One of the labels often aimed at my attitude to work is arrogance.

There are tons of arrogant people out there, people who talk up their game but can’t back it up; these are the types of people you don’t need on your team.

And yet there are those who can talk a good game and back it up; but because people are so used to others underachieving that they mistake the confidence of ones abilities to be arrogance.

You tend to find that focuses and efficient people who know what they are doing are highly direct when talking about what they can and can’t do.

They will suss people out fast and know who can do what. This directness often leads them to appear arrogant purely because people aren’t used to such a confident show of skills.

Now you might think that I am going to say that people who fail to understand confidence need to change their view on life but actually it’s quite the opposite.

You see while I appreciate that being good at your job can lead you to feeling the need to tell others about it, the problem of people mistaking this confidence for arrogance is your burden to bare.

The fact is, when you need to enlist someone else, a healthy dose of confidence helps, but most other times, despite the fact you’re telling the truth your confidence can work against you.

While you might not think it, others will believe it’s arrogance no matter what and as such it’s your job to moderate the presentation of your abilities to the world to get a response appropriate to your situation.

Now if you’re Mark Zuckerberg you don’t need to temper your confidence at all. The position of your success means people know you can back up your talk, but if you don’t have anything obvious to show for your efforts regardless of your self believe others will think you’re arrogant.

Mistaken arrogance is one of the leading reasons why people don’t like to hire self-motivated individuals. It’s the reason why staff members might miss understand your intentions and the reason potential customers decide to go with the safer option.

How you’re perceived is important; in fact it’s vital and yet we often forget that it’s not how we perceive ourselves that matters but how others perceive us that counts.

Be humble.

Chapter Summary:

• Confidence is often mistaken for arrogance
• Your obvious success will offset the risk of being perceived as arrogant
• It’s not about how you perceive yourself but how others perceive you
• The world isn’t going to change, so you need to change how people perceive you

Read our next blog post “Be careful who you talk to”.