Confidence

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

We're told that the key to success in life and business is confidence: believe in yourself, and the world is yours. But building confidence can be a challenging task. And, as leading psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic argues, confidence can actually get in the way of achievement; self-esteem is nothing without competence, the core skills, to back it up.

Confidence is feeling capable. Competence is being capable. None of the figures whose success is put down to supreme self-belief, Barack Obama, Madonna, Muhammad Ali could have achieved their goals without the hard-won skills (and years of training) behind the confidence mask. Successful people are confident because of their success, and not the other way around.

Whether you want to improve your social skills, get a promotion or that all-important first job, this game-changing exploration of how to build success, in the mould of Robert Cialdini's Influence, Susan Cain's Quiet and Steven Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, will change the way you think about achievement.