Allow me to present a recent scenario I encountered at a gathering of highly intellectual and friendly people whilst attending an after dinner party. I tend to be an observer of peoples body language as well as listening intently to what others have to say, and speak when spoken to and not interrupt an on-going conversation until the right moment presents itself.
What I discovered lately is that some of the most out spoken, confident and self-assured people are as apprehensive and uneasy as the most insecure person in the room, and they find it hard to handle the quiet and at times timid person without being rude to someone who they feel they are superior to. Well I can tell you that appearances can be deceptive.
There is probably no intellectual difference between the most confident person in the room and the most insecure, in fact the old adage of the "beware the quiet ones" can be a lesson to all concerned.
The persona of, let us call him Mr Over Confident, does not mean that they are as cool, sophisticated and in control of all around them as they might have you believe. There act is a good one mind you but it is not built on solid ground. The majority of these over confident types like the sound of their own voice and enjoy being the centre of attention, "look at me I am here" and they usually think they know it all. We all like to talk about things that we have a knowledge of, are passionate about and are interested in and pick up snippets of information along the way, but small pieces of information can be dangerous and make you look foolish if you pretend to know too much.
Mr Over Confident can also be Mr Unreachable, what I mean by this is that, probably by no fault of their own, it is built in them to be rude and arrogant as they feel on a completely different and higher plain to say Mr Insecure. They look for weaknesses and try to play on them, most of the time it will work and go un-noticed by their peers, and sometimes My Over Confident gets burnt. Allow me to explain.
Mr Insecure has met Mr Over Confident before on quite a few occasions in the past on a professional and personal level and has indeed started to look up to him, although they never been into deep face to face conversation. The more times an insecure person meets anyone the more confident they tend to get themselves, and so plucks up the courage to try to join in with a group of fellow colleagues and make conversation. Mr Insecure stands next to Mr Over Confident and waits patiently for the right moment to get involved and take part, I call this the art of perching, that is when Mr Over Confident spots him out of the corner of his eye and starts to make the new comer feel uneasy and not welcome. I observed this recently at an event first hand, and this is how it went.
The over confident guy was determined to knock the insecure person off their perch, using just subtle body language moves. This was done by stepping across the percher and calmly positioning his shoulder right in the line of vision of the percher patiently waiting to get involved in the group chat, the people were assembled in a circle about six in total. When the percher tried to speak he was spoken over by you know who, and constantly ignored by him too, but the percher did not give up and walk away instead he remained firmly standing in the position he had taken up. Probably to the annoyance of Mr Over Confident. You see the difference here is that the percher, although insecure, considers that all people are equal, although taking each on their own individual merits there is of course respect towards others, which not all people have unfortunately. Now the percher may not be the most confident and out spoken person in the room but he is very persistent and open to new people, conversations and ideas plus has the will to listen and evaluate any given situation.
It is more than likely that in this case highlighted above, despite all his efforts Mr Over Confident became uneasy himself as his tactics were not working. The percher had kept his nerve and when his moment came to join in Mr Over Confident had to walk away, it was a move that any great chess player would have been proud of, check mate was achieved like this.
Whilst Mr Over Confident had focused a lot of his time trying to manipulate the situation and oust the new comer, the percher was making his own inroads bit by bit, slowly getting the attention of each member of the circle. The occasional nod or shake of the head in the direction of whoever was speaking at any specific moment, leaning his body forward as if to take part when possible. I n doing so the percher had managed to assemble the group to his left, Mr Over Confident was still on his right still trying to exclude this intruder. The percher pounces with one very swift but simple move and just leans forward in front of his now opponent, and stands directly in his line of vision and proceeds to shake the hands of each of the group and introduce himself. By the time he turns to shake the hand of Mr Over Confident he had scuttle away to become the percher himself of another group of unsuspecting targets.
Members of the perchers new circle seemed more at ease, open and relaxed now that the arrogant element has disappeared from the conversation. There is a moral here somewhere I am sure you will agree.
