I was inspired by Chris Brogan’s post today in which he discusses confidence and conviction. Before you read my comment (below), go check out his post and come back. Here are some highlights:

The guest at the table next to mine asked their server, “What do you think of the halibut special?”

The server replied, “I’m not really sure. What did you have in mind when you came in? You know, people really are much happier when they have something in mind. I think it’s okay. I’ve sold a lot of it. I haven’t personally tried it, but it looks good.”

All I was thinking was, if I were the server, I’d say this:

“It’s a great presentation: crispy top and served over our lime rice. I’ve sold lots of it today.”

[…]

No waffling allowed.

Confidence and conviction are the key to many things in life.

A frequent critic (and someone I admire a lot), Ben Kunz, once said something like this about me (not his exact words): “What I hate most about you is that you always sound like you know exactly what you’re talking about, and that’s dangerous.”

I took this to be a great compliment. Again, I admire Ben a lot. He doesn’t let me rest on my laurels.

I take great pride in my confidence and conviction in matters that are important to me. I use confidence as a leadership trait all the time. And I admit when I’m wrong as often as is necessary to make those two traits worth a damn.

This got me thinking. This is a pretty important topic, especially given Ben’s “dangerous” comment thrown in. It may not seem like it, but confidence and conviction are two of the most important building blocks of professional competence. And in an “industry” (Social Media) drowning in incompetence, the danger isn’t that someone should speak with conviction about what they are competent in. Incompetence posing as competence is the danger, not confidence and conviction. Here is my response to Chris’ post:

Reminds me of rule #3: Know your sh*t. As a waiter, an executive, a cultural anthropologist, a politician, a teacher, a doctor or whatever. Just know your sh*t. A waiter who hasn’t tasted everything on the menu isn’t taking their job seriously.

Knowing exactly what you’re talking about isn’t dangerous. It just means that when you bother to open your mouth, you aren’t just making monkey noises for the sake of getting attention. You speak with purpose about something you know about. I’ve watched you in action, Chris. If the common advice is to listen 80% of the time and talk 20% of it, you have the uncommon trait of pushing the ratio to its limits: You listen about 95% of the time and talk 5% of it, if that. That tells me that when you DO say something, I had better listen. And so far, even what you think is just improv is still seeped in insight. You have good instincts, Chris. It’s why you rarely say something dumb.

Likewise, when you don’t know something, you have no problem saying “I don’t know but let’s find out,” which takes confidence as well, and lays the foundations for conviction when someone asks the question again next time and you actually know the answer.

With all due respect to Ben, the danger isn’t to speak with confidence and conviction about things you know. The danger is to speak with false confidence and a facade of conviction about things you don’t know well enough. Too many people choose the latter as their MO. You don’t. It’s why I read your stuff.

We saw this last year with the Social Media R.O.I. debacle, which few of the self-professed “experts” and “gurus” who blabbed about the “mysterious” acronym bothered to even look up in wikepedia, much less learn about from a business class or an actual management job. Instead of either learning how to define R.O.I. or (god forbid) tie to a P&L, many just made up their own versions. Others dismissed the need for R.O.I. completely. Precious few admitted that R.O.I. was outside of their expertise, which was the right thing to do. The professional thing to do.

Here’s a tip: Community managers don’t necessarily need to be experts in R.O.I. – Case in point: If you’re an expert in customer service on Twitter, or community management, or online reputation management, speak with confidence and conviction about that. The guy responding to negative comments on facebook doesn’t need to be an expert in doing anything but creating content and managing positive and negative comments. The R.O.I. piece, let it go to someone better equipped and trained to deal with it. Leave the stuff you don’t know to people who DO know. Businesses need real expertise, not smoke and mirrors and made-up “expertise.”

As an aside, you will get a lot further in life by learning how to get good at something than pretending to be good at something you suck at.

Don’t lie. Don’t make it up, hoping you won’t get found out. Learn what you can, be honest about what you know and don’t know yet, and make sure that you know what you’re talking about before opening your mouth. In other words, just know your sh*t.