Confidence in Leadership: It’s Not What You Think It Is

Linda, as ever, has a very particular interpretation of confidence. For her, it seems to sit somewhere between talking a lot and hoping no one notices she’s not entirely sure what’s going on. Confidence and competence, in Linda’s world, are broadly interchangeable concepts. If you sound certain enough, that probably counts. She once described being promoted as “mainly just speaking up more in meetings,” which tells you quite a lot about how she experiences leadership.

The challenge, of course, is that many leaders recognise a version of Linda in themselves at some point. That sense of slightly winging it while still being relied upon to make decisions that matter. 

And that’s where confidence becomes interesting.

Because most leaders don’t lack capability. They lack certainty about whether their capability is enough for what they’re currently being asked to do. There’s a subtle but important difference. One is about skill, the other is about self-perception under pressure.

We often tell people that confidence will come with time. And in some ways, that’s true. Experience does build familiarity. Familiarity does reduce friction. But it’s not the full picture. If confidence were simply a function of time, no experienced leader would ever doubt themselves again.

And that’s not what I see.

I've coached founders who've built successful businesses, employ dozens of people and make commercial decisions every day. Some of them still walk into a board meeting wondering whether today's the day someone notices they're making far more of it up than they'd care to admit. Leadership has an unfortunate habit of asking people to solve problems they've never seen before, then acting surprised when they don't immediately feel like experts.

A useful way to think about this is that there are usually three things sitting underneath what people call “lack of confidence.”

The first is a genuine skills gap. There are moments when you are simply being asked to do something you haven’t fully done before. This is especially common in early leadership roles or when someone steps into a broader remit. Being excellent at your technical craft does not automatically translate into leading others in the same craft. The shift is real.

But the mistake many leaders make is assuming that confidence only arrives once the skills gap is fully closed. So they wait. They over-prepare. They delay decisions until they feel “ready.” In reality, leadership rarely offers that kind of neat sequencing.

You learn while you lead.

The second layer is what I’d call healthy uncertainty. This is often mistaken for imposter syndrome, but it isn’t always the same thing. There is a particular narrative around imposter syndrome that suggests a deep, persistent belief that you don’t belong in your role at all. And for some people, that is absolutely true and needs proper support.

But for many others, what they are actually experiencing is something more situational. A gap between what they’ve done before and what they’re now being asked to do. A moment of stretch. A new level of complexity. A team that’s scaling faster than their previous experience. That discomfort isn’t necessarily a problem to eliminate. It can be information. It tells you where you are still learning.

And if you never feel that edge of uncertainty, it’s worth asking whether you are actually stretching yourself at all.

The third layer is perhaps the most overlooked: role identity.

Many leaders are still trying to lead from a previous version of themselves. The version who needed to be involved in everything. Who solved problems directly. Who stayed close to the detail to feel useful. But the organisation has often moved on. Teams are bigger. Clients are more demanding. The pace is faster. Yet the leader’s operating pattern hasn’t quite shifted to match it.

So they stay involved. They join more meetings than they need to. They approve things that could be owned elsewhere. They answer questions that don’t require their input. And slowly, their confidence becomes tied to being needed rather than being effective.

This is where the pattern becomes clearer.

Because confidence in leadership is not about being the person with all the answers. It’s about being comfortable with not being the centre of every answer. That shift changes everything.

It changes how you speak in meetings. It changes how you delegate. It changes how you respond when someone brings you a problem that, given half an hour and a bit of encouragement, they could have solved themselves.

It also changes how your team behaves around you. Because teams are highly sensitive to where authority sits. If you stay close to everything, they learn to route everything through you. If you step back slightly, they start to build their own judgement. Neither happens overnight. But both are shaped by very small, repeated behaviours.