Katty Kay is an award-winning journalist who has reported on the largest tales of the day from across the globe for the BBC.
She’s additionally — as she admitted throughout her ICON 2022 Common Session at this time on the Gaylord Texan Resort & Conference Heart in Grapevine, Texas — a work-in-progress relating to a topic of nice curiosity to her: serving to girls flip ideas into motion and grasp a extra assured mindset.
Kay, a daily contributor and substitute host of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, recounted a current electronic mail that she despatched to Jamie, her editor in London. “It was a few present we deliberate to do, and I didn’t hear again. I believed, ‘That’s bizarre. He’s often very responsive,’” she mentioned.
By the next day, she thought he is likely to be irritated along with her for working a lot on a guide project and never with BBC items. “Perhaps the entire BBC in London is simply mad at me,” Kay mentioned. “Perhaps they’re truly all sitting there mad at me. After which, by the subsequent day, I nonetheless haven’t heard again, and I used to be pondering, ‘I higher name my agent and see if I must get a brand new job.’”
It turned out that Jamie was in India for work and out of contact for a number of days.
“It had nothing to do with me. You aren’t all people else’s headline,” Kay mentioned. “I imply, how usually do you consider all people else every single day? So ruminate much less; assume much less.”
That was one among her takeaways from her analysis on the frontiers of neuroscience because the co-author of 4 New York Occasions bestselling books in regards to the significance of confidence for girls and ladies. With Claire Shipman, Kay wrote “Womenomics: Write Your Personal Guidelines for Success,” “The Confidence Code: The Science and Artwork of Self-Assurance — What Girls Ought to Know,” and “The Confidence Code for Ladies: Taking Dangers, Messing Up, & Changing into Your Amazingly Imperfect, Completely Highly effective Self.”
Kay spent most of her considerate and entertaining 40-minute discuss on confidence as a substitute of reporting for the BBC, the place she simply coated the midterm elections. (“I believe all of us need to get used to not having an Election Night time however having an Election Week in america,” she mentioned relating to the delay in among the shut races.) She mentioned she was taking a break day from politics, although she did supply her tackle the position of journalists at this time.
“Our position as suppliers of data is essential. We’re in a battle in opposition to misinformation,” Kay mentioned. “As customers of reports, it’s essential. As suppliers of reports it’s much more necessary.”
The seek for confidence
Kay and Shipman interviewed a whole bunch of enterprise and navy leaders, psychologists and neurologists to study confidence — what it’s and the way necessary is it to the work that all of us do.
Cameron Anderson, a professor on the Walter A. Haas College of Enterprise on the College of California, Berkeley, offered them with eye-opening pupil analysis: Relating to success, confidence issues as a lot, if no more, than competence, he discovered. Listening to that deflated them.
“For us, the explanation that we discovered that so miserable… notably [for] a girl, is that the concept that competence isn’t crucial factor is sort of anathema,” Kay mentioned. “We predict if we coloration within the strains and dot each I and cross each T and play by the principles and preserve our heads down, then sometime, anyone will come alongside and faucet us on the shoulder and provides us the keys to the nook workplace.
“And we discover that doesn’t occur,” she continued. “Maybe it doesn’t occur due to this difficulty of confidence. We did find yourself placing Professor Anderson’s analysis within the guide as a result of I believe there’s a studying alternative right here. Relating to expertise, we have to broaden our definition of expertise to incorporate confidence.”
Kay additionally mentioned the arrogance that comes from doing one thing laborious and the arrogance that comes from individuals complimenting or flattering you, or getting a like on Instagram — the sort of confidence that may be taken away.
“It’s what psychologists name unstable confidence. However the confidence that lasts you could cling on to and that nobody can take from you is the arrogance that comes from overcoming hurdles from doing these troublesome issues,” Kay mentioned. “And sure, from failing. Failing is simply a part of taking dangers. You must act extra, which is why it’s a must to drop the perfectionism.”
As well as, Kay mentioned that individuals need to be themselves to trust.
“It doesn’t work to placed on anyone else’s swimsuit of armor and go to work every single day and fake to be anyone else,” she mentioned. “You must be your self.”
Kay recounted a dialog with Christine Lagarde, the primary lady to function managing director of the Worldwide Financial Fund.
“She mentioned this to us: ‘The important thing to confidence is authenticity.’ Or, as Oscar Wilde mentioned, ‘Be your self as a result of all people else is taken,’” Kay mentioned. “So confidence comes from performing extra, pondering much less and being genuine.”
John Elsasser is the editor-in-chief of Methods & Techniques. He joined PRSA in 1994.
