What Not to Do in a Workplace If You are Overconfident
It is said that confidence can increase the chances of success while a lack of confidence can give even the best of opportunities a miss. Confidence is a beautiful thing and it adds punch to your character, while also improving the behaviour and uplifting the overall morale of your surroundings- be it workplace or family.
However, as an excess of anything is bad, an excess of confidence is harmful too. Over-confidence can do as bad as confidence can do good. If you know you’re over-confident, you need to relax and work your way through it before it can affect anything or anyone. Some of the things you must NOT do when you’re overconfident at your workplace are:
1. Don’t Let Overconfidence Make You Mediocre
Often when we are over-confident, we don’t provide enough attention to our work. It can make us enter the realm of substandard simply because we think the work is too easy and we don’t pay attention to the details. It is one of the biggest fallacies of human character and not just at the workplace; countries have lost wars due to the overconfidence of a single man. So the next time you feel that you can do no wrong, take care to do the work more diligently.
2. Take Extra Care
It is important to take extra care while doing your work when under the effects of overconfidence. It is imperative that you will be making several mistakes on account of your overconfidence. These mistakes could make your company go into a much financial loss, more so if you’re in one of the leadership roles. Also, understand the difference between how confidence and overconfidence affect work.
It is also important to be critical and careful because overconfidence can also lead to many accidents at workplace. If you are in one of the departments that involve physical labour, or you yourself are in that category, it becomes even more important to double-check everything. Double checking helps in eliminating any risk that your overconfidence poses.
For some people, it could be even fatal to be overconfident at work. It is because during overconfidence, we tend to think nothing is impossible and the work is below our capabilities. This leads to the thought about finishing it as soon as possible and not being careful with regards to the correct stringent process, which may land someone in serious trouble.
3. Conflicts
It is very easy to get into conflicts when overconfidence is at a high. It is because at those times, we don’t value opinion of anyone but ourselves. We consider ourselves to be highly accurate and think that the possibility that we could be wrong, even partially wrong, is remote. This can harm in two ways:
High-handedness
If you get over-confident, you tend to be disrespectful towards others, mostly because you think too much about yourself. This can lead to high-handedness which is a sure shot recipe for conflict, especially if someone who has a loose temper comes into the picture.
Effect on Work Environment
The overall mood of the workplace gets affected because of the overconfidence of one person. Slowly and steadily, this can seep into everyone where each of them thinks too high of themselves. Too much negativity or attitude can enter the work premises and this surely can be a disaster. This, however, is an extreme case of effects of overconfidence of a person and is more likely to happen if one of the persons in senior roles gets this bug.
4. Try not to Irk Co-workers
While you’re overconfident, you tend to put others down. Some of them may answer back or retaliate, while others, especially those junior to you, might lose morale. It may also leave some effects in the long run. It is, therefore, best to keep to work and work-related conversations if you know you’re having one of those highs of over-confidence.
Over-confidence is a pretty common problem which plenty of people face time to time. It is similar to the loss of confidence. It is, however, more difficult to make people understand because the person doesn’t usually look like the person who needs help. Therefore, it’s best to work your way through it or take professional help. It can be detrimental to you and your co-workers once it is brought into the daily equation of the workplace.
