How Do I Communicate With Greater Clarity, Confidence, and Credibility?

 

Economics for Non Economists 2 – Quantitative Easing Explained

by Girish Menon

Pradhip, you have asked for an ‘Idiot’s guide on Quantitative Easing and how it affects the economy’. Let me try:

The Bank of England (BOE) has been practising Quantitative Easing (QE) since 2009. The amounts are:

Time	Amount in £ Billions
Nov. 2009	200
July 2012	375
Aug. 2016	435
Mar. 2020	645
June 2020	745

Ref – The Bank of England

What exactly did the BOE do when they said they were doing QE?

The BOE created additional digital money and used it to buy financial assets (especially government bonds) which were owned by the privately owned banks, pension funds and others.

How did they create this additional money?

Unlike you or me who would be arrested if we did this; the BOE has been conferred with monopoly powers to conjure up any amount of money from thin air by typing the necessary numbers into its bank accounts. It’s as simple as saying, ‘Let there be £745 billion and it appears in the bank’s accounts.

Why do they do QE?

Post the 2008 financial crisis there was a liquidity crisis (see below for explanation of liquidity crisis). The BOE by buying the government bonds from local banks transferred cash to them thus enabling them to start their lending activities in the economy.

In 2020 too they have done the same, but this time I suspect that even if the commercial banks are willing to lend there may not be enough borrowers and so this policy may not have the intended effect of stimulating economic growth.

How does QE affect the economy?

The dominant worldview is that debt drives the world. So QE ensures that lenders have enough money to lend to prospective borrowers. Borrowers borrow money to produce and sell goods at a profit; enabling them to repay their loans with interest while creating jobs in the economy.

The above borrower will use his loan to buy machinery, employ labour…. One man’s spending is another man’s income, so the money begins to circulate among citizens in an economy and a positive spiral will push economic growth and create employment.

However, all this theory hinges on the citizens’ confidence about the future. In the current Covid climate, with firms downsizing at will and people worried about their future, I doubt if there will be a critical mass of borrowers to re-start the stalled economic activity.

Pradhip, thus the BOE does indeed have a magic wand to create money out of thin air. You may ask why is it that in a free market I am not allowed to create my own money? Now that question will be considered seditious!

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What Is a Liquidity Crisis?

A liquidity crisis is a financial situation characterized by a lack of cash or easily-convertible-to-cash assets on hand across many businesses or financial institutions simultaneously. In a liquidity crisis, liquidity problems at individual institutions lead to an acute increase in demand and decrease in supply of liquidity, and the resulting lack of available liquidity can lead to widespread defaults and even bankruptcies. (Ref Investopedia)

---Also watch

Now the world faces two pandemics – one medical, one financial

Coronavirus fears are feeding financial and economic anxiety and vice versa. Breaking the cycle will not be easy, but it is possible writes Robert Shiller in The Guardian  

 

The normally busy Schiphol airport in the Netherlands. Photograph: Patrick van Katwijk/Getty Images


We are feeling the anxiety effects of not one pandemic but two. First, there is the Covid-19 pandemic, which makes us anxious because we, or people we love, anywhere in the world, could soon become gravely ill and even die. And, second, there is a pandemic of anxiety about the economic consequences of the first.

These two pandemics are interrelated but are not the same phenomenon. In the second pandemic, stories of fear have gone viral and we often think of them constantly. The stock market has been dropping like a rock, apparently in response to stories of Covid-19 depleting our lifetime savings unless we take some action. But, unlike Covid-19, the source of our anxiety is that we are unsure what action to take.

It is not good news when two pandemics are at work simultaneously. One can feed the other. Business closures, soaring unemployment, and loss of income fuel financial anxiety, which may, in turn, deter people, desperate for work, from taking adequate precautions against the spread of the disease.

Moreover, it is not good news when two contagions are, indeed, global pandemics. When a drop in demand is confined to one country, the loss is partially spread abroad, while demand for the country’s exports is not diminished much. But this time, that natural safety valve will not work, because the recession threatens nearly all countries.

Many people seem to assume that the financial anxiety is nothing more than a direct byproduct of the Covid-19 crisis – a perfectly logical reaction to the disease pandemic. But anxiety is not perfectly logical. The pandemic of financial anxiety, spreading through panicked reaction to price drops and changing narratives, has a life of its own.

The effects financial anxiety has on the stock market may be mediated by a phenomenon that the psychologist Paul Slovic of the University of Oregon and his colleagues call the “affect heuristic.” When people are emotionally upset because of a tragic event, they react with fear even in circumstances where there is no reason to fear.

In a joint paper with William Goetzmann and Dasol Kim, we found that nearby earthquakes affect people’s judgment of the probability of a 1929- or 1987-size stock market crash. If there was a substantial quake within 30 miles (48km) during the previous 30 days, respondents’ assessment of the probability of a crash was significantly higher. That is the affect heuristic at work.

It might make more sense to expect a stock market drop from a disease pandemic than from a recent earthquake, but maybe not a crash of the magnitude seen recently. If it were widely believed that a treatment could limit the intensity of the Covid-19 pandemic to a matter of months, or even that it would last a year or two, that would suggest the stock market risk is not so great for a long-term investor. One could buy, hold, and wait it out.

But a contagion of financial anxiety works differently than a contagion of disease. It is fuelled in part by people noticing others’ lack of confidence, reflected in price declines, and others’ emotional reaction to the declines. A negative bubble in the stock market occurs when people see prices falling, and, trying to discover why, start amplifying stories that explain the decline. Then, prices fall on subsequent days, and again and again.

Observing successive decreases in stock prices creates a powerful feeling of regret for those who have not sold, together with a fear that one might sell at the bottom. This regret and fear prime people’s interest in both pandemic narratives. Where the market goes from there depends on their nature and evolution.

To see this, consider that the stock market in the US did not crater when, in September-October 1918, the news media first started covering the Spanish flu pandemic that eventually claimed 675,000 US lives (and over 50 million worldwide). Instead, monthly prices in the US market were on an uptrend from September 1918 to July 1919.

Why didn’t the market crash? One likely explanation is that world war one, which was approaching its end after the last major battle, the second battle of the Marne, in July-August 1918, crowded out the influenza story, especially after the armistice in November of that year. The war story was likely more contagious than the flu story.

Another reason is that epidemiology was only in its infancy then. Outbreaks were not as forecastable, and the public did not fully believe experts’ advice, with people’s adherence to social-distancing measures “sloppy”. Moreover, it was generally believed that economic crises were banking crises, and there was no banking crisis in the US, where the Federal Reserve System, established just a few years earlier, in 1913, was widely heralded as eliminating that risk.

But perhaps the most important reason the financial narrative was muted during the 1918 influenza epidemic is that far fewer people owned stocks a century ago, and saving for retirement was not the concern it is today, in part because people didn’t live as long and more routinely depended on family if they did.

This time, of course, is different. We see buyers’ panics at local grocery stores, in contrast to 1918, when wartime shortages were regular occurrences. With the Great Recession just behind us, we certainly are well aware of the possibility of major drops in asset prices. Instead of a tragic world war, this time the US is preoccupied with its own political polarisation, and there are many angry narratives about the federal government’s mishandling of the crisis.

Predicting the stock market at a time like this is hard. To do so well, we would have to predict the direct effects on the economy of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as all the real and psychological effects of the pandemic of financial anxiety. The two are different but inseparable.

Time for Sabka Vishwas

Why do so many incompetent men win at work?

 Emma Jacobs in The FT


 “Women are better leaders,” says Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. “I am not neutral on this. I am sexist in favour of women. Women have better people skills, more altruistic, better able to control their impulses. They outperform men in university at graduate and undergraduate levels.” 

This subject is explored in his new book, Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (And How to Fix It). In it, he writes that “traits like overconfidence and self-absorption should be seen as red flags”, when, in fact, the opposite tends to happen. As Prof Chamorro-Premuzic puts it: “They prompt us to say: ‘Ah, there’s a charismatic fellow! He’s probably leadership material.’” 

It is this mistaken insistence that confidence equates to greatness that is the reason so many ill-suited men get top jobs, he argues. “The result in both business and politics is a surplus of incompetent men in charge, and this surplus reduces opportunities for competent people — women and men — while keeping the standards of leadership depressingly low.” 

This book is based on a Harvard Business Review blog of the same title which was published in 2013, and which elicited more feedback than any of his previous books or articles. He is currently professor of business psychology at University College London and at Columbia University, as well as being the “chief talent scientist” at Manpower Group and co-founder of two companies that deploy technological tools to enhance staff retention. This book builds on two of his professional interests: data and confidence. 

Too often, he argues, we use intuition rather than metrics to judge whether someone is competent. In his book he argues that confidence may well be a “compensatory strategy for lower competence”. The modern mantra to just believe in yourself is possibly foolish. Perhaps, he suggests, modesty is not false but an accurate awareness of one’s talents and limitations. 

The book’s title has been “too provocative” for many, Prof Chamorro-Premuzic tells me on the phone from Brooklyn, where he spends most of his time, juggling his teaching and corporate roles. “A lot of female leaders said they can’t endorse it as [they are] worried about looking like man-haters.” Some female colleagues feel depressed that his message is being heard because he is a man, whereas if it came from them it would be “dismissed”. Men criticise him for “virtue-signalling”. 

