Rosabeth Moss Kanter (born March 15, 1943) is the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business at Harvard Business School. She is also
director and chair of the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative. Kanter was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and described her childhood as “benign” and herself as ambitious, having written a novel and entered essay contests as early as 11 years old.
director and chair of the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative. Kanter was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and described her childhood as “benign” and herself as ambitious, having written a novel and entered essay contests as early as 11 years old.“Confidence isn’t optimism or pessimism, and it’s not a character attribute. It’s the expectation of a positive outcome. … Confidence is contagious, but so is failure. Even the Yankees will lose if you persuade them that they will.”
Rosabeth Kanter shared a wonderful definition of confidence.
She says that confidence is the expectation of a positive outcome. Not something that is mistaken as arrogance! If you are a woman and this resonates with you, read on …
She adds that confidence, just like failure, can be contagious. In other words, if you undermine someone’s confidence, you teach them to believe less of what they are capable of doing or achieving. Of course, this applies to either men or women as we all deal with the fear of failure.
Do you have people in your life that undermine your confidence? Do you undermine your own confidence? Being bold, especially in business is a necessity, in my opinion, to gaining success in your given field.
I would like to share one final quote from Rosabeth Kantor — which may explain her ability to be confident in what she accomplished: