Ranjay Gulati

And I think what we need to understand is how can ordinary people who may not have this congenital magical quality of fearlessness can resource themselves to act with courage, meaning taking action.

Nelson Mandela talked about this too.

He said that, you know, I thought courage is the absence of fear.

I've discovered courage is conquering fear.

It's taking action in the face of fear.

It's looking fear in the eye and still choosing to do something.

Actually, there's a really interesting body of research on self-efficacy by a Stanford psychologist, Albert Bandura.

And he said that, you know, there are two aspects to confidence.

One is domain-specific efficacy.

I'm the master of my craft.

I know my job.

I know my skills.

You know, Captain Sullenberger has to fly a United Airlines flight where the engines both fail at takeoff from LaGuardia.

And he has to land the plane in the Hudson River.

He's a 40-year season veteran pilot.

He's, you know, he knows what needs to be done.

That's called domain-specific efficacy.

But there's a second kind of efficacy, which is the generalized can-do efficacy.

I got it.

I can do it.