{"id":704,"date":"2026-09-01T10:33:45","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T10:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/darmawan-assc.com\/?p=704"},"modified":"2026-09-01T10:33:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T10:33:45","slug":"when-confidence-stops-us-from-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darmawan-assc.com\/?p=704","title":{"rendered":"When Confidence Stops us from Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"

My daughter, who lives in Australia, once used a phrase to describe something she had observed across the two worlds she moves between. The phrase stayed with me: delusions of capability<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I was not entirely sure what she meant at first. Then I began noticing it – in conversations, meetings, leadership decisions and, perhaps occasionally, in myself. It made me wonder how easily confidence, experience and a little success can change the way we understand our own abilities.<\/p>\n

The phrase sounds harsh, but the behaviour is not always dramatic. It often appears in people who are genuinely talented, hardworking and experienced. They have achieved results. People trust them. Their confidence has been earned.<\/p>\n

The difficulty begins when that confidence turn it stops being updated.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What Does It Relate To?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A belief in our own capability is important. Without it, many of us would never accept greater responsibility, begin something unfamiliar or continue after an early failure.<\/p>\n

Psychology describes part of this as self-efficacy<\/em>: the belief that we can organise ourselves and take the actions needed to achieve a result.<\/p>\n

Healthy confidence says:<\/p>\n

\u201cI may not know this yet, but I can learn.\u201d<\/p>\n

A delusion of capability says:<\/p>\n

\u201cI have succeeded before, therefore I already understand. I know what I am doing, follow me\u201d<\/p>\n

I use the phrase not as a formal diagnosis, but as an everyday description of uncalibrated confidence – the point at which our view of ourselves no longer adjusts to evidence, context or the knowledge of other people.<\/p>\n

Research on overconfidence distinguishes between overestimating our performance, placing ourselves above others and becoming too certain that our judgment is correct. Studies of expertise also show how experience can reduce curiosity when familiar solutions are applied too quickly to unfamiliar situations.<\/p>\n

The problem is not confidence. It is confidence that has stopped checking. Maybe one becomes arrogant?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

How Culture Shapes What Confidence Looks Like<\/strong><\/p>\n

Culture does not create a delusion of capability. But it can influence how confidence is displayed, how authority is questioned and how easily people admit that they do not know.<\/p>\n

These are tendencies, not rules. Every country contains different generations, industries, personalities and organisational cultures. Still, familiar workplace situations can show how differently confidence and disagreement may appear.<\/p>\n

In an Indonesian meeting, a younger manager may recognise that a deadline is unrealistic but hesitate to say, \u201cThis will not work,\u201d particularly when the proposal comes from someone senior.<\/p>\n

They may suggest reviewing the timing, raise the concern privately or wait for a more senior colleague to speak first.<\/p>\n

This does not mean they lack ideas or capability. They may be protecting harmony, showing respect or avoiding public embarrassment.<\/p>\n

But a leader who listens only for direct objections may leave the room believing that everyone agrees. Silence then becomes part of the evidence supporting the leader\u2019s confidence.<\/p>\n

In some Japanese organisations, considerable consultation may happen before the formal meeting. By the time everyone sits around the table, concerns have already been discussed and the proposal adjusted.<\/p>\n

An outsider might mistake the quiet meeting for passivity, although much of the real thinking happened beforehand.<\/p>\n

Australia offers another contrast. A younger colleague may feel relatively comfortable saying, \u201cI don\u2019t think that will work,\u201d even to a senior manager. Informality can reduce the visible distance between positions and force confidence to meet another point of view. Australian is so informal to get the idea across. Written in the policy what the minister do you can edit \u2013 tall Poppy syndrome shapes Australian culture \u2013 put all in the same level somehow. We can talk about this more later stage.<\/p>\n

But informality does not guarantee equal influence. The quickest speaker, the most persuasive presenter or the person most comfortable with disagreement may still dominate.<\/p>\n

In some French professional settings, open intellectual disagreement may be treated as engagement rather than disloyalty. Ideas can be questioned rigorously, forcing people to defend the thinking behind them. Debate is their culture. They talk different perspectives in every talk show starts early in the morning. So many topics so many thoughts and speakers.<\/p>\n

Yet the person most skilled in debate may appear to be the most capable, even when someone less verbally persuasive understands the operational reality better. Not in romantic manners for sure, on how they are being known.<\/p>\n

The lesson is not that one cultural approach is better.<\/p>\n

The norm in general without being judgmental; Indonesia may protect relationships. Japan may encourage preparation and consensus. Australia may make direct challenge feel more normal. France may sharpen ideas through debate.<\/p>\n

Each strength can also hide something.<\/p>\n

Harmony may conceal disagreement. Consensus may conceal the effort required to reach it. Informality may conceal unequal influence. Debate may reward performance more than reflection.<\/p>\n

The danger begins when we assume that our preferred way of communicating is the only evidence of intelligence, commitment or capability.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

How Experience and Success Influence It<\/strong><\/p>\n

Experience should improve judgment. It gives us patterns, references and lessons that cannot be learned only from books.<\/p>\n

