In August 1963 Columbia Records released an album by the young boxer Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali. Its title was I Am the Greatest.
On February 25, 1964, in Miami Beach, he beat Sonny Liston and took the title. Afterward he told reporters: “I’m the greatest thing that ever lived … I shook up the world.”
On January 9, 1969, according to most accounts, Joe Namath of the New York Jets spoke at a dinner of the Miami Touchdown Club. Super Bowl III was three days away. “We’re going to win Sunday. I guarantee it,” he said, as CBS Sports quotes him. Other accounts give slightly different words.
The Jets were heavy underdogs against the Baltimore Colts. Sources give the point spread as 17, 18 or 19 points. The Jets won, 16 to 7.
In 2012 Cameron Anderson and three colleagues published six studies in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. They found that “overconfidence leads to higher social status in both short and longer-term groups.”
The mechanism was how others saw the overconfident person. “Overconfidence leads to a behavioral signature that makes the individual appear competent to others.”
In 2010 Dana Carney, Amy Cuddy and Andy Yap reported in Psychological Science that holding an expansive “power pose” raised testosterone and lowered cortisol. The study had 42 participants. In June 2012 Cuddy presented the idea in a TED talk. By 2017 about 47 million viewers had seen it.
In 2015 a larger replication found that people felt more powerful after posing, but it found no physiological or behavioral effects. In 2016 Carney wrote: “I do not believe that ‘power pose’ effects are real.”
On March 16, 2004, Senator John Kerry, then running for president, spoke at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. About an $87 billion bill for Iraq, he said: “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”
The Bush campaign used the line in television ads to present Kerry as a man who changes positions. At the Republican convention that year, delegates brought flip-flop sandals. Kerry later called his remark “one of those inarticulate moments.”
“Can’t somebody bring me a one-handed economist?” Harry Truman is often quoted as saying this about advisers who weighed both sides of every question. The economist Walter Heller told the story in the New York Times in 1974.
Quote Investigator found no solid contemporary evidence that Truman said it. The earliest similar version it found appeared on June 12, 1936, in a Scripps-Howard editorial: “what the Republicans need is a one-armed platform writer.”
The Army’s leadership doctrine, ADP 6-22 of July 31, 2019, lists confidence among the attributes of a leader’s presence. “Confidence is the faith leaders place in their abilities to make decisions and take appropriate action in any situation, no matter how stressful or ambiguous.” The doctrine adds: “A leader’s confidence is contagious and permeates the entire organization.”
It also warns: “Effective leaders temper confidence with humility.”
At a Toastmasters meeting, one member serves as the Ah-Counter. The task is to “note any overused words or filler sounds used as a crutch by anyone who speaks during the meeting.” Toastmasters asks that the report be delivered “in a positive, supportive way.”
Ralph C. Smedley organized the first permanent Toastmasters club. It met at the YMCA in Santa Ana, California, on October 22, 1924.
Fake it till you make it. Act confident until the confidence is real.
Own the room. Hold the attention and respect of everyone present.
Make the call. Decide, especially when others hesitate.
Waffle. Avoid a clear position, or keep changing it.
Wishy-washy. Weak and without a clear opinion.
Lead with the answer. Give the recommendation first and the reasons after.
In 2012 Susan Cain published Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. She described an “Extrovert Ideal”: the belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha and comfortable in the spotlight. She called Harvard Business School one of its centers.
In her TED talk the same year, she said: “There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.” The book became a long-running bestseller.
Its success suggests how strong the expectation to speak is, and how many Americans feel its cost.