He makes a convincing case for a more modest style of leader, focused on the team rather than advancing their own careers. Angela Merkel is the “most boring and best leader” in politics, he says. In the corporate sphere, he picks Warren Buffett who, he says, started off as a finance geek and taught himself leadership skills. David Cameron, the former British prime minister, is cited as an example of misplaced confidence in a leader — he held a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, sure that he would win, an assurance that, as it turned out, was misplaced. 

A quiet leadership style is often overlooked as heads are turned by bravado and narcissism. “There is a cult of confidence,” says Prof Chamorro-Premuzic. In part this is because confidence is “easier to observe”. It is harder to discern whether someone is a good leader. “What we see is what we rely on, what we see is visible.” 

People “overrate their intuition”, he says. Too often it turns out to be “nepotistic, self-serving choices . . . most organisations don’t have data to tell you if the leader is good.” 

Those leaders who are celebrated for their volatility and short fuses, such as the late Apple boss Steve Jobs, might have succeeded despite, not because of, their personality defects, he argues. 

One common narrative holds that women are held back by a lack of confidence, yet studies show this to be a fallacy. Perhaps it would be better to say that they are less likely to overrate themselves. The book cites one study from Columbia University which found that men overstated their maths ability by 30 per cent and women by 15 per cent. 

It is also the case, he writes, that women are penalised for appearing confident: “Their mistakes are judged more harshly and remembered longer. Their behaviour is scrutinised more carefully and their colleagues are less likely to share vital information with them. When women speak, they’re more likely to be interrupted or ignored.” 

“The fundamental role of self-confidence is not to be as high as possible,” he adds, “but to be in sync with ability.” 

Prof Chamorro-Premuzic’s interest in leadership was nurtured while growing up in Argentina, a country that he describes as having had one terrible leader after another. He came from a pocket of Buenos Aires known as Villa Freud for its high concentration of psychotherapists (even his family dog had a therapist), so it was a natural step to enter the field of psychology. 

There are many observations in the book that posit women as the superior sex, for example, citing their higher emotional intelligence. Such biological essentialism has been contested, for example by Cordelia Fine in her book Testosterone Rex: Unmaking the Myths of Our Gendered Minds. 

Prof Chamorro-Premuzic says describing such differences as “hard-wired” would be an “overstatement”. Nonetheless, he argues that men score higher for impulsivity, risk-taking, narcissism, aggression and overconfidence; while women do better on emotional intelligence, empathy, altruism, self-awareness and humility. 

The book’s central message, though, is not to make a case for preferential treatment for women, but rather to “elevate the standards of leadership”. We should be making it harder for terrible men to get to the top, rather than focusing solely on removing the hurdles for women. 

He makes the argument against setting quotas for women in senior positions, which, Prof Chamorro-Premuzic says, can look like special pleading. Rather, he says: “We should minimise biases when it comes to evaluating leaders, rely less and less on human valuations and use performance data.” 

Raising the leadership game will boost the number of women in such positions, but it will also highlight talented but modest men who are typically overlooked. “There are many competent men who are being disregarded for leadership roles,” he says. “They don’t float hypermasculine leadership roles.”

Too scared to speak up? How to be more confident

Laura Barton in The Guardian



Above the entrance to Manchester Grammar School lies a coat of arms and a Latin inscription: “Sapere Aude”. Ian Thorpe, then the school’s development officer, translated it for me – “Dare to Be Wise” – as we stood in the front quad on a warm day last July. First used by the Roman poet Horace in his book of Epistles, the phrase was later employed by the philosopher Immanuel Kant: “Dare to know! ‘Have the courage to use your own understanding’ is … the motto of the enlightenment,” he wrote. And it makes a fine motto, too, for a school that counts among its alumni the writer Thomas de Quincy and the director Nicholas Hytner.

Manchester Grammar is the largest all-boys day school in the country, and when I visited they were in the throes of summer sports’ day: a loudspeaker reeled race results out across the grass, a large marquee stood by the track. There was, I felt, a sense of gentle splendour – there in the trees that line its long driveway, mature and broad-branched, and in the quad designed in the style of an Oxbridge college. Certainly, the school wants for little: it stands on a 28-acre site, has a history dating back to the early 16th century, and commands fees a little shy of £12,000 a year.

In the cool of the library, I joined Thorpe, his colleague Laura Rooney and some of their students. We talked about the benefits of the school, their previous educational experiences at a “rowdy” primary and a local state comprehensive. “There’s more attention to individual pupils here,” said one. “When I came to this school, I felt more important,” said another. Rooney spoke of the school’s old boys’ network. “We look after them for the rest of their lives,” she said, and told of how, only the previous week, she had arranged a sixth-form work experience placement with an Old Mancunian who is now a vehicle engineer for a Formula One team.

The boys were open, articulate and delightful, their demeanour imbued with a confidence I found striking. But a school such as Manchester Grammar engenders confidence – not just through the depth and breadth of its education, but through the sense of history and lineage it bestows upon its pupils, the belief that it is quite something to join the ranks of Old Mancunians, the familiarity with Oxbridge and the professional world, a feeling of ease in a variety of social settings and occasions. And although not every public school child will brim with confidence, many will go on to live their lives with the deep-rooted sense that they have worth.

Confidence is a peculiar beast. At its most fulsome it can seem repellent. In some cases it could even prove dangerous – consider the circumstances brought about by the unwavering confidence of Donald Trump or Nigel Farage, for instance, or the kind of financial maelstrom unleashed by the overconfidence of stock market traders. Yet as I left Manchester Grammar that July day I felt a great wash of sadness that not all young people will know that sense of self-assurance; that many will spend their lives feeling perpetually on the back foot. And I wondered whether confidence might be something we can learn at any stage in life.

To an extent, confidence is something hardwired into us from birth. A study of 3,700 twins by behavioural geneticist Corina Greven at King’s College London and Robert Plomin of the Institute of Psychiatry, for instance, concluded that academic self-confidence was 50% nature and 50% nurture. Women, meanwhile, have a biological tendency to seek acceptance and avoid conflict, while men tend to take more risks under pressure, meaning that, in some lights, women might appear to lack inner confidence.

But external factors play a huge role in shaping our feelings of self worth. Let’s say you are white and male and raised in a detached house in the home counties. You attend a fee-paying school, your family is financially secure and well-educated – as it has been for generations. It seems brain-numbingly obvious to suggest your levels of confidence are likely to be higher than if you were female, black and state-educated, growing up in a single-parent family on benefits living on a council estate in, say, Burnley.

“No working-class kid, however self-confident, is ever going to be made the editor of the Evening Standard without any journalistic experience, in the way that George Osborne was,” says the writer and broadcaster Stuart Maconie, who has written often on matters of class, politics and regional divide. “What he has is a complicated nexus, a network of power and relationships that means you can’t really fail.” Underpinning that sort of confidence, he adds, is “actual material and political power and I think this is forgotten sometimes when well-meaning people are accusing working-class kids of lacking the confidence and self-assertion that comes with middle-class people”.

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Some of the reasons for this are glaringly obvious, while others exert a more subtle force. John Grindrod is the author of Concretopia: A Journey Around the Rebuilding of Post-War Britain. “For hundreds of thousands of years, our confidence has been shaped by the environments that we are allowed into or not allowed into,” he says, pointing out that, by its nature, castle design led to the feeling that those inside were protected by its architecture, while those outside were not. After the war, Grindrod notes, this began to shift. “We saw a desire to try to create buildings that were more transparent and more permeable,” he says. “An egalitarian architecture as a panacea to a lot of issues around people feeling very disconnected from power.”

But the issue is that we do not live in an egalitarian society. The design of a public school such as Eton has much in common with, say, the colleges of Oxbridge, as well as the Inns of Court and the Houses of Parliament. If you grow up among these kinds of buildings, you are not only less likely to be daunted by their grandeur but ,on the contrary, you will feel at home, as if you belong there and they speak your language. “When the competition to build the Houses of Parliament came along in the 1830s, you were only allowed to enter buildings that were neo-gothic or Tudor,” adds Grindrod. “People who understood this vernacular, of course, would have been to Oxford and Cambridge and all those other hallowed institutions.”

There have been architectural ripostes to the established elite, however. Maconie speaks fondly of St George’s Hall in Liverpool, a neoclassical building begun in 1841, when the city was flourishing: “It’s designed to be the first thing you see when you get off the train at Lime Street, this grand edifice, and it’s supposed to say, ‘We’re not bowing to anyone, we’re supremely self-confident and we’re as good a city as anywhere in the world.’ You see that in a lot of Manchester’s cottonopolis-era architecture. A sort of swagger in bricks.”

“Swagger” is one of those words often used to describe confident northerners – particularly men. “I think of the self-confidence of the north in terms of, say, the Gallagher brothers [from Oasis], that and Arthur Seaton [from Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning],” says Maconie. “That kind of self-confidence is born, to a degree, of failure. You get a lot of street confidence in northern males, it’s an ‘I’m never really going to make anything of myself in terms of money or power or prestige, but I can enjoy the prestige of being the loudest guy in the pub.’”

