Confidence isn’t knowing the answer. It’s asking the question in front of everyone.

Everybody assumes the confident person in the room is the one with answers. More often it is the one willing to be visibly unsure while thirty people watch. That takes more than knowledge, because the risk is social rather than academic: you are betting that your standing survives a moment of not knowing. It usually does, and the question usually helps somebody else.

Ask the thing you were going to look up later, out loud, in the lesson or the meeting. One question, no apology in front of it. Count how many people thank you afterwards for asking what they were also wondering.