When working together, people often demand of us two seemingly contradictory qualities: confidence and humility. At first glance, an excess of confidence will undermine humility, and an excess of humility will undermine confidence. Supposedly, you should strive for a balance, in the middle.

I propose a more precise description for your consideration. We can have certainty and confidence, and we can have them in ability, process, and outcome.

Certainty stems from determining what to measure, how to measure it, and finally measuring it. We can measure quantitatively, e.g. money, and qualitatively, e.g. honest and constructive feedback from peers.

Ability confidence stems from practice, and reflecting (with reasonable certainty) on that practice, to become better at some inter-related group of skills. As we become more confident in our abilities, we can better iterate and refine the processes involved in activities which require those abilities. And with confidence in our iterated, refined processes, we become more confident in achieving the outcomes we want.¹

So when people demand confidence and humility, we can express ability confidence, and process humility. As we iterate and refine process, we can justify process confidence, then outcome confidence. And when we observe the outcome, we can reflect back on process and ability.

Does this sound good to you? I'd like to start here and refine (rethink) this idea over time.