The Intermediary – September 2026 - Flipbook - Page 89
B RO K E R B U S I N E S S
Opinion
When being certain
becomes a risk
B
e decisive. Trust your
instincts. Don’t dither.
Nobody wants a leader
who appears incapable
of decision-making
without convening a
task force, commissioning a report
and asking 17 people whether they
have “any thoughts.”
But confidence has a dark side.
We are reassured by the person who
speaks fluently, decides quickly
and answers before everyone else
has finished reading the question.
Uncertainty makes us uncomfortable.
A confident leader seems to know
what is going on. But they may not.
they are arrogant. Sometimes it is
simply because everyone else is busy.
Sometimes, if we are being honest,
senior people are not enormously
encouraging when challenged. A
leader may say they welcome debate,
but their body language suggests that
the person offering a contrary view
has announced they are allergic to
puppies. The result is predictable.
People edit themselves. The leader
then concludes that everyone agrees.
Overconfidence grows
Some people are highly skilled and
underestimate themselves. Others
have considerably less expertise but
possess an almost heroic belief in their
own abilities. The laer are oen
more noticeable.
In corporate life, confidence can
become particularly seductive when
the stakes are high. Markets are
volatile, technology is changing,
regulation is increasing and everyone
has an opinion on what artificial
intelligence (AI) will do next Tuesday.
The person who says, “this is what
we are going to do,” can feel like a gi.
Until, of course, they are confidently
taking you in completely the wrong
direction. The most effective senior
leaders are oen the ones who know
which of their convictions deserve to
be tested.
When a decision works, we tend
to aribute the outcome to our
judgement. When it fails, we become
remarkably inventive in identifying
external factors. The market
changed. The team did not execute.
Nobody could have predicted it. The
regulator intervened. Mercury was in
retrograde.
Success reinforces our belief that our
instincts are reliable. But luck, timing
and context also play a considerable
role in business outcomes. The danger
is that we learn the wrong lesson.
We become increasingly certain that
our previous success proves we will
be right next time. But expertise is
context dependent. What worked in
one market, organisation or economic
cycle may be completely ineffective
in another.
The senior leader who has seen
everything before may eventually
discover that this is precisely the
problem. They have not seen
this before.
The seniority problem
Confidence without curiosity
The more senior you become, the
more difficult it is to discover when
you are wrong. People defer to you,
they soen their disagreement. Your
authority changes the information
you receive.
Without noticing, senior leaders
can create an environment in which
their assumptions are less likely to be
challenged. This is not always because
The antidote to destructive
overconfidence is not self-doubt.
It is curiosity. What am I missing?
What assumptions are we making?
What would have to be true for this
decision to be wrong? Who sees this
situation differently from me? What
information would change my mind?
These are powerful questions.
They interrupt the natural tendency
Persuasive, not accurate
AVERIL LEIMON
is co-founder
at White Water Group
towards confirmation bias: our
preference for information that
supports what we already believe.
Most of us do not deliberately ignore
inconvenient information. We simply
find confirming information more
convincing, particularly when we
have invested publicly in a position.
Changing our minds can feel like
weakness. In reality, changing your
mind in response to beer evidence
is one of the strongest leadership
behaviours available.
Part of the process
Senior teams should not rely on
individuals being naturally brave
enough to challenge powerful
people. Build challenge into the
process. Assign someone to argue
the alternative case. Ask the team to
identify how the proposed strategy
could fail. Imagine that the decision
has gone badly and work backwards.
Seek the perspective of people closer to
the operational reality. Occasionally
ask someone who knows absolutely
nothing about the issue.
This last suggestion is more useful
than it sounds. Experts oen share
assumptions that are invisible to
them, because everyone in the room
understands the same language. The
person who asks the ‘basic’ question
may expose what nobody else has
thought to challenge.
The best leaders
Real confidence is not the absence of
uncertainty, it’s the ability to act while
recognising that you do not possess
perfect information. That requires the
courage to admit that somebody else
may know something you do not, and
occasionally to say “I was wrong.” No
need to make a habit of it, obviously.
There are limits. ●
September 2026 | The Intermediary
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