Arrogant or Confident?

I turned 45 last week, and in a conversation with my sister the week before, we started talking about how fast we could run a mile.

The last time I ran a timed mile was probably in high school when I was on the track team. Even then, I was a hurdler, not a distance runner. I consistently ride my Peloton and do some strength training, but if you've been following these messages, you know I'm not much of a runner.

Still, I confidently proclaimed that I thought I could run a mile in under eight minutes.

Part of that confidence came from my desire to stay in relatively good physical and athletic condition as I get older. I hoped I had kept myself fit enough to hit that mark without specifically training for it. I was also inspired watching my son, Ajay, run cross country this fall and wondering how fast I could run a mile.

So we set a time to meet at the high school track near our house for a family timed mile. My sister, brother-in-law, both kids and me.  After plenty of stretching and a light warm-up, we lined up and April with the stopwatch shouted, "Go!"

Nothing like a family-timed mile to test your limits and teach you the difference between confidence and arrogance.

I took off fast. My thinking was that I was going to get tired either way, so I might as well get a fast start.  My first lap was 1:20.  I felt pretty good about that until about halfway through the second lap. My legs started hurting. My lungs were burning. And I began to seriously question both my strategy and my goal.  I thought:  The hell with eight minutes. I might not even finish a mile! How embarrassing.

Then another voice kicked in: Just keep going.

I focused on controlling my breathing and settled into a slower more manageable pace. When I finished my third lap and realized I still had a shot at my goal, I pushed through the final lap.  I came around the last curve, gave it everything I had left and crossed the finish line.

April shouted, "7:31."  I was exhausted and at the same time pretty proud of myself.

But afterward I started wondering: Was I confident that I could run an eight-minute mile, or was I arrogant to think I could do something I hadn't trained for?

I've been thinking about the difference quite a bit the past couple of days. I don't think confidence means knowing you're going to succeed. Confidence is believing enough in your abilities to be willing to find out.

Arrogance is different because it doesn't leave much room for being wrong and it can make us explain away failure rather than learn from it.  And that's an important distinction for leaders.

We need confidence. People depend on us to make decisions, take chances and move forward when the outcome isn't guaranteed. And experience should give us greater confidence in what we're capable of.

But I hope we never become so confident that we stop testing our assumptions.

Sometimes we'll cross the finish line at 7:31 and discover we were capable of more than we thought. Other times we'll find out we weren't as prepared as we thought we were.  Had I run 8:31, I would have missed my goal, but I also would have learned something about where my fitness actually was and what I needed to do if I wanted a different result.  Either outcome gives us something valuable if we're willing to learn from it.

Confidence and arrogance can sometimes look very similar.  For me the difference is our willingness to accept that we might be wrong.  Arrogance assumes what we believe is already true.  Confidence allows us to test what we believe, accept the result and learn from it.  That is the kind of confidence I hope to keep building.