“They feel infallible”: can a team member be too confident?

Confidence is usually a positive attribute (and one a lot of people are lacking). But it can go too far. 

Overconfident employees are a headache for managers. They may forget or neglect key principles and processes because they think they know better. They may fail to ask questions (especially if the “answer” is on YouTube). And if they make careless mistakes, they may be unwilling to take any criticism. 

Darcy Fletcher CMgr MCMI is a qualified paramedic who’s now using her disaster preparedness acumen to run first-response emergency care training at CIS Security (work that she says is underpinned by the strategic management insights she gained by completing the CMI Level 7 Certificate in Strategic Management & Leadership Practice). 

Darcy still recalls one incident from her time in the NHS, when an overconfident employee nearly derailed the support of a time-critical patient – while affecting a new recruit’s development too.