The Confident You: Why Most Leadership Advice Gets Self-Assurance Completely Wrong

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Here's something that'll ruffle feathers: confidence isn't about believing in yourself. It's about getting comfortable with not knowing what the hell you're doing half the time.

After seventeen years of watching executives crash and burn in boardrooms across Melbourne and Sydney, I've noticed something peculiar. The most successful leaders aren't the ones who stride into meetings with all the answers. They're the ones who ask the right questions and aren't afraid to look stupid doing it.

Most confidence training is absolute rubbish. Complete waste of money.

I learnt this the hard way back in 2009 when I hired a "confidence coach" for my team at a mid-sized logistics firm. Bloke charged us $8,000 for a two-day workshop that basically amounted to positive affirmations and mirror work. My operations manager – tough-as-nails woman who'd been running teams for twenty years – walked out after the first hour. "This is bollocks, Andrew," she said. "You want confidence? Give me clear expectations and get out of my way."

She was absolutely right.

Real confidence comes from competence, not cheerleading. But here's where it gets interesting – and where most business consultants get it wrong. Competence doesn't mean knowing everything. It means knowing your limitations and working within them effectively.

The best CEO I ever worked with – let's call him David from a major Australian retailer – used to start every board meeting the same way: "Right, what don't we know that we need to know?" Not "what do we know" or "what are our strengths." What don't we know.

That's confidence.

The Authenticity Trap

Everyone bangs on about "authentic leadership" these days. LinkedIn is full of posts about "bringing your whole self to work." Here's my controversial take: sometimes your whole self is having a bad day, doubts everything, and shouldn't be making decisions about other people's livelihoods.

Professional confidence means having the self-awareness to know when you're not at your best. It means building systems that don't rely on your mood or energy levels. It means admitting when you're wrong before someone else has to point it out.

I made this mistake early in my career. Fresh out of university, full of management theory, I thought authenticity meant sharing every doubt and concern with my team. Turns out, nobody wants a manager who processes their anxiety in real-time during staff meetings.

The balance is tricky, though. People can smell fake confidence from kilometres away. That forced enthusiasm, the over-compensation, the need to be the smartest person in every conversation – it's exhausting for everyone involved.

Building Real Confidence: The Uncomfortable Truth

True professional confidence develops through three uncomfortable realities that most leadership gurus won't tell you:

First, you'll make decisions with incomplete information. Always. The sooner you accept this, the better. I've seen brilliant people paralysed by the need for certainty. Meanwhile, their competitors are making good-enough decisions and adjusting as they go.

Second, people are watching how you handle failure more than success. Everyone can be confident when things are going well. Your team learns about your character when the quarterly numbers are down or when a major client walks away. Do you blame others? Do you panic? Or do you roll up your sleeves and figure out what's next?

Third, confidence is contagious, but so is doubt. Your team picks up on your energy whether you realise it or not. This doesn't mean pretending everything's fine when it isn't. It means managing your own emotional state professionally.

I remember a particularly rough patch in 2016 when our biggest client – represented about 40% of our revenue – decided to go with a competitor. I gathered the team and explained the situation honestly, but I'd already spent the weekend working through contingency plans. We implemented those plans over the next three months and ended up stronger for it.

The Australian Advantage

There's something uniquely Australian about healthy confidence that we don't talk about enough. We're naturally skeptical of tall poppies, which means we're less likely to buy into grandiose leadership personas that work in other cultures.

The best Australian leaders I know have this quality of being simultaneously confident and self-deprecating. They'll make tough decisions without drama, take responsibility for outcomes, but they won't bore you with stories about how brilliant they are.

Think about successful Australian business leaders – they tend to be straight-talking, practical, and they don't take themselves too seriously. This isn't just cultural preference; it's actually more effective in most business contexts.

Practical Confidence-Building

Here's what actually works, based on what I've observed across dozens of organisations:

Start small. Make decisions on low-stakes issues quickly and learn from the outcomes. Build your decision-making muscles on things that won't sink the company if you get them wrong.

Document your wins. Not for ego, but for reference. When self-doubt creeps in – and it will – you need evidence of your competence. Keep a simple list of problems you've solved and decisions that worked out.

Find your preparation sweet spot. Some people need extensive research before making decisions. Others work better with just the essential facts. Know which type you are and prepare accordingly, but don't over-prepare as a way of avoiding decisions.

Practice uncomfortable conversations. Confidence often comes down to your ability to navigate difficult discussions without falling apart. Whether it's performance reviews, budget cuts, or strategic disagreements, the more you practice, the easier it becomes.

The Confidence Paradox

Here's something that took me years to understand: the most confident people are often the most curious. They ask more questions, seek more feedback, and change their minds more readily than insecure people who feel they need to stick to their original position regardless of new information.

Insecurity masquerades as stubbornness. "I know what I'm doing" becomes a shield against learning. Real confidence says, "I know enough to get started, and I'll figure out the rest as I go."

This is particularly relevant in our current business environment where change happens quickly. The leaders who thrive are those comfortable with continuous learning and adjustment. They're confident in their ability to adapt, not in having all the answers upfront.

Moving Forward

Building genuine professional confidence isn't about positive thinking or fake-it-till-you-make-it strategies. It's about developing competence, accepting uncertainty, and learning to make good decisions with incomplete information.

Most importantly, it's about understanding that confidence isn't a destination – it's a practice. Some days you'll feel more confident than others. Some decisions will work out better than others. The goal isn't perfection; it's consistent improvement and the ability to bounce back from setbacks.

Your team doesn't need you to be superhuman. They need you to be competent, honest, and steady under pressure. That's achievable for anyone willing to do the work.

The rest is just noise.