Confident women, meanwhile, often find they are described as “bossy” or “snobby”. Katty Kay presents BBC World News America – you may remember her as the presenter whom Dr Ben Carson, the former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, tried to silence during a live TV discussion of Trump’s alleged sexual assaults, asking for her microphone to be turned off. She is also the co-author of The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance – What Women Should Know.

Kay is the daughter of a diplomat, she attended Oxford, and worked for the Bank of England before beginning her career in journalism. Despite this grounding, professional confidence has been a quality that has often alluded her, and she attributes its cause to “thinking I wasn’t bright enough, and I was conscious of not being confident enough”.

But she is aware that she is not alone. “Evidence of women underestimating their abilities is comprehensive and across the board,” she says. “It exists in sports, it exists in politics, it exists in business, it exists in the military.” It is quite the reverse for men. “One of the most reliable social studies you can do is to give men and women a scientific reasoning quiz,” she says. “Men tend to overestimate their abilities by more than 30%. Women routinely underestimate their abilities.” In reality, the quiz results reveal men and women tend to do about the same.

This, of course, has implications for both an individual’s career and the workplace in general. “Hewlett Packard has done work on promotions,” Kay continues. “Women will apply for promotions when they have 100% of the skill set, men will go for those same promotions with 60% of the skill set, because they figure they’re going to learn the rest when they get there – and they’re right, they will, and so could we. It’s one of the biggest factors I think in why women hold themselves back at work. Now, there are lots of structural reasons, the playing field is not level, but we are also not going for those promotions, we’re not asking for those pay rises in the way that men do.”

During the last few months I have been making a radio series about confidence – what it is, where it comes from, why some of us have it and others don’t, and what to do about it if your confidence levels are in short supply. I should note that I am not a confident person. I spent my entire first term at primary school allowing myself to be called Louise because I was too shy to tell them my name was actually Laura. I also recently gave a talk at a festival and, for fear that I was taking up everyone’s valuable time, began early, then garbled through it at high speed and low volume, apologising frequently. I did not ask for a lectern, or for the window on to the noisy street to be closed, I did not allow myself to stop and breathe, because I feared that to do any of these things – things that would have benefited both the audience and myself – might have been considered arrogant.

It seems to me that confidence has much to do with space – with how much room you feel able and allowed to take up. Grow up in a detached house with several acres and you might feel entitled to more room than someone raised in a terrace or a high rise with a tiny balcony. Attend a school where the class sizes are smaller, where fees are paid, and the buildings are grander, and you will learn early that you have a right to spread out, raise your voice, ask for more.

To muddy things further, girls are raised to believe that being smaller is preferable; in a hundred thousand ways we receive the message that we should be quieter, thinner, less demanding, in case we are deemed bossy, or our views too strident, or in case a man asks for our microphone to be turned off. To ask for a pay rise, then, is demanding; it says I am worthy of more – and to women, who have spent their lives being told that they should be less, this is conflicting. Men, meanwhile, are raised to be go-getters, to conquer and to win.

But, male or female, we are all a mess of contradictions: the business leader who can’t make small talk, the party animal who balks at intimacy. I feel relatively self-assured so long as you can’t see me – so I can write an article, or present a radio programme, or be as cocky as you like on email, but in the decade that I worked in the Guardian’s offices, it filled me with dread to have to walk over to speak to my editor.

In the making of this series, there have been moments when I have begun to question whether confidence is such a marvellous thing at all. I don’t know if I always trust it, and certainly I have wondered whether confidence always has to equate with brashness – whether there might not be a quieter, gentler form of self-worth. I have thought often of something Maria Konnikova, author of a book about con artists, The Confidence Game, said to me: “I have to be very wary of people who speak confidently. That is actually a sign that you should be a little bit more sceptical of them.” And I’ve considered the state of the world and wondered whether maybe all the big mouths and hot-talkers should just pipe down for a moment. “I certainly look around me at the world and see strong, confident men who seem to be leading us into very dark places,” Maconie notes. “Isn’t quiet, modest competence a better thing? Ease in one’s own skin, I think, is a different matter. To not feel beholden to anyone or inferior to anyone, that’s hard-acquired, I think, and that comes from a long immersion in what you do. Sometimes a little more discretion and humility might be a good thing.”

Susan Cain is the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. She cites a recent study by the Kellogg School in the US which found that in an average large meeting, three people do 70% of the talking. “And that’s horrifying,” she says, “because if you imagine it, everyone in those large meetings is equally likely to have good ideas but we’re only hearing from three of those people. That is just so much power and mind talent that has never seen the light of day.”

The problem, she says, is that we have created a culture in our schools and workplaces where those people who “are just more vocal, who are more dominant, more willing to take up space are automatically accorded all kinds of advantages, both consciously and unconsciously”. But if you consider that a third to a half of the population is introverted, perhaps it is time for us to change the culture rather than change ourselves.

Still, we have grown accustomed to trying to change ourselves. Visit the self-help section of any bookshop and you will find any number of guides to gaining confidence: Susan Jeffers’ Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, Paul McKenna’s Instant Confidence, Russ Harris’s The Confidence Gap among them. One of the bestsellers is Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly. In 2010, Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston, gave a TED talk called The Power of Vulnerability which has gone on to be one of the most-viewed TED talks of all time (31,649,423 views at time of writing). Brown’s theory is that we acquire true confidence through vulnerability. “Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen,” she writes.

The School of Life, the educational company founded by Alain de Botton, takes a similar approach. It runs a popular confidence workshop and publishes a guide, On Confidence, that draws on the wisdom of Erasmus’s 1509 essay In Praise of Folly, and suggests that a willingness not only to be vulnerable but also to be a fool is crucial to evolving greater self-worth. “There’s a type of underconfidence that arises specifically when we grow too attached to our own dignity and become anxious around any situation that might seem to threaten it,” it states. “We hold back from challenges in which there is any risk of ending up looking ridiculous, which comprises, of course, almost all the most interesting situations.” The happy news is that, far from regarding it as an elusive gift, confidence is rather “a skill based on ideas about our place in the world, and its secrets can be learned”.

Katty Kay, agrees. “I see confidence almost like building blocks,” she says. “It’s almost a tangible physical commodity. You get confidence by doing things and trying stuff that’s hard for you and when you do those things it’s like you bank a bit of confidence, you put it in your confidence wall.” Not so long ago she was called to a meeting on Middle East affairs at the White House. “And I thought: ‘Oh my God, I’m a fraud, all these people are super-duper experts, what am I doing here? I’m just a generalist!’” When they reached the Q&A part of the meeting, Kay noted how “the men in the room just jump in with questions, and I’m sitting there thinking to myself: ‘I must ask a question, I can’t be one of only two women and neither of us ask questions!’ And eventually I think: ‘For God’s sakes, Katty, you’re nearly 50! Put your hand in the air and ask a question!’ So I put my hand up, and the question comes out, and the Earth didn’t open up and swallow me whole. And the next time I was in that situation it was that bit easier because I had banked a bit of confidence.”

It’s an approach echoed by Brown. “Courage is a habitus, a habit, a virtue: You get it by courageous acts,” she writes. “It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging.” The brain, after all, is not rigidly set, but malleable and open to change, and so we can learn to be bolder through repetition and reward.

A 2014 study at Dartmouth College, looked at the role of the frontostriatal pathway, which connects the medial prefrontal cortex, implicated in self-knowledge, to the ventral striatum, which provides feelings of reward and motivation. Researchers used magnetic imaging to measure both the physical parameters of that pathway, which it termed the “road” and the activity levels on that pathway, termed the “traffic”.

Participants answered questions about how they rated themselves in the short and the long-term with regard to qualities such as “happy”, “hard-working”, “pessimistic” and “depressed”. The researchers found that an individual with a strong “road” was likely to experience higher long-term self-esteem. Higher “traffic” levels on the pathway, meanwhile, showed momentary rises in self-esteem. They also only saw “traffic” when participants rated themselves with positive qualities, not negative ones. So if we think about ourselves positively, the areas of the brain connected with motivation, pleasure and reward are stimulated.

“Just like mastering any other talent, gaining self-assurance requires repetition and time,” writes Dr Stacie Grossman Bloom, a neuroscientist who has examined the role that neuroscience can play in raising confidence. “The first step is to push back against the obstacles we know stand in our way by being mindful of the situation, and deciding to be confident. Making that complex decision is a multi-step process that taps into our emotions and engages many other parts of the brain. It doesn’t matter what level of self-assurance you start at, the more time and effort you dedicate to practicing being more confident, the faster your brain will change and the faster you’ll master it.”

At the Impact Factory in north London, Jo Ellen Grzyb runs workshops on communication, negotiation and public speaking. Over the course of her career she has developed her own tricks for pushing back against obstacles and mustering confidence. If, for example, you find yourself in a meeting in which only three people are blathering on, you might consider interjecting for the good of your colleagues. “You put on your Superwoman or Superman cape and you are rescuing everyone else,” she says. “Because if I’m thinking, ‘I have to speak, I have to speak, what am I going to say?’, I’m all in my head. But if I think, ‘I can rescue this meeting’, then that builds my confidence because I’m not just doing it on my behalf, I’m doing it for the whole room.”

