Reasons to Fake It Till You Make It, by Eric Barker
Adam Rifkin stashed this in Leadership!
Stashed in: #TED, Influence!, Confidence, Be yourself., Trust, Productivity, @bakadesuyo, Awesome, Interesting, Leadership, Body Language, Life Hacks
Eric Barker writes:
You like confidence.
In fact, most of us have such a bias toward confidence we prefer it over actual expertise.
Speaking first, speaking confidently and speaking make you sound like a leader and people who do that usually end up as the leader — even if they don’t know what they’re talking about.
It’s even more shallow than that: Doctors who wear the white coat are trusted more than doctors who don’t.
But what’s fascinating is an increasing amount of research is showing that acting a certain way can bring you closer to actually being what you aspire to. Faking it might help you make it.
The whole article is a great read:
http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2013/03/fake-it-until-you-make-it/
Eric adds:
Watching the Avengers might make you more heroic. And if you feel a connection to the Dark Knight, seeing Batman can make you physically stronger.
Sound crazy?
Recent research in the area of embodied cognition confirms you can improve how you think and behave by changing how you sit, stand and move.
Harvard professor Amy Cuddy explains her research on the subject in this TED talk:
Eric concludes:
The main theme of Don Quixote was: If you want to be a knight, act like a knight.
How can you reconcile this? Can you fake it and be honest? Yes.
Think about the best possible version of yourself and move toward that.
You still want to be yourself. You just want to be your best self.
"How did the dominant individuals become the group leaders even though they were no better at math? ... The answer is almost absurdly simple: They spoke first."Whoa. In the last couple of weeks, I was a bit puzzled that I've had people in classes approach me and ask if I'd like to work on the class group project with them. Why me? Where did all of this attention come from? I think this explains it: when the professor asks a question, and there's a pause where no one's answering, I'll put my hand up and respond. I'm usually the first one to do that. Maybe that's why it seems like the other students are seeking me out and want to be on my team. It's definitely not that I'm doing better on tests than they are!
There's really something to be said for speaking first, Elizabeth.
(It's also good to remember not to do if you DON'T want the attention!)
11:00 AM Mar 09 2013