You must moderate your opinion of others so that you may not think so high of them as to fear them... Many appear great till you know them personally... No one o'ersteps the narrow bounds of humanity: all have their weaknesses either in heart or head. Dignity gives apparent authority, which is rarely accompanied by personal power.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
Imagination inflates the people you have not met. From a distance the senior figure, the famous name, the intimidating counterparty all look larger than human, and that inflation becomes fear, and fear makes you smaller in the room than you need to be. The correction is a grain of boldness built on a plain fact: nobody exceeds the bounds of humanity, and everyone has weaknesses of heart or head. The title is often larger than the person wearing it, because office and ability are frequently mismatched. This is not arrogance; it is accurate sizing. Respect the position, prepare properly, and then walk in dealing with a human being rather than performing for a myth your own imagination built.
Practice
- Before a daunting meeting, deflate the aura on purpose: this is a person with weaknesses of heart or head, not the myth your imagination painted.
- Separate the office from the holder; respect the position fully while remembering the person in it is ordinary and often over-titled.
- Convert fear into preparation; the grain of boldness is earned by doing the homework, not by pretending the stakes are low (maxim 4 supplies the nerve).
Use this when
- Use this before high-stakes meetings with intimidating people, where your own inflation is the biggest obstacle in the room.
- Use it when a famous name or big title is making you shrink; the discount restores you to your actual size.
Ignore this when
- Don't let the grain of boldness become disrespect or recklessness; sizing someone accurately is not the same as underestimating them (maxim 172 still weighs the stakes).
- Don't deflate the genuinely formidable into nothing; some people are exactly as capable as their reputation, and the grain of boldness is calibration, not denial.
A picture of it
Summoned to present to a legendary chairman, a mid-level officer spends two days terrified of the myth. A mentor gives her the grain of boldness in one sentence: he is a man who mishears things after lunch and worries about his knees, prepare well and talk to that man. She does, and the meeting that her imagination had made unsurvivable turns out to be a conversation with an ordinary, tired, over-titled human who mainly wanted a clear answer. The homework earned the respect. The deflation earned the composure. Both were needed, and only one of them was about him.
Respect the title, deflate the myth. Up close, everyone is human, and fear is just your imagination arriving before you do.