Advice offered to Harvard Business School students (via Quiet, p. 47):
“Speak with conviction. Even if you believe something only fifty-five percent, say it as if you believe it a hundred percent.”
It drives me nuts when people do this in meetings. It’s dishonest and inauthentic. The fact that it’s being taught at the leading business schools fills me with sadness.
Speak to me with false conviction, and it will have little effect except to shatter my trust in you.