There’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance. Here’s what I mean…
- Confidence is the feeling or belief that someone can rely on you.
- Arrogance is having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance or abilities.
Here are some differences between the two.
- Arrogance is exaggerated, meaning it’s “larger” than reality. Confidence is a suitable dose of reality.
- Confidence is given to you, over time, by others. Arrogance, on the other hand, is something you give off.
- Arrogance can be masked for a short time as confidence.
- Perhaps most importantly: Confidence is good. Arrogance is bad.
Ask them about a time they had to “eat crow” or admit they were wrong. Confident people willingly share, but arrogant ones have trouble with it.
The moral is this: Prospects and customers want to deal with a confident salesperson. They’ll eagerly run away from an arrogant one.
So, as a sales manager, how do you find salespeople who are on the confident side of the spectrum? After all, it can be difficult to tell whether a particular candidate is unnecessarily arrogant or appropriately confident during a short interview.
In fact, it’s sometimes even difficult for people to tell how they come across to others. And, that’s for good reason; self-perception can be vastly different from reality. Here are a few ways I’ve used to tell whether someone is arrogant in an interview setting:
- Make the interview a looooonnnng one. Arrogance can be masked as confidence for only so long.
- Use an assessment that measures a person’s self-perception. Nothing like knowing what’s beneath the surface!
