Confidence Vs Entitlement

Welcome back to the Australian Institute of Insight Australia. And in this video we're going to discuss the distinction between confidence and entitlement, exploring how these traits can influence behavior and organizational security. While confidence inspires trust and drive performance, entitlement can foster a sense of privilege that leads to risky behaviours or lapses of attitudes, ethical behavior. With me again we've got Peter Netra. Welcome.

Thank you.

Let's start and define what each of them are. What do we mean by confidence and what do we mean by entitlement?

So confidence is the ability or is the perception of one's ability to be able to handle situation? Entitlement is a demand for the respect that might not yet be earned.

Yes.

And the interesting thing is that confidence will inspire confidence and entitlement will inspire non confidence. I guess the best way of looking at it is if you had a leader in a tense situation, the person that has confidence will inspire confidence. The person who just demands everything of you in that, in that situation may appear that they have confidence.

Correct.

The entitlement shows that now everybody else has to do the heavy lifting while this person.

Correct. And it's a very big distinction.

It is a huge distinction. Absolutely.

So what sets, what are the sort of the indicators that said okay, someone maybe confident but is leading more to becoming entitled?

The entitled person will have very little humility. It will be this is the way and this is the way it will be. And it's almost an assumption. There's an assumptive process that the world just works this way.

Yeah.

Whereas a confident person will say, okay, I recognize a world will, you know, not every task or scenario is going to be the same. But I have the confidence that I'm flexible to move between those and there is a huge difference between those. So one is very rigid, one has the ability to adapt.

Yeah. Is it easy to see?

Absolutely. If you're actually with somebody who has confidence, that confidence you can see that in operation within the first 10 minutes. Yeah, I understand that. Whereas if you have somebody who's entitled, it will be very much like Tum Tum laying down the law. This is the way it is.

How can a sense of entitlement lead to undermining in our organization?

Oh, absolutely. If somebody feels like they are constantly operating to or with somebody who is entitled, there's no way out, there's no wiggle room. You have to work with that. And if there's people will find a way through it, around it all under it. And that's, that's sabotage under it.

Yeah. So when it comes to, are there specific personal traits or even outside pressures or culture that can either create someone to become more confident or vice versa, push them to becoming more entitled?

I think confidence comes also with a sense of humility that not every scenario has a set of rules, but a confidence in the ability to deal with what's at hand. Entitlement, basically the world revolves around non humility. Everything has to conform to their vision of the world and in terms of the environment around them. Confident people will surround themselves with all voices, whereas entitled people will actually surround themselves with mainly voices or probably exclusively voices that keep on saying yes.

Is there a scenario or a situation where, for example, due to maybe being sort of like in an industry where it's highly competitive, like let's say information technology and a number of organizations are vying for tender, is that sort of the external pressure that's been placed on the organization, could that lead to people or specific people within the organization saying, well, because it's highly competitive environment, I need to stand up, but I need to feel that I'm entitled.

I think you'll find that the people that end up standing up are the ones that have the confidence. The people that are entitled will, will almost demand of that tender that it be placed upon them.

Correct.

Yeah. Which as we all know, you know, you might get lucky, but it doesn't always work.

Yeah. Because they may think, oh, you know, they're, they're more likely to win or so.

Yeah. So, you know, I don't understand why I didn't win. I was entitled. Yes. So, you know, that's in a tender situation, that's a, that's a really dangerous place.

So what can do, what can leaders then do to encourage employees to I suppose gain more confidence but also reduce or mitigate the entitlement?

So I guess part of the diff, part of the issue here is that if you take somebody who's confident and you manage them to such a degree that they become the prima donna, you can move them into entitlement. And that's a rigid situation. So one of the best ways to do it is to sit down with a person who has a confident person who's had a win and say, fantastic, let's celebrate your win. Now tell me what you could have.

Improved, what you could have done better.

So what your messaging in that is you really did great, but how do we. Where would you self critique yourself? And that could be in timing, that could be in all sorts of different things. If you sit down with a person who is entitled.

The. Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, exactly. There's a, an air expectation that they deserve it. Y. Okay, in what ways can a person who's. Who's in. Fills the entire lead or become a precursor to a situation where it can lead to an insider threat?

By disenfranchising those around him. Him. I say him. Gill is going to be a her. Absolutely. By disenfranching those people around them if they are entitled. It's basically like a bulldozer going through the office at that point in time and the debris falls where it may and people followed by an entourage of people saying, oh yes, isn't this person great? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That damages an organization to the point that people who look at that thing. I mean the spectrum of reaction to that is massive.

Yes.

