

Yeah, well, I mean, if it works for you, I feel like that's as good a transition as any to go with and talk about failure.

Yeah, yeah, well, failure in all the senses, that means you've not achieved the goal you aspired to, which could be a relationship ending or a job ending, or an exam not passed, or a skill not acquired. Compared to success, failure is a much, much better teacher. Your brain learns much more from failure than from success because success has many origins. And when you're successful, you tend to look forward to more success and your attention doesn't focus on why you're successful, which makes it a bad teacher. Whereas when you fail, if you can bear to do it, if you can try and look back and address the causes of failure, you will learn much more than you will from success. And the trouble, the obstacle to that is failure is a threat to the ego a threat to yourself. And to the extent that you hold what's called Carol Dweck from Stanford calls a fixed theory about your abilities or attributes. That is, you think that your intelligence or your abilities or your personality or your emotions is something fixed that you've inherited or been, you know, that are stuck with you really there's nothing much you can do about that then failure is a terrible threat to your self concept. Maybe I'm not clever, maybe I'm not likable. And that is a depressing thought if you have a fixed theory because whereas if you have a change theory of your abilities or your attributes, you'll be more likely to be able to swallow the bitter pill and look at what the reasons were for your failure. Maybe you didn't, maybe it was luck, maybe you just were unlucky, your business was a great idea, just the time wasn't right. Or maybe you didn't develop spend enough time developing certain skills. Or maybe you spent too much time on the product and not enough time in the marketing. Maybe you weren't clear enough about what the market was. So if you can avoid all the awful self scrutiny that goes on after failure and this kind of doom thing, oh, I am not this, I'm not that what I call the big I thoughts and instead look at the process. Okay, let me just analyze this kind of slightly dispassionately as I can. You will learn and if you then keep going forward in spite of failure, doing stuff in spite of adversity is a huge source of confidence. It's a source of grit. I'm doing this in spite of the anxiety or in spite of the feeling that the bad feelings I have, I'm taking a step forward. And the Persian poet Rumi, Persian Afghanistani poet rumi in the 13th century, he said the road only appears with the first step. And that's what confidence does. It makes you take that first step even though you're not quite clear where you're going. But just taking that first step provides new perspectives, new ideas, new encounters that will, if you don't take that first step, you won't be exposed to. So this is the action impelling nature of confidence and particularly failure can be your friend if you're not frightened of it and if you address it in.

This way, yeah, definitely. And for everybody I'm going to be linking to, I have an episode on counterfactual thinking, an episode on prefactual thinking just for everybody in the like, why didn't I what if? And like looking forward just for more on that. Like, thoughts that we can kind of spin on in a way that may or may not be productive and how you can use them. Because I think that builds on a lot of what you were just talking about there and how easy it is to get stuck on you. Whereas, you know, with the prefactual and counterfactual using that next time I'll do this sort of language is really helpful to get out when you get stuck because like you said, we all have things that happen. And actually in that episode, I had just had an email go out with a big glitch in it, and it was felt super embarrassing that it went to my whole list. And I talk about it in the episode and how I really wish that it hadn't happened or hadn't happened. Yeah. And I wish it would have been different and I could have sat and ruminated and, oh, why did I let this happen? I'm so terrible and whatever. And at some point you just have to move forward and say, yeah, that wasn't awesome, and what will I do to keep that from happening next time and into the future? So one of the things that you mentioned that I really wanted to talk about today, so I'm glad that you brought it up just a little bit. There is in the. The emotional state and the feeling and kind of the framing of what's happening in our bodies and how we can look at it. And so in this case, you're talking about, like, that feeling of anxiousness versus excitement and how the reaction's similar, but how we think about it makes a difference.