But experience becomes wisdom when it helps us recognise differences. It becomes a trap when every new situation begins to look like something we have already solved.<\/p>\n

Success adds another layer.<\/p>\n

After repeated achievement, people receive more trust and fewer questions. Their ideas move faster. Their decisions are less frequently tested. They may begin to confuse a successful outcome with proof that every part of their judgment was correct.<\/p>\n

Yet success is rarely the work of one capability alone.<\/p>\n

It may include timing, teamwork, institutional support, market conditions and luck. It often contains invisible contributions from people who corrected details, managed relationships or stopped small problems from becoming much larger ones.<\/p>\n

A healthy attitude towards success asks:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat made this possible?\u201d<\/p>\n

A less healthy one asks:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat does this prove about me?\u201d<\/p>\n

The first produces learning.<\/p>\n

The second produces a story\u2014and eventually, we may begin protecting the story more than improving the work.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What Happens to the Team?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The real concern is not only what happens to the individual. It is what slowly happens around them.<\/p>\n

People become careful about offering unfinished ideas. Specialists are consulted only after decisions have already been made. Younger employees wait for instructions instead of developing judgment. Colleagues quietly repair mistakes because correcting them openly feels too difficult.<\/p>\n

The work may still be delivered. The leader may still appear effective.<\/p>\n

But the team is becoming more dependent.<\/p>\n

Capability in leadership cannot therefore be measured only by personal output. It must also be measured by what grows around the leader.<\/p>\n

Does the team become more capable and independent?<\/p>\n

Can people disagree without being labelled difficult?<\/p>\n

Is knowledge being shared?<\/p>\n

Can the work continue well when the leader is absent?<\/p>\n

A leader who must always remain the most capable person in the room may prevent the room from becoming more capable.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What Do We Learn and What Do We Do Tomorrow?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We do not need to erase culture or make everyone communicate in the same way. Respect, harmony, directness, debate and consensus all have value.<\/p>\n

What matters is understanding how truth travels in each environment.<\/p>\n

In one team, disagreement may be spoken immediately. In another, it may arrive privately, in writing or only after trust has been built.<\/p>\n

The responsibility of a leader is not to demand one style. It is to make sure important information can still reach the decision.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow\u2019s expectation should therefore be clearer: confidence must remain open to correction.<\/p>\n

Harvard Business Review magazine that I read once awhile, has examined why leaders often learn less from success than from failure. When the outcome is positive, we tend to give too much credit to our own judgment and too little to timing, teamwork, circumstances or luck. Because the result was good, we assume the thinking behind it must also have been good.<\/p>\n

But a good outcome does not mean every decision was right.<\/p>\n

After success, ask what worked – but also what nearly failed, what others quietly repaired and which conditions may not exist next time.<\/p>\n

One question may be especially useful:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat did we misunderstand but survive anyway?\u201d<\/p>\n

Before an important decision, ask:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat might we be missing?\u201d<\/p>\n

Then create more than one way for people to answer.<\/p>\n

Some will speak during the meeting. Others may contribute better in writing, in a smaller conversation or before the decision is announced. The aim is not to force everyone into the same style. It is to ensure that useful truth is not lost because it arrived quietly.<\/p>\n

The final test of capability is not whether a leader always has the answer.<\/p>\n

It is whether the team becomes stronger, more honest and less dependent on one person.<\/p>\n

Can someone else lead the meeting?<\/p>\n

Can a younger colleague make a decision?<\/p>\n

Can expertise be challenged without disrespect?<\/p>\n

Can credit be shared accurately?<\/p>\n

We do not correct a delusion of capability by becoming less confident.<\/p>\n

We correct it by becoming more accurate\u2014about what we know, what success required and whose capability helped make it possible.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that is the expectation for tomorrow: not leaders who are certain of everything, but leaders confident enough to keep learning.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

About the Writer<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yoke Darmawan is the founder and Managing Director of D&A Consultancy in Bali. Her work across corporate affairs, communications, tourism, hospitality, culture and social initiatives has given her a close view of how organisations speak, decide and grow.<\/p>\n

Yoke\u2019s Midnight Notes<\/em> is a personal series of reflections on work, people, purpose and the everyday behaviours that shape organisational life. She writes not as someone with all the answers, but as someone who continues to observe, question and learn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My daughter, who lives in Australia, once used a phrase to describe something she had observed across the two worlds she moves between. The phrase stayed with me: delusions of capability. I was not entirely sure what she meant at first. Then I began noticing it – in conversations, meetings, leadership decisions and, perhaps occasionally, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Yoke Darmawan","author_link":"https:\/\/darmawan-assc.com\/?author=6"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"blog<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"My daughter, who lives in Australia, once used a phrase to describe something she had observed across the two worlds she moves between. The phrase stayed with me: delusions of capability. I was not entirely sure what she meant at first. Then I began noticing it – in conversations, meetings, leadership decisions and, perhaps occasionally,…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darmawan-assc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darmawan-assc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darmawan-assc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darmawan-assc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darmawan-assc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/darmawan-assc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":705,"href":"https:\/\/darmawan-assc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions\/705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darmawan-assc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darmawan-assc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darmawan-assc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}