When Emmanuel Macron became France’s youngest president at just 39 years old in 2017, questions about age and authority followed him everywhere. How does someone lead a nation at 39? Where does that confidence come from?
In an exclusive interview with Brut, Macron offered a reflective answer. For him, confidence was never about projecting certainty at all costs. In fact, he believes overconfidence can be dangerous.
He does not see confidence as the central criterion of leadership. In fact, he admits that
“each time I was overconfident, I made mistakes. Big mistakes.”
According to Macron, those mistakes often stemmed from assuming that a message would automatically be understood the way he intended.
“Being in a speech where you consider you can say everything, sometimes it's misunderstood. You are so upset after that. It's when you are overconfident because you are less sensitive to the way it will be perceived by others.”
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He pointed out that leaders sometimes act with complete certainty, only to realise that perception does not always match intention.
“Sometimes you do something and you are 100 per cent confident that it will be understood. It's not automatically the case.”
For Macron, the key is not blind confidence but constant reflection.
“Being careful about how people will perceive your message, doubting about what you are doing, is it right or wrong, and so on till the moment you have to decide is super important.”
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Interestingly, he does not see confidence as a personal trait that he simply possessed. Instead, he describes it as something shared. When he launched his presidential campaign nearly a decade ago, he said it was the people around him who fuelled his belief.
“I got confidence when I launched my campaign 10 years ago because I had a lot of people with their enthusiasm and they gave me their energy and their own confidence. This is a sort of circle of trust and confidence and so on.”
Macron views leadership as an exchange built on trust. And with that trust comes weight.
“What you have to feel as a leader is that each time somebody gives you this confidence, this trust, I mean, this is your responsibility.”