Yeah. So the last year, I was sitting at home alone on a Saturday afternoon, and suddenly my stomach very tight and my mouth became dry and my heart was pounding and it became very tense. And, you know, if I asked you what. What emotion do you think I was having? I mean, 90%, you would say anxiety or fear. Actually, Scotland had just, where I come from, had just beaten England at rugby. And so it was excitement. But here's the funny thing. My body's responses were the same. Would have been the same had I been frightened. And similarly, if I've been angry. So the psychophysiology of these three emotions, anger, excitement and anxiety, is the same. So the question becomes, how do we know what emotion we're having? And the answer is, we only know what emotion we're having by the context, by the label we put on it. I was sitting at home with a beer in hand on Saturday afternoon, so I knew it was excitement. Had I been in a dark road with some figures approaching me, I would have labeled it as anxiety. So emotions, what these bodily reactions that we tend to call stress or anxiety are actually much more neutral than that. They're a preparation for action. They're a primitive preparation for action. And your body and brain don't really care whether that action is running away, celebrating, or fighting. And so that means we have the capacity to, if you like jiu jitsu, one emotion into another by the label we put on it. And so there's been experimental work done, Alison Brooks at Pittsburgh University, showing that if you're given a very stressful situation where you have to, say, perform mental arithmetic, math, in front of a critical audience with your heart rate portrayed on a big screen, boom, boom, boom. If you get the people to say out loud to themselves before they start, I feel anxious, which is accurate compared with changing one word, I feel excited. Just saying I feel excited makes them perform better, make fewer errors in the mental arithmetic in that performance. Their heart rate doesn't really change, but their framing of these action activations in the body changes one emotion, fear, into another one, excitement, albeit nervy excitement. And so when you see it that way, you actually change one emotion into another. And that emotion is a challenge emotion, Excitement, Can I do this? Versus a threat emotion. Oh, my goodness, I'm going to make a fool of myself. This is terrible. And these two, this a challenge versus a threat mindset have profound effects on how our brain and our mind operate. And it's possible to do this if you're about to give a very stressful presentation to a board, for instance, or to a critical audience or a pitch to some doubtful customers, and you feel all these symptoms. If you treat these symptoms as evidence of, whoa, can I do this? I think I can do this. And if you do the thing in spite of anxiety, that's like doing something in spite of adversity. That is a huge source of confidence. Doing something and not being held back by the anxiety, but working through the anxiety and doing the thing anyway, and that puts you in control of the anxiety because you're no longer being tamed or controlled by the anxiety. You're harnessing it. And Tiger woods, the golfer, he says, the day I'm not nervous when I go on to the green is the day I give up. He needs that thing, that stuff, which is actually arousal. Let's not call it anxiety, because it only becomes anxiety if you call it that. And so this is, I guess, a tip for people in stressful situations. You can really, you can turn an external challenge into an internal one saying even though you're not sure of the outcome by saying to yourself, can I do, I can do this in spite of feeling like this. And so the challenge becomes just doing the thing in spite of these awful feelings. And that in a way it doesn't matter whether you perform badly objectively in the world at all because your goal now is to an internal one of doing this in spite of the anxiety. And if you do just doing the thing, no matter how well or badly you do it in spite of anxiety can be a huge source of confidence and a real feeling of wow, I did that. And ten to one your performance will be much better than you thought it was because you know, it's very difficult to think clearly when you're in that situation.

Oh yeah, for sure that I was thinking. So I know I mentioned Rebel Wilson, which I think this, that's like the only time I've ever said her name on the show. But like, because when I was reading about in this section of the book I was reminded of, I recently listened to one of her. I like the Apple Fitness. They have time to walk and time to run. So it's interesting people telling some stories and things as you're out on a walk with, with them or on a run. And in hers she was talking about how she actually was always really self conscious and nervous growing up and wanted to act, but it was stressful for her and that she would kind of shut down and when put on the spot didn't kind of know what to say and got all in her own head about it when she was trying to do improv and stuff. Which for anyone who knows, if you don't off the top of your head, know who Rebel Wilson is. She's an Australian actress that is known for being just over the top, ridiculous in all the ways. And so you wouldn't think that about her, but she talks about one of her early acting coaches who had told her, hey, you know, you've got this energy buzzing around inside of you and you have two options. One is you can allow it to take over and it can force you to implode, or you can use it the energy and explode with what you have.

Right?

