Overconfidence

What do have soccer-coaches José Mourinho, Real Madrid, Felix Magath, VfL Wolfsburg, Christoph Daum, Eintracht Frankfurt, Lybian president Muammar al Gaddafi and to a lesser extent – but already noticeable in a recent interview -, Swiss hockey coach Arno Del Curto, HC Davos, have in common? It’s their so called overconfidence.

A good, healthy confidence is one of the most important parts of becoming successful in whatever you do. Coupled with an above average – but not great - technical intelligence and the passion for what they do and what they believe the above mentioned famous people became successful in their specific subject, yes they became even very successful and the word „VERY“ is poison in this coincidence. It’s not easy to explain overconfidence. Maybe one of the best explanations I did find in an essay of Rolf Dobelli: “We do overrate systematically our knowledge and our prognoses-skills. The overconfidence-effect is measuring the difference between the real knowledge and the knowledge we think to have.” Quite surprising is the fact that experts in subjects of high complexity overrate their knowledge even more than non-experts. Conclusion: Be very sceptical with all sort of prognoses, especially if they come from so called experts! We have to be modest enough to admit that we do know much less than what we would like to know.

Coming to the above mentioned famous people who I already feel sorry for them because I believe they are already overconfident and did lose their sense for reality and the respect for people with other life-views: If you judge fair and without emotions, you have to admit that even one of the most hated personalities in western culture, Muammar al Gaddafi, did have some sort of sensible thesis when he was young, his basic theories in his „green book“  weren’t all that bad and to became the leader of Lybia he did need some sort of intelligence to win the race as a leader of this country – in whatever race it was. Today we just can feel sorry for him at best, we all do know in what kind of shape he is nowadays and all this is partly a result of becoming overconfident. The young José Mourinho was one of my most respected soccer-coaches I ever did follow. Fortunately Mourinho, Magath and Daum are just soccer-coaches – so their influence of doing bad things is limited to the not so important sports-world. In the case of Gaddafi it’s getting dangerous, dangerous for a whole country and maybe even for parts of the world.

In addition I did follow the unspectacular footprints of a lot of managers in companies who had an above average – but not great – intelligence, who did work hard and passionate and who became successful and did climb in the hierarchy. A lot of them became overconfident the sooner or later, did overrate their abilities, produced big mistakes and got fired. It’s very sad if I see what happened to José Mourinhos personality – nowadays Mourinho is partly dominated by close to pathologist conspiracy-theories, lack of respect in terms of treating people who are not 100% on his line and lately even his tactical football-strategies are sometimes very questionable... It’s very sad and even more than that to see what happened to personalities of some presidents, dictators and "sport-popes" who maybe in their young ages – before they became overconfident – had talented brains, were caring husbands and fathers and respectful in treating all kind of people, even with the ones they didn’t agree with. Conclusion for life: People with an above average intelligence can become dangerous if they are successful. People with a great intelligence must be our hope for a better world because they stay wise and modest enough if they are successful.

Conclusion for the hockey-world:

Never hire a coach who was very successful in the past, it's just a fairy-tale if he tells tha he knows how to win championships,  he just makes us believe that he knows… it’s very dangerous to overpay such a coach because you will have unreachable  expectations and you will be very disappointed. In addition some of the very successful coaches don’t work as hard anymore in the future, they are not critical enough anymore with themselves, they are not hungry enough anymore. Quite often I do read from such coaches: I don’t have to prove nothing anymore to nobody, and if you get in touch with this popular sentence of a possible new coach: Never hire him. You have to find the next, the future successful coach who has to prove that he is good, who is passionate and self-critical enough to learn and improve every day, you have to finde a wise, confident and modest personality. Of course this is much more difficult than just throwing big money on the table and presenting a coach decorated with numerous championship-rings.

Watch what happened with Othmar Hitzfeld and the Swiss football National team, watch what happened with the much hyped Canadien Hockey coach Glen Hanlon with the Slovakian Nationalteam and watch what happened with various decorated North American Coaches who were hired for big money and with even bigger expectations from Russian KHL-teams. Also in the NHL and in all sort of pro-sport-leagues there are coaches and GMs who still benefit from their reputation in the past and they are not doing much anymore…but of course they do know how to win a championship…smile…and too many people believe it… Please don't get me wrong: My thesis doesn't mean that you just have to look for young, dynamic coach-candidates, also old, experienced, wise, confident and modest coaches can fit to this profile. 

Thomas Roost, 9^th May 2011