Welcome to the Scarlet Ink newsletter. I’m Dave Anderson, an ex-Amazon Tech Director and GM. Each week I write a newsletter article on tech industry careers and tactical leadership advice.

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I wrote a popular (tongue-in-cheek) article about winning at politics in the office. People repeatedly pointed out that they didn’t realize how much their leaders were playing games.

Today I wanted to write a bit about how leaders can use being confident to get what they want.

Confidence is a leadership tool. We’re a hierarchical species. We genetically understand that our leaders are confident. But to put it another way, confident people are our leaders.

If you want to be a worker bee, that’s totally fine. Lots of room at companies for worker bees.

But if you’d like to be a principal engineer someday, or lead many engineering teams, or build your own design organization (etc etc), you need to be seen by your peers as a leader.

That’s not always easy. Many of your peers have the same idea. I’ve had to learn how to time a conversation to have my voice heard. I’ve had to speak louder to ensure that people are less tempted to speak over me.

Over the years, I’ve also watched my peers. I’ve seen successful and embarrassing attempts to act like a leader. These are skills you can build, but they can certainly go wrong as well.

How do you land on the right side of things?

Subtle is better - Until you know what you’re doing, I wouldn’t go for some of the more extreme ideas below.

Read the room - I don’t think you should try to manipulate a room until you can read a room. I’ve repeatedly seen skepticism on faces across a room full of people, and a peer would blindly trudge forward, not realizing they’ve already lost the fight.

Now is this all manipulation? Yes. And if that bothers you too much, I wouldn’t go past section 1 or 2 below. I’m here to help you succeed. Not succeed by screwing over your company, but succeed by being an excellent leader. Some success is about showing empathy to your peers (for example). But some success is becoming a leader in the first place. And this is a set of practical skills to get you there.

Anyway, enough lead-in. Let’s get into specifics.

1. Physical posture matters.

You can’t play the confidence game if you look insecure.

Imagine you’re an engineer, and you’re trying to get some of your time set aside to work on some overdue operations work. You’ve walked into your manager’s office to ask.

The engineer walks into my office. They have their head hanging low, looking at the floor. They sit down in my guest chair across from my desk but then stare at the desk itself, as if hesitant to look at me. They’re not the most socially skilled employee, but they’re acting far more timid than usual.

“Ummm. I guess.. it would be nice if we could maybe, um.. set aside a little of my time.. to..”

That’s not an exaggeration. I’ve repeatedly had experienced employees act as if they know they’re going to be told no.

Do you know what that body language tells me? It tells me that they know that their idea is bad, but they decided to ask anyway. They’re confident I will say no, because they deserve that no.

Without context, it’s very hard for me to approve whatever they’re asking for, because I’m getting a message that it’d be a bad idea to say yes.

We humans are basically apes. We love to believe that we’re logical thinking beings, but we can’t ignore body language. It’s literally a part of our DNA.

If you want the other person to believe that you’re confident, act like it.

1. If you’re in a chair, it should preferably be a tall chair. Don’t go sit in the beanbag chair the hippie designer put into the conference room. Your body should be as high as possible. Height is confidence. Weirdly enough. I don’t make the rules, I just help you navigate them.

2. Sit up straight, shoulders back. I love to slouch like the rest of you. Heck, I’m slouching right now. But confidence is sitting up straight. I’ve truly had more than one person at work comment on my excellent posture. I blame my parents (“Shoulders back Dave!”), but I swear it has helped my career.

3. Fully focus. Distraction means that you’re feeling stress about this moment. You need to show that you’re not stressed at all. This means phone down, laptop closed, no playing with your hands. Look people in the eyes. You’re 100% in the moment. Because you’re confident.

4. Speak loudly and clearly. Unfortunately, volume really does matter, as much as quiet people try to deny it. Yes, you can get away with being quiet and amazingly competent. I’ve seen a couple of directors at Amazon who tended to speak a bit quietly. But it was the exception to the rule. When humans are anxious about doing the wrong thing, they tend to lower their volume. Do the opposite. Speak loudly and enunciate. You’re confident about what you’re saying!

5. No emotion allowed. Emotional responses mean not logical responses. Nothing prompts people to disagree with you more than if they think you’re being emotional about something. “But it’s unfair!” you yell. Shh. Don’t be so emotional. It’s just business. And that’s what this is to you. You’re a logical, confident business leader...