Arrogance versus Confidence

I am convinced that many leaders have a huge blind spot when it comes to determining the difference between arrogance and confidence.

When I was 29 years old I started working as a senior pastor in an amazing church in Minnesota.  As a 29-year old with 6 years of youth pastor experience, I thought I could step fairly easily into the challenges of working as a senior pastor.  I was young, but not foolish enough to think the change would be without its challenges.  I did, however, think I knew what it would take for a church to move forward.

I did not think about it at the time, but as I look back I realize how crazy the situation was.  There were people in the church who had been in leadership longer than I had been alive, and I came in thinking that I knew what needed to happen to move forward.  It was not surprising that I started to hear reports that people thought that I was arrogant.

The accusations surprised me, so asked some new friends in the church if they felt I was coming across that way.  One of them said something that I wanted to hear.  He told me that it was most likely that many people in the church could not distinguish the difference between arrogance and confidence.  He felt that they were mistaking my confidence in what God was calling me to do as arrogance.

Of course I wanted to hear that.  No one likes hearing that they are arrogant.  Confidence is different, though.  Confidence sounds like a quality leaders should have.  Confidence is a calm assurance that the path selected is the right path.  And what leader in history has not had a strong level of confidence?

Arrogance vs Confidence

If you take the time to think about it, it is an interesting question.  What is the difference between arrogance and confidence?

Most would agree that confidence is a positive quality, and arrogance is negative.

Arrogance is linked with attitudes of superiority.  An arrogant person believes that he is better, smarter, or more important than others (Merriam-Websters)

Confidence is just a personal belief that you can do something well or succeed at something.  It can also deal with the feeling or belief that one is able to succeed at something (also Merriam-Websters)

Both deal with belief in self.  I would argue that most arrogant people are also supremely confident.  When I have walked away from encounters with people and felt that the person was arrogant, I did not have a problem that the person was confident.  I struggled with feeling that they were so certain of their own position that they did not take enough time to consider other potential solutions or approaches.

And in hindsight, I can now see how my actions could have been interpreted as arrogant.  Confidence in my own position to the point that I do not appear to adequately consider other positions will always lead to others feeling like they are being handled arrogantly.

Addressing the Issue

Learn to Listen to your Team

I am a planner, and before I make a suggestion I have usually run many scenarios in my head.  Many times in presenting a solution I hear many suggestions that I have already thought through and determined were not adequate to solve the problem.  My lack of desire to spend time wading through solutions I believe won’t work means that I can dismiss ideas too quickly.  It is absolutely vital for us as leaders to realize that most accusations of arrogance come from a lack of people feeling heard.

By eliminating the team from the decision making process, the leader creates what I think of as a Prophet-Based Leadership style.  The Prophet goes up on the mountain, hears the message from on high, comes back to the normal people and tells them how to line up with the new paradigm.  In faith-based nonprofit ministries, this is especially dangerous (with many cult leaders throughout history serving as proof), and I believe a completely false way of leading.  (In my opinion, it completely ignores the New Testament reality of the priesthood of all believers and the context of gifting in the Body of Christ.  It also ignores the way the church made difficult decisions in the first century, in groups with discussion from people of multiple giftings – but I digress).  It is also short-sighted, because the changes last only through the life-span of the Prophet.

But pretending to listen is not enough.  One cannot simply “appear to adequately consider other positions.”  It is vital for a leaders to recognize that they have blind spots.  These can have any number of causes, including but not limited to age, culture, belief-system, and experience.  These blind spots cause them to also falsely reject potential solutions, regardless of how well thought out that rejection is.  A solution should only be 100% rejected when it is considered by the whole team.

When you do have to say “No”, learn to do it well.

No teams of yes-men

To eliminate accusations of being arrogant, address your leadership team first.  Begin to make decisions as a team instead of looking for the team to confirm the decisions you have already made.  Along the way, surround yourself with people who will tell you the truth that is, not the truth you want to hear.  Just because you want people to say you are confident does not mean that you do not need to hear that you are acting arrogant.  Just because you want to hear your ideas are golden does not mean that you should not have a team member who will tell you that there are holes in your logic.

It stokes our ego to have a team full of people who like us,  think like us, and tell us how great we are.  It certainly makes the decision making process faster.  It only reinforces areas of short-sightedness, however.  Imitate Abraham Lincoln and build your leadership team full of great thinkers who also think differently from you.  A team of rivals makes you better.

Pay attention to evaluations.

If you hear that you are behaving arrogantly, you may have.  You won’t think so.  Most likely you will think you had simply acted confidently.  But the reports should indicate to you that someone feels that you were acting in a way that communicated superiority.  Take time to evaluate.

1.  Did you listen well?
2. Did you communicate in a way that made people feel truly heard? Are you dealing with “sour-grapes”?  Are people simply upset that they did not get their way?  This is, of course, always possible.  Every leader who eventually has to  make a decision that was not unanimous will deal with feed-back.  I am sure almost every leader has been accused of being arrogant.  Sometimes even the biggest complaints contain a morsel of truth, however.  You should always take time to make sure people did not feel you were just going through the motions of listening, but really took the time to hear what was being said.
3. How important is it that you move ahead now?  Can you afford to take your foot off of the gas and address the issue? Some issues are truly windows of opportunity that have to be seized, and an organization cannot permanently be paralyzed waiting for a unanimous decision.  Is this really one of those cases?  Or can you afford to slow down to come to a unified decision.
4. Does your team trust you enough to tell you the truth?  Some organizations berate workers for having a different opinion.  This is sometimes done from a pious, guilt-creating position in Christian organizations.  Elder boards who remind the congregation that they should be respected or leadership teams that tell people they should not have opposing positions or feelings do nothing to eliminate accusations of arrogance.

Tempering Confidence with Humility

In my church leadership experience two specific decisions helped me.  The first was to be sure that my leadership teams were good cross-sections of the church, to make sure that everyone felt their interests were being well represented.  Sometimes we made decisions slower than I wanted.  Sometimes the board decided my way was not the best way to move forward.  But in the end we felt that we had found the best way for the church to move forward.

The second decision was to invite former leaders in the church to meet with me once a month.  These men were much older than me, and I would ask them how they had addressed issues in the church.  How did they try to address, for example, sinking attendance at key programs.  How did they try to focus on growth?  What were problems or challenges they faced?  By doing so, I could help learn from patterns of thinking and help them focus on key issues instead of symptomatic problems.  They may not always have enjoyed, for example, the music being played on Sunday morning, but they were able to see things they had done to change directions to help make the music of the church enjoyable.

I also asked these men questions about life and approached the entire meeting with a learner’s posture.  How did they help their children in different areas?  How did they show their wife that they loved her?  How did they make vacations enjoyable for their family?

One of the biggest ways to stop being arrogant is to choose to be humble.  Take on the position of a learner, and then when you do confidently move forward, people will recognize the difference between confidence and arrogance.