There are physical tools, too. “You think you don’t have the confidence to interrupt this blusterer,” she says. “But if you begin to speak and you give eye contact to everybody but that person, it’s one of those little tiny magic tricks, because that person is being ignored. It’s not being rude, but you can change the dynamic very quickly. Speak, make eye contact – but not with the person who is taking up all the space.”

Among many roles, Patsy Rodenburg is head of voice at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and works with actors, teachers, world leaders and members of the corporate world, teaching on matters of voice and presence. “Although I can’t talk about the psychology of confidence, I know what it looks like in the body, and the breath, and the voice and the pace,” she says. “Often people who are trying to be confident and aren’t swing the pendulum the other way and they’re too loud. They take up too much space.” Others are “collapsed in their bodies. They don’t want to make eye contact, so there is a withdrawal from the world. You disappear. You stop breathing. It’s the equivalent of the mouse with the hawk above it.”

Her advice is that there is no overnight fix for the underconfident. “It takes consciousness, choice, but also simple exercises that might have to be done for the rest of your life. Technique is for the moments when you’re upset, disturbed or fearful.” She asks people where they feel uncomfortable in these moments. “All these tensions stop us breathing,” she says. “And breath is the fundamental thing in using our voice and connecting to people. So we have to get the breath low and deep and not rushed.”

For a lot of women, it’s a matter of lifting the sternum, for others it might be finding some kind of external connection. “I might be sitting at a desk feeling scared,” she suggests. “So I’m just putting my hand against a desk and I’m just gently pushing. And if you push against the desk, and your feet are on the floor, you can re-set the breath. It’s about re-setting. You’ve just got to come back into yourself.”

Conversely, coming back into yourself is often a matter of stepping out of yourself. “Somebody who is incredibly confident has authority and stillness and they’re interested in us,” Rodenburg says. “Real confidence has gravitas. And when we’re fully present, we’re interested in something outside ourselves. So one of the best things you could do if you’re not feeling confident is just listen to others, and be attentive.”

Once, I thought gaining confidence might require me to become someone else entirely – someone harder and louder and more bruising. But really I think it is a matter of stepping beyond yourself; an adventure of sorts, into the unknown and the brilliantly possible. It is about taking up as much space as you need. About daring to be wise. And, if necessary, it’s about keeping a steadying hand on the table.

The case for sledging

Sam Perry in Cricinfo

Around a decade ago a 20-year-old man walked to a suburban wicket with his team in a precarious position. The previous week they had conceded a glut of runs to a rampaging opposition that included a recently discarded international player. In a message to selectors and anyone else who wanted to listen, the deposed veteran made a score that dropped jaws.

And so the 20-year-old strode to the crease, his team 40 for 4 in reply. Two overs remained before lunch. Slightly shaking but presenting the bravest face possible, he asked for centre. In an attempt at familiarity, he addressed the umpire by name. It was a disastrous overcompensation, seized upon gleefully.

"Do you know him, mate?" offered the point fieldsman. Chuckles ensued from those in earshot. The batsman glanced behind him to see four slips waiting. Each stared, stony-faced, directly back. Two had arms folded, two had hands behind their backs, like policemen strolling their beat. Robocop wraparound sunglasses were the day's fashion, as was the gnashing of chewing gum. The batsman probably shouldn't have addressed the umpire by name. It played on his mind.

"Rod, do you know this bloke?" came the follow-up from first slip. It was the veteran record-breaker, speaking to the umpire, capitalising on the moment. All heads turned to the man in white, now a central character in the contrived pantomime. Rod chuckled. "Nope!" he replied, followed by more laughter. A ball hadn't yet been bowled.

The veteran continued, "Mate, what's going on with your socks?" Now we had a problem. Unbeknown to the batsman, he had tucked his socks into his pants before affixing his pads. "Is this Under-12s? Rod, am I playing Under-12s?" Guffaws followed from all but the already humiliated batsman. He was out for 5, caught at gully off the last ball before lunch.

Sledging has utility and that's primarily why it exists. While few of us ever will, were we to step into the private confines of a professional dressing room, we would likely find believers. You won't hear this publicly, though, as the word itself has become villainous to cricketing morality. Very few are willing to openly defend sledging, though many privately believe in its value. Pragmatism often trumps principle.

So in this Trumpian world, perhaps it's time to air the views of a silent majority. Maybe sledging is effective. Maybe sledging makes a difference. Maybe sledging helps teams win.

We accept that cricket is a mental game, and let's face it, the majority of us cannot control ourselves very well mentally

Contrary to popular conception, sledging is rarely a series of witty one-liners of the sort found in internet listicles. Nor is it often outright verbal abuse. In large part it's merely a stream of hushed expletives, passive-aggressive body language, conversations between team-mates, and assorted noises, the worst of which is laughter.

We accept that cricket is a mental game, and let's face it, the majority of us cannot control ourselves very well mentally. We are not purveyors of unadulterated Zen and focused positivity. We are mostly flawed individuals, who carry our nerves, insecurities and awareness of weakness into most of life's important moments. We all learned at an early age that humiliation, embarrassment, and feelings of not belonging compromise our confidence. Ergo, if you accept that confidence is critical to cricketing success, then isn't it the opposition's imperative to weaken it?

Which brings us to sledging's ethical considerations. Among the many and overlapping guiding principles for a player's behaviour, particularly at the professional level, standing as tall as any is this: "What will help us win?" It's here that we confront sledging's mythical line. For most, the line is simply about what you can get away with. Or as Nathan Lyon described it, "We try to head-butt the line." If there is an upside or edge to be exploited in pursuit of victory, aren't players arguably justified in doing so? When it comes to sledging, for many the question is less "Is this right?", more "Will this work?"

Of course, it doesn't always work. Some personalities thrive under sledging, while others are immune. But these are rare birds. It's more likely than not that sledging hurts us. If we succeed, we do so in spite of it and not because of it. And so in our new, Trump-led world, where the prevailing doctrines seem to be less about honour and more about winning, it is fitting to view sledging as a viable tool in the arsenals of fielding sides. No one will say so, mind.
Beyond its capacity to mentally disrupt the opposition, in some countries sledging seemingly has a cultural allure too. You don't have to travel far on YouTube to witness the bipartisan adoration for former Australian prime minister Paul Keating, whose ability to deliver withering verbal takedowns and comebacks is arguably without peer. He is adored for his capacity to verbally undermine his opposition, and it's understandable that many may seek to emulate that when it comes to facing opponents of their own.

This potent yet fragile tool for psychological disruption remains as alive as ever. Ask any batsman whether they'd prefer to be sledged when they bat or not, and the honest answer will be no. And it is for this reason that they will engage in sledging themselves when fielding. While many might express a glib, deep-voiced indifference to "chat", we would all much prefer friendly, welcoming, encouraging environs when out in the middle. The reality, however sad or unethical, is that sledging usually makes one's innings more difficult. So long as professional pragmatism and the doctrine of winning prevails, so will sledging, whether publicly acknowledged or not.

Voters believe that even if they did exercise their right to leave the EU, the politicians wouldn’t obey them.

Aditya Chakrabortty in The Guardian


 

‘Voters believe that even if they did exercise their right to leave the EU, the politicians wouldn’t obey them.’ Illustration by Matt Kenyon


Neil was speckled with paint from his trousers to his spectacle lenses, and had come straight from work to the vape shop. When I asked which side he’d be backing in the EU referendum, he projected as if addressing a rally. He wanted everyone to know he was damned if he was going to vote. “It’s an illusion that we’ve got a say in it. We don’t live in a democracy. The day of having a common working man standing for us here or in Europe – it’s over.”

We were in Pontypool, south Wales. As a valleys boy (“I smell of sheep”), Neil had been brought up Labour. But now, “It’s all lies, isn’t it?” Then came the sins: Blair “a big liar”; the political class in the pockets of the bankers.

It was the refrain I kept getting last week across south Wales – and have heard in many other regions too. That dissolution in old loyalties, that breakdown in trust, runs wide and deep – and it already marks the referendum on 23 June. Opinion polls show that voters believe that even if they did exercise their right to leave the EU, the politicians wouldn’t obey them. This is what a democratic crisis looks like.

Although journalists often remind us that this is the first vote the British have had on Europe in 40 years, they rarely dwell on what happened last time round. Yet the torchlight of history shows just how much has changed. While today’s polls show leave and remain neck and neck, the 1975 referendum on whether Britain should stay in the European Economic Community was as good as won before it was even announced. The then prime minister, Harold Wilson, led a coalition of the establishment – all three parties, the unions, the business lobbies, the press – and emerged with a 2:1 majority to stay in.

“Europhoria” is how the Guardian reported the results. Its leader began: “Full-hearted, wholehearted and cheerful hearted: there is no doubt about the ‘yes’.” Imagine anything even close to that being said in two weeks’ time – after months of sullen and sour campaigning, of close colleagues branding one another “liars”, “luxury-lifestyle” politicians and “Pinocchio”.

