Since it has surfaced here many times I explored a bit on this. It seems the subject is discussed in many places because most people think there is a distinction between confidence and arrogance. And in every workplace and such setting there are confident and arrogant people. How do you see the difference? I took these from infoworld weblog discussion to get us started (comment these or figure out your own definition):
"I'm not sure I could arrive at a crisp and clear dividing line between the two. In general, I figure confident people are comfortable acknowledging the good ideas and insights of others, where arrogant people, never being wrong, rarely acknowledge that anyone with a different perspective is ever right ... and usually won't have any basis for evaluation, since they rarely waste their time listening to anyone else."
"Try this on for size: Confidant people figure they're one of the capable people in the room. Arrogant people each figure he or she is the only capable person in the room."
"The quickest way to seperate Arrogance from Confidence is the arrogant one never utters the words "I don't know". They have an answer for everything."
"In dealing with a new person, or criticizing the work of others, just criticizing is arrogance. Asking what ideas can we come up with to overcome the problemn is confidence."