Confidence: The surprising truth about how much you need and how to get it

by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

We're told that the key to success in life and business is believe in yourself, and the world is yours. But building confidence can be a challenging task. And, as leading psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic argues, confidence can actually get in the way of achievement; self-esteem is nothing without competence, the core skills, to back it up.Confidence is feeling capable. Competence is being capable. None of the figures whose success is put down to supreme self-belief, Barack Obama, Madonna, Muhammad Ali could have achieved their goals without the hard-won skills (and years of training) behind the confidence mask. Successful people are confident because of their success, and not the other way around. Whether you want to improve your social skills, get a promotion or that all-important first job, this game-changing exploration of how to build success, in the mould of Robert Cialdini's Influence, Susan Cain's Quiet and Steven Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, will change the way you think about achievement.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Self Help

273 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is an international authority in psychological profiling, talent management, and people analytics. He is the CEO of Hogan Assessment Systems, Professor of Business Psychology at University College London (UCL), and visiting Professor at Columbia University. He has previously taught at New York University and the London School of Economics.

He has published 8 books and over 120 scientific papers (h index 41), making him one of the most prolific social scientists of his generation. His work has received awards by the American Psychological Association and the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences.

He is also the director of UCL's Industrial-Organisational and Business Psychology programme, and an Associate with Harvard's Entrepreneurial Finance Lab.

Over the past 15 years, he has consulted to a range of clients in financial services (JP Morgan, HSBC, Prudential), advertising (Havas, Fallon, BBH), media (Yahoo!, MTV, Endemol), consumer goods (Unilever, Reckitt Benckiser), fashion (LVMH, Net-a-Porter), and government (British Army, Royal Mail, National Health Service).

His media career comprises over 70 TV appearances, including the BBC, CNN, and Sky, and regular features in Harvard Business Review, the Guardian, Fast Company, Forbes, and the Huffington Post. He is a keynote speaker for the Institute of Economic Affairs and the co-founder of metaprofiling.com, a digital start-up that enables organisations to identify individuals with entrepreneurial talent. He lives in New York.

Reviews

[Nora · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book has one idea in it: People who have high confidence are deluded, because they are not as competent as they think they are, and people who have low confidence will become more competent because they will work at it.
It would have been great as a blog post or a TED talk. As a book it's highly repetitive and not fun to read. Which is a shame

[Daniela D · Rating 3 out of 5]

An unusual read relative to other self-help books that it paints the picture of high confidence as the villain. The book is filled with outputs from a variety of studies in psychology and other behavioral sciences, so that gives it a good base. Whilst the central idea of the book is convincing and I most definitely changed my mind and now firmly believe that low confidence can be a good incentive for increasing competence, some of the chapters felt a bit stretched. In my opinion, there was little if any additional and meaty or more useful stuff in chapter 6 and 7.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not what I expected, but an interesting perspective. I like that I leave this book with tools to apply to my daily life.

[Hamza Abdulkadir]

probably it was a life changing book

[Gary Knapton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding. I read this not so much as a self-help guide. I'm plenty confident. It was recommended by a friend in the gym from an intellectual angle. It has provided me with great insight into an 3,000 word article I was writing at the time, on confidence. Yet what a terrific read. And help me it has. Upbeat, down to earth, heretical, well cited. This is fresh, useful and makes you smile. A clever yet humble argument. Bravo!

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

A highly theoretical book, with nowhere near enough to say to justify the length of the book.

Now, how can those lacking in confidence band together to make sure that those who overflow with confidence, bordering on narcissism, don't end up running the show, and making catastrophic mistakes, because their confidence way outweighs their competence?

[George Araman · Rating 1 out of 5]

The examples are great, and the content is relevant but in my opinion a little pessimistic.

[Jery Heprianto · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this book ,it tells me about how I should take benefit of low confidence..it's not always bad to have low confidence..new perspective