“Wilson would never have asked a question of which he couldn’t be confident of the answer,” says historian Adrian Williamson. Contrast that with David Cameron, who once claimed he wanted to be prime minister because he’d be “rather good at it”, but now resembles a short-tempered supply teacher struggling to control his own class.

Panicked by a fear of Nigel Farage and the ultras in his own party, the Tory leader has staged a referendum for which there was little public appetite and which he may now, incredibly, lose.

Months were spent trailing a deal that the prime minister was going to strike with Germany’s Angela Merkel and the rest – a rewriting of the rules that was going to form the basis of this referendum. You’ve barely heard about that deal since.
Posed a question few of them were actually asking, voters have wound up raising their own. Why haven’t my wages gone up? How will the kids get on the housing ladder? When will my mum get her knee replacement? All good questions, none of which are actually on the ballot paper. The likely result is that on 23 June, many of those who do vote will try to squeeze a multitude of other answers into one crude binary.

In 1975 Roy Jenkins, another son of Welsh coal and steel, explained the result as: “The people took the advice of people they were used to following.” Classic Jenkins, but also an expression of the classic role of mass political parties. When they had millions of members, both Labour and the Conservatives served as the brokers between the people they represented and the “experts”, the authoritative midpoint between ideology and empirics.

Neither party can claim to be mass any more, least of all the Tories – low on members, bankrolled by hedge funds and the City. This creates what Chris Bickerton, politics lecturer at Cambridge, calls “the crisis of political mediation”.

No longer claiming the same democratic legitimacy as their predecessors, Cameron and George Osborne have had to borrow their authority from other sources: Mark Carney and the Bank of England, the International Monetary Fund, the Treasury. These technocrats, much cited by broadcasters and jittery remainers, are one of the two main sources of authority in our democracy. The other is the post-truth brigade, as channelled by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, who advise voters to ignore the nuance, trust their gut – and blame migrants or the Brussels fatcats.

British democracy in 2016 comes down to this: a prime minister can no longer come out and say something and expect to be believed. He or she must wheel out a common room-full of experts. He or she can expect to be called a liar in the press and by their colleagues. He or she can only hope that some of what they say resonates with an electorate that has tuned them out.

And mainstream politicians have only themselves to blame. Over the past three decades, Britons have been made a series of false promises. They have been told they must go to war with a country that can bomb them in 45 minutes – only to learn later that that was false. They have been assured the economy was booming, only to find out it was fuelled by house prices and tax credits.

New Labour pledged an end to Margaret Thatcher’s unfairness, except that – as the Centre for Research into Socio-Cultural Change has shown – the richest 20% of households scooped as much of the income growth under Brown and Blair as they had under the Iron Lady.

Britons were told austerity would last five years, tops – although we will now endure at least a decade.

And the people of south Wales were told new industries would replace the coal and steelworks. Looking out of the shop window, Neil remembered how Pontypool on market days like today would be “rammed”. Now it was half-empty. “It’s dead now, because they took what they wanted,” he said. “Thatcher smashed the unions. There used to be coalmines all around here. Boosh – we’re out of here. They’ve moved on.”

Cameron and the rest of the political class are learning a lesson the hard way. You can only break your promises to the public so many times before they refuse to put any more trust in you. After that, you have to rely on Threadneedle Street and the Treasury to corrode their own finite reputation for impartiality.

Whichever way the ballots go on 23 June, the public will continue returning a vote of no-confidence in Westminster for a long time to come.

Global markets are no longer obeying economic common sense

Mark Blyth in The Guardian


The financial markets no longer know what is good for them or what is bad for them – so how can they know who to blame when things go increasingly wrong

 

‘Financial markets are becoming increasingly odd, wanting more expensive money and oil to restore confidence’ Photograph: Daniel Roland/AFP/Getty Images


 
One of the oddest things about 2016, so far at least, is how economic “common sense” is being twisted in all sorts of ways to explain what’s going on in the global economy.

By the end of 2015 market “commentators” were clamoring for an interest rate rise from the Federal Reserve to “restore confidence”. Normally, the only reason to raise rates is if there is inflation in the economy and you want to squeeze it out.


Problem: there was no inflation in the US, or almost anywhere else, at the end of 2015.



World markets in turmoil for a second day


So despite that rather obvious fact, the markets got the rise that they wanted and … it helped lower economic activity, precisely as one would expect, which has had a decidedly negative impact on confidence.


Generally speaking, when you make something more expensive – in this case, money – people buy less of it. But in this world, “the markets” were arguing that people would buy more of something if you made it more expensive, and that would produce “confidence”, so they would buy more, which is a bit odd, to say the least.


The next bit of oddness, apparent as we entered into 2016, was that the fall in commodity prices, especially oil, was not good news. Yet falling commodity prices means that everyone who is not a commodity producer or an oil company pays less for their inputs, and can then spend more on other stuff, which has to be good – right?


But “the markets”, once again, figured different. Falling oil prices were now seen as a bad thing, with markets in January having a mini heart attack as oil prices fell below $30 a barrel. When pressed as to why this was a bad thing, no one in these markets seemed to have a clear answer. But the markets freaked out anyway.


A cause for this volatility had to be found, and it was, by the middle of January, in the form of China’s banking sector. And so for the past month the markets have been fretting about the non-performing Loans (NPL’s) in China … and their “dodgy” economic statistics.


But just last year the IMF, who has plenty of data on NPL’s everywhere, brought the yuan into its basket of reserve currencies, which is hardly what you would do if you thought it was all going to pot. After all, China’s statistics and loan book have been questionable for years … but so has Italy’s and Ireland for that matter. And China has literally trillions of dollars (and other currencies) in reserves to throw at the problem – not to mention a decidedly non-democratic state that can, and often does, just make things “go away”.


So why is China now the cause of all ills? Along with China, cheap money, and everything else? Quite possibly because the world has changed, fundamentally, and financial markets are incentivised not to recognise this.

Today there is no inflation anywhere that isn’t due to a currency collapse brought on when the country that issues the currency is heavily dependent on imports, such as Russia and Brazil.


Globalisation, and concerted action for 30 years by the political right, has killed the ability of labour to demand higher wages, hence record inequality and super low inflation. Meanwhile, yields on assets, and interest rates in such a world, will stay “long and low” well beyond 2016 as global savings outpace global investment, and everyone except the US tries to run an export surplus.

This is an ugly world for financial markets, used to delivering the types of returns that people thought normal before the crash: 6 to 8%, liquid, and abundant. That money was made in a period when interest rates and inflation rates across the world fell year on year from abnormally high levels. In that world it was hard not to make money.


But now we find ourselves in a post-crisis world in which the old tricks no longer work despite growth at 1.5%, inflation at 0.5% and interest rates in some places at minus 0.25%.

Rather than face this fact, “the markets” blame China, this week, or it’s the Fed’s rate policy, last month, or its quantitative easing (another bête noir for markets of long standing).


But here’s the bad news. It’s not their fault. “Long and low as far as you go” driven by ageing populations in developed countries that save more than they spend pushing down interest rates and consumption to the point of deflation as everyone tries to run a surplus is the reality of the world today.


So what will the rest of 2016 look like?


Just like we have seen so far – periodic “inexplicable” and “what the heck” moments as markets everywhere hunt for causes to explain away something very inconvenient. That the game has changed for financial markets – that there is no going back to the boom times – and that the world going forward is a much more boring, and much less “finance friendly” place, than “the markets” want to admit. Most of all to themselves.

Why life is just one big confidence trick

Matthew Stadlen in The Telegraph


It was supposed to be an event targeted at young people and I’m not that young any more; it was meant to be a campaign designed to build confidence and I don’t see myself as the timid type; and anyway, I was there to interview World and Olympic Champion Jessica Ennis-Hill, not for an education in self-help. Yet I left Sky Studios the other day profoundly influenced by a single sentence.

Find something you love and then stick to it.

These words emerged from the mouth of Melvyn Bragg, the enduring broadcaster who has reached the very top of his profession. They amounted to Lord Bragg’s recipe for confidence. He was speaking on a panel put together by Sky Academy, a bursary scheme that supports emerging talent in the worlds of sport and the arts. His advice immediately lodged somewhere deep inside me, partly perhaps because Bragg is a luminary in my own field, partly perhaps because I’ve enjoyed meeting and interviewing him in the past. Its real impact, though, stems from its essential truth. If you love something, you’re more likely to be confident at it and therefore to succeed.

Despite my self-assurance, bred in me by my privileged schooling, my parents and a childhood environment in which I was surrounded by successful role-models, I do sometimes doubt my career trajectory. The life of the self-employed can provoke uncomfortable journeys into dark corners of the mind where confidence seems a distant relative. But Bragg reminded me that I do love what I do and that there is a very strong argument for sticking at it. There are echoes of a line from Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist in Bragg’s philosophy: “Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.”

Of course, Bragg’s winning cocktail must include a decent dose of natural ability if it’s to translate into success. Simply loving something isn’t enough, you have to have some talent or aptitude too. It's a maxim that England’s rugby players must now know only too well. They no doubt love what they do (much of the time) and they are talented; but not talented enough, it turns out.

