"Being outwardly assertive and confident wins elections and grants, but is not at odds with ability to internally re-evaluate one's beliefs"
Incorrect. They are absolutely at odds. You have never noticed that at the times you are most sure of yourself it's easier to appear externally confident and assertive? Compared to times that you have self doubt?
Maybe it's fair to say it doesn't necessarily impact how you project confidence, but sure doesn't mean they not at odds, and sure can mean it requires expending a lot more energy.
Secondly you are misreading the leadership quote. You say it's ok for a leader to dismiss an idea already evaluated, which is true. However the quote refers to leaders who do not listen to suggestions, which very different and certainly poor leadership when given no other context to justify not listening.
Appearing confident externally while remaining open-minded internally is a learned skill, and you absolutely can make it second-nature.
Learning it is intimately tied in with learning self-awareness & emotional intelligence, and I suspect that different people all use different mental tricks to get there, depending on how they're wired up there and what their value systems are. But for me, the key breakthrough was understanding that everything is inherently uncertain; you'll never be 100% sure of any mental model in your head, because they are, ultimately, just models of the world. But my raison d'etre is to find out which of my mental models of the world is correct, and which of them should be discarded. Your opinions are taken more seriously when they're expressed confidently; they have more of a chance to impact the world around you, and only through impacting the world will you get feedback about whether they're correct. Therefore, if I want to prove my models wrong, the best way to act is to assume that they're right. Once they are proven wrong it's not worth holding on to them any more, but as long as they exist in the grey area of maybe-wrong-maybe-right, just assume that they're right and see what happens.
I did not say it wasn't possible, in fact I explicitly allowed that is possible.
The claim is that in general they are forces at odds and in most of those situations in takes more energy to project confidence or assertiveness.
I think I would otherwise mostly agree with your post, that it is a skill that can be improved with practice, and to different degrees in different people.
Hmm, I really like your method of forming mental models. I think there are a lot of non-rational reasons why people like to hold on to certain mental models, even if they may not be accurate. This seems like a very rational way of testing mental models.
One of the important realizations as an adult for me was that there was nothing inherent about these mental models. They are, after all, paradigms and they can most certainly be changed. Well, now that I use that word, I think that realization came from reading Covey's 7 habits book.
You can be 100% confident of your position given the information available, but still be willing to re-evaluate your position when new information arrives. This second quality is intellectual humility.
I understand the leadership quote, but I find it interesting that the author did not go into the nuances of why leaders might not listen to suggestions, instead sending the reader down the garden path of "all suggestions are worth hearing", which I believe to be false.
You can have P(your position | information available) = 1 all you want but in practice that's a useless proposition, nearing a tautology. In practice you (should) know that you don't know everything and must take that into account. As Rumsfeld famously stated, you should even know there are things you don't know you don't know.
Not quite, there is a subtle but meaningful distinction. You are inferring the author to mean "all suggestions are worth hearing" or that good leaders should not be able to "dismiss" suggestions. Neither of these is stated or has context to be implied.
The quote should simply be taken at face value to mean generally speaking leaders should "listen to other people's suggestions", and take a variety of perspectives into account.
> Incorrect. They are absolutely at odds. You have never noticed that at the times you are most sure of yourself it's easier to appear externally confident and assertive? Compared to times that you have self doubt?
I disagree. You can harbor uncertainties and doubts about the outcome yet still be confident of the course of action you must take.
My aunt recently had a brain injury and I was the only family available to attend to her. I had to choose between letting her die or opting for a controversial surgery that also carried a risk of mortality, little chance of improving her condition, and the possibility of incurring a lot of debt.
I was uncertain, scared, yet also confident that some attempt to save her should be made.
Incorrect. They are absolutely at odds. You have never noticed that at the times you are most sure of yourself it's easier to appear externally confident and assertive? Compared to times that you have self doubt?
Maybe it's fair to say it doesn't necessarily impact how you project confidence, but sure doesn't mean they not at odds, and sure can mean it requires expending a lot more energy.
Secondly you are misreading the leadership quote. You say it's ok for a leader to dismiss an idea already evaluated, which is true. However the quote refers to leaders who do not listen to suggestions, which very different and certainly poor leadership when given no other context to justify not listening.