Dear Dana Career Advice: What do they mean when they say you need a confidence leadership style?

Dear Dana, What do they mean when they say I should be more “confident”? I recently had a boss tell me that if I want to get ahead I need to express “confidence leadership style.” I think I am confident but I keep getting this advice in order to further my career. My girlfriend says she gets the same advice, but I’m so much more confident than she is – I think:) I don’t get it. What should I do differently so people can see how confident I am? – Confidently Female in Connecticut

In all the years I’ve been coaching women on getting ahead, I’ve found the “confident leadership style” advice to women as perplexing as you. I think it’s because people who don’t know how to express more specific advice fall back on “confidence” to express what they observe as the differentiator between successful leaders and those who don’t fit the leadership stereotype.

In my work offering executive coaching services to women I’ve identified the following two core dimensions of what the confidence leadership advice to women really means. Perhaps you’ll find ways you can view the feedback you’re getting and suss out more specific insights as to what you do to take your personal brand up a level in the eyes of others, to be seen as the confident woman you feel you are.

Cover Image by: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Second-Guessing/Expressing Doubt

This is probably the most legitimate and common form of lack of confidence. If you’re not sure of yourself, others have an uncanny way of sensing your lack of assuredness, which is pretty much the textbook opposite of “confident”. Why should this matter? Should we just follow the used car salesman’s fake self-confidence right off the authenticity cliff? Shouldn’t we be open to alternative paths and be willing to consider other’s recommendations? Well, yes, but let’s look at what’s happening beneath the surface of interpersonal interactions where doubt plays a role.

I think at the core of it, everyone alive (regardless of their power and station in life) is unsure about a lot of things and this creates an underlying anxiety and a layer of discomfort in everyone’s lives. Enter: you. If you feed their anxiety by constantly expressing doubt you can make them even more uncomfortable. If you have any leadership influence over them (like a boss does), then you can make them feel less confident about their choices and more vulnerable in their situation. By contrast, if you express more surety you make them feel better and reduce their anxiety. So basically, people above, below and alongside you will feel more comfortable trusting you with things they care about if you calm their anxieties, not feed them.

For people to trust you with important things, they need to believe you trust yourself. – Click to Tweet

Unfortunately, our culture builds in plenty of incentive for women not to express ourselves as sure of anything. This comes in many forms, from the relatively harmless “I’m not the expert, but….” pre-apology verbal habit that makes us put doubt in front of our opinions all the way to abusive gaslighting we get from people who want to hurt us (and even from some who want to help us). Gaslighting in all its forms invalidates our experience and feelings, making us question what we feel and think. These cultural experiences are familiar to most women and lead most of us to feel uncomfortable taking many kinds of risk, personally invalidated/devastated when we fail and vulnerable when we receive/seek attention.

The path out of this kind of self-doubt is as individual as you are. At a minimum, stop voicing pre-apology verbal doubt statements, deal with the discomfort it causes you and observe how others react. I call this The Silence Trick and it’s amazing how many women have told me that while they didn’t “admit” to not being a know-it-all, they were sure others would notice and call them out on it. Yet, no one did, boosting their confidence in the moment.

The bottom line is that it’s much easier for others to trust you with things that matter to them when they believe you trust yourself.

“Girlish” Behavior, Appearance and Expressions

Let’s face it. Girls are not taken as seriously as men in our world, and those are basically the two poles of power on which people judge who “looks like a leader.” It may not be fair, but it’s reality and you probably have this bias too. Most of us do. If you feel confident but others don’t see that in you, you may well be triggering their “girl” biases. (I say girl, but this is my way of pointing to the extreme end of feminine expression that people are biased against taking seriously.)

You may or may not have a good read on what behaviors or expressions you have that trigger this for people, so you may have to ask people you trust for insight. Maybe you end every sentence like a question (indicating a lack of surety, see above). Maybe you don’t look people in the eye when you speak to them. Maybe you’re short. Maybe you’re blonde. Maybe you can’t help whatever it is that triggers this bias in others, and maybe you can. Maybe you can but you don’t want to, because it feels like who you are. There’s a lot of opportunity for every woman who wants to be taken seriously to feel caught in this bind of identity and authenticity.

Crafting your personal brand is a function of all these things, and more, so simply ask yourself, “how can I be authentically me and reduce whatever ‘girl’ triggers I put out in the world for others to respond to?” For me personally, this included learning to remove pre-apology from my language (i.e., The Silence Trick) and consciously lowering my voice at the end of sentences when I wanted to be sure I would make an impact. For others it’s wearing heels, or not wearing heels. The true answer isn’t a pattern you can follow to “do nothing feminine,” it’s to “do feminine” in a way that’s authentic and powerful for you.

The 1-2 Punch for Confidence Leadership

I will tell you that when you solve for the first dynamic above, putting your own self-doubt in perspective and learning to trust yourself, the second dynamic, authentically managing your feminine expressions becomes much easier.

Confidence 101: Trust yourself. – Click to Tweet

A friend of mine got a powerful job in the Pentagon and strutted around confidently in 5 inch red heels. Her first week on the job all the guys – especially the military folk – told her she wouldn’t last a month. She lasted years and earned the civilian rank of general officer before her government career came to an end. and she strutted around in those gorgeous red heels the whole time.

In other words, you can develop your own, authentic confidence leadership style, when you trust yourself and be authentically you in the world.

Dana Theus
Executive & Career Coach

P.S. Need help figuring out how to trust yourself in developing your own confidence leadership style and be authentically you in your personal brand? That’s what coaches help you do! Let’s talk.