Which was very much. And I thought about like, that's something I can tell my kids, right? As far as thinking about like you feel the energy and one of our kids is very much the like bogged down by the choice sort of style when he was very, even very little, when it's like, well, do you want chocolate milk or orange juice? Right. Things that are two arguably good choices and say all I could think is both was his response to things all the time. And that's just his natural sort of tendency. But how to like kind of come out of yourself in that way. And this, you know, where it's easy when you feel the eyes on you and whatnot. And that's like performing for me. When I was younger, I used to tell my parents I was going to do a national anthem at school and I was okay performing in front of the whole school. But I told my parents they couldn't be there, they could not go, because if I saw them, I knew it would mess me up. And of course they came and they hid in a back. So like, I didn't know until after that they were there. But you just have to kind of get. It's like enough experience and whatnot you get over. But that like implode, explode, I think really resonated with me.

That's the threat versus the challenge. That's harnessing, harnessing that energy and rather than retreating from it. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So for the next kind of piece.

Here, you were talking about that, you know, the road appears, you know, as you start taking the step. And in the book you talk about even the just doing something right, getting some momentum. As far as like a for.

Is that a first step for people.

Who have, who do recognize, hey, I need to do something, I want to make a change in this area of confidence. Is that a good place to start?

Yeah, it's probably the most important. Some people confuse confidence and self esteem. Confidence isn't self esteem. Self esteem is your self evaluation. It's possible to kind of low self esteem but still be confident in a particular domain.

Yeah.

And the way you become confident is by registering success in that domain. And the way you get success is by being skilled at setting goals for yourself that are in a sweet spot of neither too hard nor too easy. So you've got to stretch yourself a little bit. If you set goals for yourself that are too easy, then you don't need confidence and there's no confidence spin off from them. But if you set something where it's not 100% certain you can do it, when you're stretching yourself and you do it, your brain will respond with this rich dopaminergic impulse to the ventral striatum and you'll get a lift in your mood, A slight lift in your mood and a slight lowering anxiety. And that sense of, yeah, I can do that. And the more you do that, when you build on that, gradually increasing the goals but keeping always within this zone of stretching you, but not too much. You know, a person with low self esteem and high anxiety can still, just by being skilled at setting goals, build up. Slowly build up confidence in one domain and then you can. No reason why you cannot turn to another domain and start to build up your confidence. And once you do that, once you start building up confidence, that can slowly affect your self esteem as well. But confidence is the driver. Self esteem is not. Self esteem is something we have to protect all the time. Self esteem can often hold us back either if it's too high, because maybe we're very defensive and we're frightened of criticism and humiliation. And so we do all sorts of stuff to try and protect our view of ourselves, or because it's too low, we don't believe people will listen to us. So sometimes the action is speaking out in the meeting, saying clearly the thing, and not just staying quiet and even thinking something, but being scared to say it. It's just saying the thing clearly and as calmly as possible. In spite of the fact that your stomach's in turmoil and your pulse is racing and you're flushed with anxiety, you just say the thing. That's an action, but you have to do it in this controlled way of not too big a step at any one time.

Oh, yeah, definitely. Well, thank you for that. And it's really important, I think, for people in the. Get some momentum. And then I know in the book too, you talk about the. For running a marathon or, you know, the little steps, right. That it's not necessarily that we have to go and be thinking about a goal that's 26.2 miles away from where we are now. But maybe it's just the next little bit, right?

Yeah, yeah, it's the next, I'm going to run to that lamppost, I'm going to run to that tree. And that's controlling your attention. And really that's the other biggie for confidence is what you pay attention to. Because what you feel, your motivation, your emotions depend on what you pay attention to. And that's what the challenge mindset does. It makes you pay attention to a future success as opposed to a future possible failure or humiliation. And that success can be just doing the thing, just getting to that lamp poster, right? Whereas if you don't set that goal, if you're only thinking about the end of the marathon, you're depriving your brain of these Motivating mood, enhancing anxiety, reducing many success experiences along the way.

Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much for that. That's, you know, and a good way for people to start to think about, you know, we've got our can do can happen. We can be looking for the take a step, focus on the little wins. And I would love if, you know, knowing that we have so many people listening and we're talking about the brainy business. Right. So we talked a bit about ourselves and then what about as a manager, as a leader, if we're looking to empower people on our teams, that if we see that there's a little bit of benefit and maybe if they were to have some confidence, how do we encourage those around us to take steps without saying you're suffering from a lack of confidence, you need to change because that probably doesn't work so well.

It's a great question. It's a great question. So collective confidence is the belief that we can do something. Individual confidence is the belief that I can do something. And sometimes a very confident person in a group, particularly a senior person in the group, can inadvertently bleed the confidence the individual group members and therefore stymie the collective confidence of the group. This can happen. Both men and women can do this, but it's more likely for men to do this. And often it's quite unconscious. They don't realize by being effortlessly confident and maybe extroverted and maybe talking a lot, and however genially, they can suck away the confidence of less confident people and therefore of the collective confidence in the group. And so for instance, the IQ of a group, the intelligence of a group for solving problems, depends not on the individual IQs of the members, but rather on three factors. One is how equal the time spent speaking and solving the problem is in the group. Secondly, the average ability of the group members to read other people's emotions. And thirdly, the proportion of women in the group. And that's entirely because women have slightly higher average than average ability to read other people's emotions. So what you're doing in that situation, the ability to read other people's emotions allows you to network brains together to link them together to solve the problem and you get a much greater computation power. Whereas if you have, say, one, however genial, however generous, one person that's doing all the talking and you know, come on, come on you, and just the sheer proportion of time talking, that person will suck the IQ and the confidence of the group away. So a good leader will be self aware and realize that confidence is a Huge signal of dominance of status and can inhibit less confident people. So that person, she or he must consciously get, the quiet person in the corner who said nothing to speak, must help them give them challenges, help them get mini success experiences. Because people with lower confidence, if you give them, put them into a mode where they're implementing as opposed to wondering what they're going to say, rather you're giving them a task to do. When they're focused on future, their confidence will increase significantly and confidence then mushrooms. So a good leader will recognize that it's not all about individual charisma and confidence, rather it's about shepherding and the husbandry of the confidence of the individual team members. And the final thing I would say about that is espousing a common set of values. So values having clear values that your group share is one of the greatest sources of cohesion and collective confidence as well. We are in this together. Values are a huge source of trust between people. And so these things are incredibly important as leaders. So the old kind of image, 1950s image of the kind of charismatic boss who inspires and talks wonderfully and all that, that probably is not neuroscientifically, is not, you know, can sometimes work depending on the team, but a lot of the time it can just suck that incredible resource away from teams that is confident.

Yeah. Well, I love that advice, especially because, you know, it's so easy to say for those who are confident and I would say in general, I would put myself in this category, I'm more of a confident person. It's easy to think that I'm going to emulate this confidence and show people how great it is to be confident and they're going to want to be just like me and they're going to just, you know, by osmosis, become confident, but obviously not. Right.

Yeah, you know, it can, it can, you know, it can work if someone, if someone really identifies with you, if you're mentally someone or someone, someone feels, you know, you're on their side, that can work. That can work. But it has, you have to. The trouble is confidence can become a source of self regard and even narcissism in some people. And nothing degrades the confidence of other people than the narcissistic boss or leader.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, and then too, I know you talked a bit about like coaches who are abusive and aggressive, like verbally with their teams and how that can impact those players for a decade after, even when they get out from under that. And so, you know, really that everyone does have responsibility in the way that they're behaving around others and knowing that that impact is not that one thing in that one moment. Right. Whether it's, you know, teachers or we're thinking as parents, or if you're coaching the little league team or the way that you work with your teams at work, all those little moments can either be, you know, a catalyst for very positive change, or it can be sending someone down a path that, you know, you didn't intend. But it's important to be thoughtful about those little things and how you can change the whole course of someone's life if you're not careful.