There were plenty of confident noises emanating from in and around the England camp last week ahead of the do-or-die match against Australia. Ben Morgan, one of the 18-stone forwards, threatened to expose the Wallabies’ infamous insecurities in the scrum; Danny Cipriani, the talented back excluded from England’s tournament squad, claimed that not a single Australian would get into the England team. In the event, England crashed out of their own World Cup, the English pack was humiliated in retreat and it was hard to see how more than one or two Englishmen would make it into the Australian team.

Stuart Lancaster's England appeared to suffer a crisis of confidence during their World Cup games Photo: REUTERS

So much for English confidence. But then again, maybe they were faking it. I was in the stands to watch their disintegration, part physical, part mental, in the final excruciating minutes against Wales the week before. Could every England player really have been that sure of themselves after such a bruising defeat, facing an Australian team fresh from winning the southern hemisphere’s coveted Rugby Championship? Perhaps. Or maybe self-doubt had crept in but they decided to subscribe to the Davina McCall blueprint for confidence.

The former Big Brother host, was, together with Ennis-Hill, Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts and YouTube personality Alfie Deyes, on the same panel as Bragg. McCall is not an obvious candidate for self-doubt, but speaking with impressive candidness, she talked about her own teenage issues with a chronic lack of confidence. Her remedy was to act as if she really were confident. Fake it, she advised. If you’re not confident, teach yourself to project confidence instead and eventually you might end up believing it.

Fake it to make it: Davina McCall admits to suffering from low confidence as a teenager Photo: Andrew Crowley

Mahatma Gandhi seemed to be saying something similar when he reflected, “Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”

Roger Uttley, a former England rugby coach, offered advice to the incumbent, Stuart Lancaster, via an interview with The Telegraph between the Wales and Australia games. “You have got to get over things quickly,” he said. “Stuart has to look the part in terms of his body language. It is tough to do that but important. Players feed off it.” Lancaster did put on a brave face, but he had already admitted to being “absolutely devastated” following the loss to Wales. Hardly the sort of message to be sending down from on high. The scoreline worsened against Australia and this time Lancaster was “absolutely gutted.”

Just how critical confidence is in sport had already been spelt out in an ITV interview given by Warren Gatland ahead of his side’s thrilling victory over the English. England have more money, more fans, more players – yet still Wales won. “When are you at your best?” Gatland was asked. “When I'm under a bit of pressure. It's always been my biggest challenge often with the Welsh players to keep building on that confidence and that self-belief that they are good enough to compete with the best teams in the world and they're good enough to go out there and win.”

Gatland was then asked what was the one quality he had as a player that has never left him. “Self-belief,” came the reply. Together with greater skill and fitness, what Wales demonstrated in those final frantic minutes was a core belief that they could still win a game that seemed lost at half-time. The players aped the confidence of their coach.

In the eye of the storm: Wales coach Warren Gatland Photo: AFP

During the recent Ashes summer, Sky Sports ran a series of programmes profiling some of cricket’s greatest stars of the past. Listening to Glenn McGrath speak about his record-breaking career, it was immediately obvious how pivotal self-belief was to his success. Just like the Welsh rugby team, confidence was welded onto ability, in his case onto his metronomic accuracy with the ball.

“The biggest battle I ever had when I was bowling out in the middle was with myself,’ he said. “And if I won that battle the rest was pretty easy. It's about having a bit of mongrel in you. You've got to be aggressive.” His two main strengths, he said, were that accuracy and a little bit of bounce. Then he added: “And just self-belief.” Interviewed for the same profile, McGrath’s former new ball partner, Jason Gillespie, reflected: “I don't think anyone came close to believing in their own ability as much as Glenn McGrath.”

Confidence is essential in politics too. It’s something that David Cameron projects so effectively that it is rarely, if ever, questioned in profiles of the Prime Minister. Despite his pledge to end “Punch and Judy politics" when he became leader, he has often been forthright and confrontational at the despatch box and exudes an air of watertight self-confidence that borders on a sense of entitlement. To what extent this is contrived, we don’t know, but much of it may have its roots in an elite public school education at Eton.

Wherever Cameron’s confidence comes from, it now stands in stark contrast to the hesitancy of Jeremy Corbyn. Maybe the Labour leader’s indecisiveness in interviews can be spun as the supreme confidence of a man with a mandate from his party’s grass roots not to play by the long established rules of Westminster politics. Up goes the cry: 'It’s the new politics!' But, if he continues to dither, he will continue to be cast by others as un-Prime Ministerial and as an uncertain figurehead.

Margaret Thatcher came across as even more self-assured than Cameron (and she was a state-educated grocer’s daughter). No one could claim that confidence is a male preserve. But it is, perhaps, worth asking whether gender sometimes plays a role. If you haven’t heard of impostor syndrome, it’s a phenomenon thought to be particularly prevalent among high-achieving women. It is, essentially, a conviction that success, however merited, is actually undeserved.

There is also that feeling of guilt so common, we’re told, among new mothers. In my interview with Ennis-Hill, she explained how anxious she’d been ahead of this summer’s World Championships in Beijing. When training wasn’t going so well, she imagined how she’d feel if she didn’t perform as she hoped. “I would have been away from my son for two weeks and I would have been absolutely devastated because I would be so mad with myself for being away. As a mum as well you feel guilty about everything, so it’s definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever, ever done,” she told me. How many men would have questioned themselves in this way?

Ennis-Hill spoke openly about one of the more challenging consequences of childbirth. “Your confidence does [take a] knock,” she said. “I was thinking, 'Oh gosh, I’ve got to train now as well and fit all this in. You’re up through the night and that has an impact on how you feel about everything and whether you can do it, and your self-belief. Everything’s a million times worse when you’re tired.” In a changing world, men also travel emotional postnatal journeys and undoubtedly suffer from sleep deprivation too. But they certainly aren’t forced to battle through changes to body shape.

And then there’s the question of why there are so many more prominent male comedians. Earlier this year, I asked Jason Manford for his explanation in an interview for the Radio Times. “Audiences on a Friday, Saturday night are a bit rowdy and I always think stand-up is a bit like flirting,” he said. “So when a bloke comes out and he does his thing, he’s making people laugh, this is what you do when you’re flirting one on one.

“So it’s harder for females sometimes to come on and be on the forefront because that’s not what we’re used to in our societal rules. It’s a bloke who’s on the forefront and generally the woman’s passive. For a female to be aggressive is not what we’re used to. So I think female comics generally have to work harder because of an audience’s preconceptions.”

Handling rejection, Manford believed, is another factor. “Blokes are more used to rejection. Generally it’s a bloke who asks a girl out. I’m stereotyping but that’s what we do. And I’ve noticed it on the circuit. A girl will come off stage, she’s had a bad gig, and she’ll go, ‘I must have said something wrong.’

“A guy will come offstage and he’ll go, ‘Maybe the sound was off’ or, ‘It was definitely the audience’. He’ll find an external reason for his failure."

Whether or not there’s something in Manford’s analysis, we still live in a society where – last time I checked anyway – the onus is more frequently on the man to chat up a woman. That involves confidence. Peacocking isn’t a ritual confined to the animal kingdom.

There’s no doubt that confidence is an attractive quality in both men and women. It can transform appearances and draw in admirers who would otherwise walk on by. It can also be, as we’ve seen, a pivotal ingredient in successful careers. But overconfidence not only becomes unappealing, it can mutate into arrogance, pride and, ultimately, a fall.

The ancient Greeks knew about nemesis following hubris thousands of years ago and I’ve always thought Piers Morgan’s Twitter profile is brilliantly clever. He is one of the most confident men on social media, but he’s carved an indemnity clause into his online presence with a simple, biographical bon mot: “One day you’re the cock of the walk, the next a feather duster.”

The greatest trick Michael Vaughan ever pulled

Rob Smyth in Wisden India

The greatest trick Michael Vaughan ever pulled was convincing England they could beat Australia. As brilliant as England’s 2005 side were, they had no real place beating one of the greatest sides of all time. Yet by convincing them they could win the Ashes, Vaughan kickstarted a series of events that enabled them to do just that. You can see why Steve Harmison called Vaughan “the best liar I’ve ever played with”.

The most important part of England’s win was not Andrew Flintoff’s cartoon superheroism, or Glenn McGrath treading on a cricket ball, or even Gary Pratt. It was one man’s relentless conviction that it was possible to challenge two intimidating opponents: Australia, and the entrenched caution of English cricket. Vaughan did not quite change the DNA of English cricket but, for a few beautiful years, he empowered the most exhilarating England side many of us will ever see. It is why he is the most important English cricketer since Sir Ian Botham.

England’s symbolic victories in the Champions Trophy semi-final of 2004 and the one-off T20 international at the start of the 2005 summer were very important, but the most significant backstory to the 2005 Ashes is the evolution of Vaughan from underachieving, defensively-minded county batsman to the world’s best attacking batsman, which in turn enabled him to become, as England captain, a kind of arrogant visionary who waged war on the received wisdom surrounding Australia.

