A632.9.3.RB_HallMike

It was rather interesting that Prof. Shiv actually used a comparison of military leaders and confidence in their orders as I thought of that almost immediately in the video.  Almost everything I have done in the military has required that I have confidence when I do it.  It started when I was preparing for my first qualification board at Prototype.  We were instructed to be confident in your answer no matter what – if we were even 1% sure it was right, act like you are 100% right.  As someone who has a hard time talking up my own abilities, I had a very hard time not being honest with the qual board if I wasn’t completely sure I was right.  If I knew I was correct, I was confident, but if there was any doubt, my confidence waivered, and I suffered through that board.  As it ended up, I was right more often than not but my lack of confidence made the board think I didn’t know what I was talking about.  This trend continued through my qualification process unabated.  I would be open and honest if asked if I was confident in my answers, so darn near every qaul board I went to was very painful.  It also led to the command being very hesitant in my abilities, all due to my lack of confidence during my qual boards.  With that being said, for whatever reason this lack of confidence disappeared when I was actually standing watch.  In daily operations, drills, and actual casualties I was calm and confident in all of the orders that I gave out and even if I had no idea what I was doing, I made sure I at least looked like I did.  This undoubtedly had a huge effect on the confidence my CO had in me (because he essentially had none following my OOD board) and led to the crew having complete confidence in my orders.  This in turn led my watch section to work hard at everything they did as my confidence as their leader rubbed off on them.  As they became more proficient, my confidence in them grew as well.  I can confidently say that Prof. Shiv is 100% when he says that confidence is contagious.

His first statement with passion is also accurate but I think that passion leads to much more dangerous places than just confidence.  I have little doubt that my passion for my career path has led to a much larger interest in it from our unit – we made our quota for the first time in our history and should easily make it next year.  With that being said, my passion is not misplaced – I have concrete facts to support why I am passionate in the manner that I am.  This is where I think that just passion can be dangerous.  Without the solid facts behind it, passion can replace logic which shouldn’t happen in the majority of cases out there.  You can as passionate as you’d like wanting to sell me a ketchup popsicle during the summer, but if I have white gloves on there is zero chance I’ll buy it because it doesn’t make sense.  I think politics is another example where passion has replaced policy.  Rather than run your campaign on solid facts, politicians now days invoke negative passion at their opposition while building sometimes nonsensical passion on their side.