Yeah. I mean, what. What can happen, both parents and leaders can do, is they can have the opposite effect on people they're leading or people the kids are bringing up if they allow their success to go to their heads. And so it's very common for very successful people to start to feel special. And, you know, in extreme forms, godlike Julius Caesar had himself made a demigod in his lifetime and statues put up themselves. And some parents who are very successful become so pleased with their success that again, my wife, Fiona Doherty, says they hide the ladder. They conceal the fact that actually most success is a result. A huge proportion of success is a result of chance factors. Nothing to do with your attributes or your skill or your, you know, whatever it is. You know, it's just. You happen to be lucky to go to the right school. You happen to be lucky to get a break in business. You know, for every successful person, there's a thousand equally talented people who did work just as hard who are not successful. You're just so. There's a real need for gratitude and humility the more successful you get, because 90% of it is luck. 90% of it is luck. And to the extent that you acknowledge that you will inspire people in your team, but to the extent that you internalize that and see it as sign that you are somehow special, you will demotivate. You demotivate and suck the confidence from your team.

Oh, definitely. I love that. I think the, you know, such a big lesson. And thank you to your wife. Please thank on behalf of the whole audience. We're so thankful. Fiona. This, you know, don't hide the ladder, I think, is such a both.

Because I think, too, we.

We would hide the ladder from ourselves, for one. Right. Because like you're saying, you want to feel like there's something special about you that got you to this point. But first, if you can find the ladder and then you can kind of share the ladder with others to help, whether for mentoring or, or anything else. And then I don't, I know we don't have time necessarily really to talk about it before we close out today, but I'm also going to link to my episode on Vulnerability Loops because this idea of really building trust and as a leader being open and showing where you have failed, that it's good to be confident. And it's also if you can open up a little bit and show where you have had mistakes, mistakes where there are things that haven't worked out, helping others to have that space to then feel like they can share a little is really, I think, important in this aspect as well.

Yep.

Well, thank you so much. I am forcing myself to stop. I think it's probably obvious that I could continue to discuss this with you for a very long time, but I want to be respectful of your time. And so as we close out the show for everyone who is now so excited to go to, to learn more and to get your books and maybe connect and whatnot, you know, what's their next best path to do so, well.

Ianrobertson.Org would be my website. My book How Confidence Works is available in Kindle and other than Amazon. And you know, I'd be delighted to hear from anyone. They can contact me through the website. Ianrobertson.org Perfect.

Well, we'll definitely have a link to your website. We'll have links for the books and just so much because definitely so much value here for everyone that's listening. I highly recommend the book for everyone and I think they'll really enjoy it. So again, you know, thank you, Ian, for joining me. I really enjoyed chatting with you today.

Thank you, Melina.

Thank you again to Dr. Ian Robertson for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation? For me, I really enjoyed taking a deep dive on confidence, both in reading How Confidence Works and in my conversation with Ian today. As I mentioned in the chat, I give the tip of being confident and owning a recommendation a lot on the.

Show and in my books.

And I know that's often easier said than done. What I love about this book is that it makes the path much clearer than I've seen in other formats and from others. He has a lot of great brainy references throughout his work so you can understand why something works or not, and also simple steps for how to make it happen for you, as well as stories of real people who are exemplifying the point he's making in a way that makes it really concrete and tangible. He has examples of so many diverse.

Individuals throughout the book, including elite athletes.

Like Serena Williams and Tiger woods to high profile CEOs, as well as more everyday examples of success, struggle and opportunity. It's a really fascinating balance that I think anyone can see value in, both in learning more about themselves and those around them, whether that's creating a better environment for your kids, team members, friends, family, or for yourself. Confidence is helpful for everyone and as Ian has said, it can be learned. Some are born more confident than others, of course, yes, but that isn't set in stone. If you want to be more confident and get all its brainy benefits, you can, and How Confidence Works is a great place to start. There is of course a link to get your copy of How Confidence Works as well as ways to connect with Ian and check out related past episodes and more. All waiting for you in the show notes. Those are found within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com,361 and thank you again to Dr. Ian Robertson for joining me on the show today. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Join me Tuesday for another Brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

You won't want to miss it. Until then. Thanks again for listening and learning with me, and remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Melina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.