The Confidence Code Read Online Free PDF Page A

Merkel and I have talked about it,” she confided. “We have discovered that we both have the same habit. When we work on a particular matter, we will work the file inside, outside, sideways, backwards, historically, genetically and geographically. We want to be completely on top of everything and we want to understand it all and we don’t want to be fooled by somebody else.”
    We pushed aside the crème brûlée we’d been enjoying and paused, taking in the image of two of the most powerful women in the world huddling someplace to compare notes about their mutual need to overprepare. Lagarde then volunteered something most men never would: “We assume, somehow, that we don’t have the level of expertise to be able to grasp the whole thing.”
    “Of course it is part of the confidence issue,” she concluded, shrugging, “to be overly prepared and to be rehearsed, and to make sure that you are going to get it all and not make a mistake.” Is it a problem? we asked. “Well,” she joked, “it’s very time consuming!”
    Perfectionism was very much on our growing list of confidence killers and so our role model had impressed us with her self-assurance, yet also managed to make a compelling case for the depth of the problem. (Like misery, we found ourselves perversely comforted to have more company. If Amazonian athletes, hard-charging military graduates, and global financiers are susceptible to self-doubt, no wonder we mere mortals have issues.) In all though, despite her vulnerabilities, Lagarde came across as confident, and confident in a way we’d like to be, and we would think about that contradiction for months.
    The evening we had dinner with her, she was just back from the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, and laughingly recalled a panel about women’s economic progress on which she had participated with other female luminaries, including her friend Sheryl Sandberg.
    “So there we were, with just one token man right in the middle, poor guy. He struggled quite a bit, trying to be pushy. We were trying to listen to the moderator, or signal to her when we wanted to join the debate. He couldn’t care less. He ignored her and talked when he liked. And in that setting, he came across as quite rude.”
    The incident had reminded her that women don’t necessarily have to compete according to the guidelines of a male playbook.
    “To the extent that it is more interesting to be female than male, why would we have to repress that rather than be ourselves with strength and worthiness? I’ve always said that we should not try to imitate the boys in everything they do.”
    It was an interesting thought, but one we wouldn’t fully appreciate until later.
    20 Percent Less Valuable
    The shortage of female confidence is more than just a collection of high-octane anecdotes or wrenchingly familiar scenarios. It is increasingly well quantified and documented. The Institute of Leadership and Management, in the United Kingdom, conducted a study in 2011, simply asking British women, in a series of questions, how confident they feel in their professions. Not very, as it turns out. Half of the women reported feelings of self-doubt about their performance and careers, while less than a third of male respondents reported self-doubt.
    Linda Babcock, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University and the author of Women Don’t Ask , has uncovered a similar lack of confidence among American women, with concrete consequences. She found, in studies with business school students, that men initiate salary negotiations four times as often as women, and that when women do negotiate, they ask for thirty percent less than men do.
    At Manchester Business School in England, Professor Marilyn Davidson says the problem stems from a lack of confidence and expectation. Each year she asks her students what they expect to earn, and what they deserve to earn, five years after graduation. “I’ve been doing