A key moment in that development was Vaughan’s breezy 33 at Brisbane in 2002, the magical little acorn from which England’s 2005 Ashes win grew. Vaughan’s swaggering cameo in his first Ashes innings confirmed the view he had formed in the previous six months – that Australia, and particularly Glenn McGrath, not only could be attacked but had to be attacked. That attitude informed everything he did for the remainder of his Ashes mirabilis in 2002–03 and, even more importantly, what he did once he became Test captain the following summer.

England had a number of unlikely heroes who helped them win the Ashes in 2005, from Pratt to Ricky Ponting. We should probably add Darren Lehmann and Sachin Tendulkar to the list; maybe even give them MBEs. Lehmann started playing for Yorkshire in 1997 and began to broaden Vaughan’s mind. When Vaughan came into the Yorkshire dressing-room in the early 1990s, he says he found a culture in which you were slaughtered for “batting like a millionaire” if you got out playing an attacking shot. He thus grew up as a classical, defensive batsman who batted time. It was all he knew.

Lehmann was only four years older than Vaughan, yet in many ways he was his mentor: worldly, streetwise, ceaselessly positive and with the sharpest cricket brain. “Darren Lehmann really taught me how to play the game properly,” said Vaughan. “He gave me so much advice and made me into the player that I ended up being – and made me into a thoughtful, aggressive captain.”

When Vaughan returned from a promising first tour as an England player – to South Africa in 1999–2000 – Lehmann suggested he was hiding his light under a bushel. He encouraged Vaughan to play more shots and especially to always be on the look-out for quick singles – not to bat time, but to bat runs. “I loved Boof,” wrote Vaughan in Time to Declare. “He was everything an overseas player ought to be and a huge influence on me.”

That influence continued when Vaughan became England captain. He had two men “outside the England bubble”, as he put it, to whom he turned for advice on a regular basis: Lehmann and an unnamed businessman who “never played top-level cricket but always challenged me and came from a different angle”. Vaughan was always keen to pick as many brains as possible; crucially, he was extremely decisive at sifting through observations and advice from others.

He almost always listened to Lehmann’s counsel, never more importantly than when Lehmann told him to bring a one-day mindset to his batting in four- and five-day cricket. It was such a fundamental change in Vaughan’s batting philosophy that it took him a couple of years to fully retrain his brain. But his strike rate in his first four years of Test cricket, from 1999–2002, told a clear story: 27 runs per 100 balls in 1999, then 41, 42 and 64.

A series of annoying injuries – calf, finger, hand and knee – as well as Duncan Fletcher’s desire to give Graeme Hick a chance and the need to play five bowlers in India meant that Vaughan, despite a promising start to his England career, played only three out of 14 Tests between November 2000 and December 2001. At the age of 27, he could not afford much more lost time. Graham Thorpe’s personal problems allowed him back in the side in India, and then Vaughan was pushed up to open for the first time in the 1–1 draw against New Zealand in 2001–02. It did not start well; on some dicey pitches he made 131 runs in six innings. But he demonstrated his new approach. In the first Test, England were 2 for 2 when Vaughan hooked his second ball of the series for six. The death of Ben Hollioake during the second Test was “a decisive moment in my life” and made him even more determined to remember that cricket was sport and should be enjoyed.

At the start of the 2002 English summer Vaughan averaged 31.15 from 16 Tests. Before the first Test against Sri Lanka he sensed something wasn’t right against left-arm seam – of which he would be facing plenty that summer – and asked Duncan Fletcher to have a look in the nets. After four balls, Fletcher spotted that Vaughan was too open, with his shoulders and body facing towards midwicket rather than between mid-on and the bowler. “The subtle change paid instant dividends… defence and attack all clicked.” He made a century in the first Test of the summer against Sri Lanka, and then three more against India. In New Zealand his problem was getting out in the 20s and 30s; against India it was getting out in the 190s. It was life-changing stuff. Vaughan ran with the mood of that summer and kept on running until England had won the Ashes three years later.

As the summer developed, with the following winter’s Ashes in mind, Vaughan became sufficiently emboldened that he decided to attack Australia. “I was not intending to be totally gung-ho, slash and bash, but to be nothing other than positive.” It was his eureka moment.

When Vaughan returned from a promising first tour as an England player – to South Africa in 1999–2000 – Lehmann suggested he was hiding his light under a bushel. He encouraged Vaughan to play more shots and especially to always be on the look-out for quick singles – not to bat time, but to bat runs. “I loved Boof,” wrote Vaughan in Time to Declare. “He was everything an overseas player ought to be and a huge influence on me.”

If you mention Vaughan, Tendulkar and 2002 then people will think of the wonder ball with which Vaughan bowled Tendulkar at Trent Bridge. Far more important, in the long term, was the postscript to that delivery. At the end of the series, Vaughan asked Tendulkar to sign the ball and stump from that wicket. Tendulkar asked him to sit down and chat cricket, which they did for half an hour. The conversation inevitably moved on to Australia. Tendulkar told Vaughan of the Adelaide Test of 1999–2000, in which he and Dravid allowed McGrath to bowl a spell of 8-7-1-0. After that, Tendulkar decided he would never again show McGrath and Australia too much respect. “That confirmed to me what I had already been thinking about the winter to come: that I would not be holding back in taking them on,” said Vaughan. “It turned out to be one of my better resolutions in life.”

Every time Vaughan said he was going to attack McGrath, teammates looked at him as if he had said he was going to break into the Bank of England. He has having a coffee in Chelsea with his captain Nasser Hussain, who asked him what he planned to do against McGrath. “I won’t die wondering,” said Vaughan. “Oh, right,” said Hussain.

Vaughan remembers other players saying: “No chance; he just won’t give you anything to hit.” It irritated him to the point where bloody-mindedness started to kick in. “There was too much of the wrong mentality about,” he said. “The defeatism was plain to me.”

Even allowing for Vaughan’s great form in 2002, it was quite a conceit. He had never played an Ashes Test but he was going to take on McGrath, the king of individual contests, and Australia in their own manor, and in their own manner. Who the hell did he think he was?

Vaughan even went so far as to say in the press that he hoped McGrath would target him. Before he started predicting that every Ashes series would end 5–0, McGrath made a point of publicly announcing his target in the opposition team. It was pretty much a death sentence. McGrath called it “mind over batter”. He would identify his targets in an unnerving, matter-of-fact manner, with a couple of pertinent, indisputable facts and just a smidgen of smartarsery to get under his opponent’s skin. It was textbook mental disintegration.

In this case McGrath played on Vaughan’s abysmal record against Australia. He got a golden duck in his only innings against Australia, when he was bowled by Jason Gillespie in an ODI in 2001; he was also dismissed by the only delivery he had ever faced from McGrath, this time in a county match. “He’s obviously their form player if you look at the last season,” McGrath said. “I have had quite a lot of success in the past against guys I want to target. He hasn’t really got the form on the board against Australia, so we’ll see how he goes.”

Vaughan admitted that the reactions of other players to his intention of attacking Glenn McGrath irritated him to the point where bloody-mindedness started to kick in as the defeatism was plain to him. © Getty Images

Vaughan took it as a compliment. “I just thought, ‘this is a bit of all right, not bad at all. I’ve been picked out by the best in the world’… McGrath called me a grinder who could bat for long periods but who could be suspect to the short ball. It was my intention to alter this thinking.”

If you go at the king, you best not miss. “This will sound arrogant but I really quite fancied facing McGrath,” said Vaughan. “If the ball was seaming he was a bit of a nightmare, but if it was swinging I found him quite juicy.” Arrogance, like bacteria, is instinctively perceived as a bad thing but also comes in a good form. Throughout Vaughan’s career, that arrogance – and even entitlement – facilitated so much of what he and England achieved.

Before the 2002–03 tour, Vaughan didn’t so much cope with fear of failure as ignore it. He changed his mind about watching videos of the Australian bowlers as preparation because he was worried if he did that he would start playing the bowler, not the ball. His tour did not start well, however. He missed the first three matches because his knee took longer to heal than expected, though he struck 127 against Queensland in his only innings before the first Test at Brisbane. On the first day of the series he had a nightmare in the field; he let the second ball of the day through his legs, the usual depressing tone-setter, and later dropped a dolly at extra cover.

England eventually came to bat on the second afternoon after Australia posted 492. There was a hush of anticipation. “We were very interested in seeing Vaughan,” said Adam Gilchrist in Walking to Victory. “We’d heard a lot about him. He was the big name that Glenn McGrath had decided to target this summer.”

There were umpteen reasons for Vaughan to ease his way carefully into the series. He’d had a terrible time in the field. His knee was sore. There were only nine overs to tea. His fledgling record against both McGrath and Australia was awful. He averaged 27.94 in overseas Tests. Vaughan didn’t get a toss about any of it. That was then and this was now.

In many respects Vaughan was winging it. He was 28, but had only been opening for England for seven months. Yet he had the unshakeable conviction of a man who had recently had an epiphany. His state of mind was perfect. So was his state of gut; Vaughan has always been an advocate of gut instinct, and his kept telling him that, on an individual level, he could conquer Australia. His mind was fresh and uncluttered: “Keep things simple – eye on the ball, hit and look to run.”