One of the extreme edges of that spectrum is people go, well, I'm just going to take it out on you or the organization, whatever the situation may be, whatever they feel they can take it out on. So that's the extreme edge of that reaction.

How does so the perception of fairness and recognition in the workplace play a role, whether it be feeling of confidence or feeling entitled.

Yeah. For the entitled person it's always fair until they're faced with a situation where their entitlement fell over. Fairness is really great in promoting people who are confident. If something has, if a project has moved into a particular area, the confident person will be able to say, okay, I accept that. Maybe we could have done better here. I'll learn from that. This gets back to the humility again. And the humility also then creates a respect. So yeah, okay, this person's flexible. We'll work together. Together there's a collaboration that happens with that. Whereas in the entitlement it's like, yeah, it's fair.

As long as I win.

As long as I win, it's fair.

What are the long term impacts for an organization when they leave entitlement that is unchecked.

I think the word that you're looking at is unchecked because you will find that people who are entitled will usually be in that organisation for a particular reason. And I think what you need to look at is that an entitled person can still be a useful tool in a channel.

Yeah.

So as long as they are working inside of the channel which they are within which they are effective, they're a useful tool.

Correct.

If you allow them to bleed that out into areas where they're not as effective, they can be a wrecking ball to the organization.

So the question I Have then is how do organizations sort of identify that they've got situation where an employee or a number of employees are fully entitled and how would they then deal with it? Which goes a little bit to what I asked before.

It's a hard one. But the most important thing to look at is where does that entitlement sit? And the biggest issue will be if the entitlement sits at the top end, because that will then become.

The norm.

For the rest of the organization.

Correct.

One of the things that can be an indicator is staff rotation. So if you get a number of really good.

That's a good point.

Confident people coming through and you cycle and you cycle, say between six months to a year and then, you know, it's a revolving door going on, then you need to look at it from a different perspective.

Perspective. And I will also say maybe I was going to look at it as. As morale was in an organization. Could be any indicator, but they could be indicated for something else as well.

Yeah. And look, this also has to do with toxic workplaces. It can do with bullying, but it is a problem. It is a problem that will take people who really just want to roll up their sleeves, get into it and do the best that they possibly can. If they're involved in an environment like that and it bleeds over into what they do, they're going to go, that's it, I'm out of here.

Yeah. Are there sort of specific strategies that organizations can do to make or foster employees to make them more accountable while in the same time mitigating the potential risk down the track of having people that are entitled and maybe causing risky behaviors?

Yeah, look, I think most positions are accountable to their results. I think what needs to be looked at is accountable across those results as well. Too accountable inside of the organisation. So when we look at accountability, it has mainly to do with, you were tasked to do this outside the organisation, you did or you didn't do it. That's accountability. But you also need to have accountability within the organisation, across the organisation. So you might not work with this department as this department. There needs to be accountability. Accountability across organizations as well, too. And I don't think many people pay attention to that.

No, they don't. No, they don't. So here's a side question. Could a current time at the workplace be a hidden product of rewarding confidence too aggressively?

Yes, it can. It can indeed. You can create the fairy tale.

Yeah. Yeah.

What is it? Legend in your own love show you create the fairy tale in a person's mind. That you could start off with a very competent person, but all of a sudden you lock them into this mold. And people who are. Who like that mold.

Correct.

Will tend to solidify around that.

Correct.

And then all of a sudden. Because entitlement is less about the decisions you make, but at the expectations you hold.

Correct.

So if I always expect to have the same car park or this, that and the other, even though it's not really mine, car park as a for instance, that becomes an entitlement.

Correct.

You then cluster entitlements around that. And if that's.

Yeah, very much so.

If that's constantly left or not challenged or even encouraged, then you just become part of the. Yes. Group around.

Yeah. And I suppose it could be also a rolling stone. Correct.

Correct.

Down the hill, whereby someone who's been given some form of entitlement keeps on seeking more and more.

Yep, absolutely. The snowball effect. Snowball, yeah, exactly. It just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

Yes.

And actually it's a really interesting example because at one point in time, it can get so big it can become an organizational wrecking.

Yeah. Okay. So having said that, what is the confident takeaway from this discussion?

Confident takeaway is be flexible. The confidence is flexibility. And that confidence will breed confidence with the rest of the team around you. If you're a confident leader, your team is confident, you will get that response every time.

And if you're entitled, you'll get people.

Begrudgingly working with you.

So there you have it. Well, I hope you really enjoyed it. And with that, thank you very much. Thanks, Peter. It's been a very interesting series. Thank you. And we should be coming with more. Thank you. Welcome back to the Australian Institute of Insider Australia. And in this video, we're going to discuss the dynamics between and G.