Think Again

THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY HUMILITY
When I sat down with Halla, she told me that in the past her doubts had
been debilitating. She took them as a sign that she lacked the ability to
succeed. Now she had reached a point of confident humility, and she
interpreted doubts differently: they were a cue that she needed to improve
her tools.
Plenty of evidence suggests that confidence is just as often the result of
progress as the cause of it. We don’t have to wait for our confidence to rise
to achieve challenging goals. We can build it through achieving challenging
goals. “I have come to welcome impostor syndrome as a good thing: it’s
fuel to do more, try more,” Halla says. “I’ve learned to use it to my
advantage. I actually thrive on the growth that comes from the self-doubt.”

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While other candidates were content to rely on the usual media
coverage, Halla’s uncertainty about her tools made her eager to rethink the
way campaigns were run. She worked harder and smarter, staying up late to
personally answer social media messages. She held Facebook Live sessions
where voters could ask her anything, and learned to use Snapchat to reach
young people. Deciding she had nothing to lose, she went where few
presidential candidates had gone before: instead of prosecuting her
opponents, she ran a positive campaign. How much worse can it get? she
thought. It was part of why she resonated so strongly with voters: they were
tired of watching candidates smear one another and delighted to see a
candidate treat her competitors with respect.
Uncertainty primes us to ask questions and absorb new ideas. It
protects us against the Dunning-Kruger effect. “Impostor syndrome always
keeps me on my toes and growing because I never think I know it all,”
Halla reflects, sounding more like a scientist than a politician. “Maybe
impostor syndrome is needed for change. Impostors rarely say, ‘This is how
we do things around here.’ They don’t say, ‘This is the right way.’ I was so
eager to learn and grow that I asked everyone for advice on how I could do
things differently.” Although she doubted her tools, she had confidence in
herself as a learner. She understood that knowledge is best sought from
experts, but creativity and wisdom can come from anywhere.
Iceland’s presidential election came down to Halla, Davíð Oddsson,
and two other men. The three men all enjoyed more media coverage than
Halla throughout the campaign, including front-page interviews, which she
never received. They also had bigger campaign budgets. Yet on election
day, Halla stunned her country—and herself—by winning more than a
quarter of the vote.
She didn’t land the presidency; she came in second. Her 28 percent fell
shy of the victor’s 39 percent. But Halla trounced Davíð Oddsson, who
finished fourth, with less than 14 percent. Based on her trajectory and
momentum, it’s not crazy to imagine that with a few more weeks, she could
have won.
Great thinkers don’t harbor doubts because they’re impostors. They
maintain doubts because they know we’re all partially blind and they’re
committed to improving their sight. They don’t boast about how much they
know; they marvel at how little they understand. They’re aware that each
answer raises new questions, and the quest for knowledge is never finished.

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A mark of lifelong learners is recognizing that they can learn something
from everyone they meet.
Arrogance leaves us blind to our weaknesses. Humility is a reflective
lens: it helps us see them clearly. Confident humility is a corrective lens: it
enables us to overcome those weaknesses.

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