Vaughan knew that first impressions are important in sport, which has a habit of perpetuating itself. One look at Shane Warne would have reminded him of that. Steve Waugh greeted him with six men in the cordon as well as the wicket-keeper Gilchrist. Vaughan saw the consequent gaps in front of the wicket, not the men behind him. He faced only a single ball in McGrath’s first two overs, which he pushed through mid-on for a single. During that time McGrath got into his usual groove and had Marcus Trescothick dropped in the slips. Vaughan then faced every ball of McGrath’s third over – and hammered it for 12. The second ball, fractionally short of a length, was pulled impatiently through midwicket for four. As Vaughan ran past, McGrath used the side of his mouth to scold him for his impertinence. The fifth ball was driven gorgeously through the covers for four.

He took nine more from McGrath’s next over, including a savage back cut for four, an extravagant, mis-hit pull into the open spaces for two and a back-foot drive for three. This time McGrath said nothing, just licked his lips. Even Vaughan’s leaves were aggressive, a last-minute decision to abort an attacking shot. It was the sporting equivalent of the head-turning arrival; he had the instant respect of the Australian commentators on Channel 9, who were fascinated to see somebody attack McGrath, and also the Australians on the field. “I sensed immediately that we were up against quality,” said Gilchrist. “There was something about Vaughan’s balance and composure.”

More than anything else, England won the Ashes because Michael Vaughan kept asking why. Why couldn’t Glenn McGrath be attacked? Why could Australia not mentally disintegrate like all other humans? Why couldn’t England win the Ashes with an inexperienced team? Whenever he was questioned, or had slight doubts himself, he kept returning to one simple point: that the alternative hadn’t worked for 16 years.

McGrath was taken out of the attack after that, with figures of 4-1-23-0. Vaughan said he got carried away with his attacking mood and was even more aggressive than he intended. He was playing the bowler not the ball – but in a good way. He slammed another exhilarating boundary off Andy Bichel, clouting a short ball over cover. McGrath returned to the attack after tea and got his man with a fine delivery that jagged back off the seam to take the inside edge as Vaughan shaped to pull. Vaughan had made 33 from 36 balls, within which he scored 25 off just 19 from McGrath – an unimaginable strike rate of 132. “A lot of people called it a ballsy effort to get after them,” said Vaughan. “I just called it positive.”

That, more than his eventual dismissal, was what Vaughan took from the innings – especially when Warne congratulated him after play for being the first Englishman he had seen go after McGrath. Such positive reinforcement was vital, and kept coming throughout the series. We didn’t realise at the time, but it was all crescendoing towards Vaughan creating a culture that would allow England to win the Ashes.

Vaughan got a golden duck in the second innings, with McGrath dismissing him again, but it was a poor LBW decision and he was able to rationalise it as irrelevant. “I am sure he thought he had a psychological edge on me, but he was mistaken,” said Vaughan in A Year In The Sun. “I looked at the positives. I had played well in the first innings and been unfortunate in the second.” Two weeks later Vaughan hammered 177 on the first day of the second Test at Adelaide; this time he attacked McGrath judiciously, with 50 from 87 balls. He should have been given out on 19, but the third umpire gave him the benefit of what doubt there was when Justin Langer claimed a low catch at cover. Had he failed then, maybe he would have started to have doubts or rethink his approach. Steve Davis, the third umpire, is another man who unwittingly helped England win the Ashes in 2005.

“That innings had a real impact on me,” said Gilchrist of Vaughan’s 177. “I remember thinking: ‘This is a class act.’” At the close of play, Gillespie came into the England dressing-room specifically to congratulate Vaughan. Yet more positive reinforcement. He had confirmed the promising impression of the first Test and achieved one of the most worthwhile things in cricket: the respect of the Australians. He had steel and skill or, in the parlance of our time, ticker and tekkers. This was not just another Pom to the slaughter.

When Vaughan became the captain, he transmitted the same attitude of standing up to the Australians, without which England would have had zero percent of winning the Ashes in 2005. © AFP

Steve Waugh later said Vaughan was “the only guy I’ve ever seen succeed after Glenn McGrath made his annual declaration of intent upon the opposition’s key batsman”. Vaughan went on to make three huge centuries in the series, and ended it as the world’s No.1 batsman in the ICC rankings. Seven months earlier he had been 44th, behind, among others, Habibul Bashar and Mathew Sinclair. “He batted like the best player who had ever lived,” said his opening partner Trescothick. “I remember thinking they could not bowl at him, and the ‘they’ were bloody Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne.” He ended with 633 runs in five Tests; the manner of the first 33, in that first innings at Brisbane, made the other 600 possible.

“I can’t remember an opener playing McGrath, Lee and Gillespie the way Vaughan did that summer,” said Lehmann. “At times he was treating them with contempt… dare I say it, he was batting like an Aussie.” Vaughan’s geographical identity is different to most: he is a Lancashire-born Yorkshireman and an Englishman with the attitude of an Aussie. There was an infectious swagger about Vaughan which, along with the sheer beauty of his batting and the runs he scored in industrial quantities, gave England fans considerable pride despite the side suffering another 4-1 Ashes defeat. We had no idea that his performance would also inform the ultimate high in the next series.

“There was a huge amount on that trip that got stored away at the back of my mind for the purposes of tackling Australia in the future,” he said. “The basic lesson was that, if you were going to stand up to the Australians, you could not have anyone in the team who had this fear about them.”

When he later became captain, Vaughan transmitted that attitude to his team; without it, they would have had approximately 0.00 per cent chance of winning in 2005. “It’s amazing how once one player excels, his teammates find the leap from good to excellent to be not so difficult,” said Steve Waugh. “It suddenly becomes real rather than a dream.” It also made Vaughan one of the world’s leading authorities on how to play against Australia, which made the players listen to his every word.

More than anything else, England won the Ashes because Michael Vaughan kept asking why. Why couldn’t Glenn McGrath be attacked? Why could Australia not mentally disintegrate like all other humans? Why couldn’t England win the Ashes with an inexperienced team? Whenever he was questioned, or had slight doubts himself, he kept returning to one simple point: that the alternative hadn’t worked for 16 years.

Vaughan’s overall record against McGrath was not actually that good. Whose record was? In the 2002–03 series he scored 142 runs and was dismissed four times, a head-to-head average of 35.50; overall, including the 2005 Ashes, he made 205 and was dismissed six times. But in that first innings, he showed – to Australia, to himself and to all of England – that McGrath could be taken on. He had made his symbolic statement. There was a similar example during the 1997 Ashes: after his career-saving century at Edgbaston, Mark Taylor made four runs in the next four innings. But hardly anybody noticed, and those who did notice did not care. Taylor’s form was no longer an issue. So much of sport is about bluff, perception and symbolism, and Vaughan understood that better than most.

When he later became captain, Vaughan transmitted that attitude to his team; without it, they would have had approximately 0.00 per cent chance of winning in 2005. “It’s amazing how once one player excels, his teammates find the leap from good to excellent to be not so difficult,” said Steve Waugh. “It suddenly becomes real rather than a dream.” It also made Vaughan one of the world’s leading authorities on how to play against Australia, which made the players listen to his every word.

Vaughan’s approach in that 33 was a longer-term version of a tactic Steve Waugh employed in so many individual innings: take calculated risks to get to 20 or 30 as soon as possible so that you reverse the momentum and spread the field, and then you can settle in for the long haul. After taking on McGrath, he could then focus on easier targets (these things are relative) like Stuart MacGill and, in 2005, a flagging Gillespie.

Life is a complex, sprawling flow chart, in which apparently minor incidents usher us in a completely different direction, and it is fascinating – and a little terrifying – to reflect on all the little things that made Vaughan into the world’s best batsman, without which he probably would not have become an Ashes-winning captain: Lehmann joining Yorkshire, Thorpe’s personal problems, Hollioake’s death, Fletcher spotting that technical flaw, the ball to Tendulkar – and those injuries in 2001, which were so frustrating at the time but, with hindsight, were surely a blessing. Although Vaughan had started to modify his game, he was probably not quite ready to go after McGrath and the Australians that summer; a difficult series might have left him with mental scars like the other England players.

Even the timing of Vaughan’s ascent was perfect. Hussain, a man who was at his most comfortable with the feel of the wall against his back, was perfectly suited to dragging England out of the doldrums. Vaughan probably could not have done that, but between them, over a six-year period, they turned the worst team into a team who could outplay the best team in the world.

As Vaughan’s team developed in 2003 and 2004, everything he did was geared towards beating Australia. He became obsessed with mental scarring, and that Australia could only be beaten with aggression and fresh minds. It was reinforced when Lehmann, unprompted, made the same observation. When the 2005 Ashes started, England had five players making their debuts against Australia. Overall the team had made 25 Ashes appearances between them, fewer than Shane Warne on his own. In total Australia had 129.

“I wasn’t 100 per cent sure we were ready for them, wondering if perhaps they were coming a year too soon.” Not that he told anyone. He was far too good a liar for that.