You froze in the room. Lost your words, your footing, maybe your own content. And the advice showed up right on schedule: you just need more confidence.
Sometimes your hesitation as a leader isn’t a confidence challenge. It’s useful information.
I got essentially fired from a two-day sales retreat I was hired to lead. I knew the material cold. I’m a confident, engaging speaker, and that’s not a brag; it’s the setup. Mid-sentence, in front of everyone, the executive who hired me cut in and redirected the room. The call was right. I didn’t see it.
What followed was every public speaking nightmare at once. But I didn’t lack confidence. I had plenty. That was the whole problem. What I was missing was context: who had influence, what happened before I walked in, the agenda underneath the agenda. No power pose was going to save me.
“I need more confidence” isn’t a category you can work on. Confidence to do what, exactly? Raise your prices? Tell your CEO she’s wrong? Lead 300 people instead of 30? Each one takes different knowledge, skills, relationships, and practice.
In this episode:
- Why “pop” confidence advice helps you walk through the door but can’t prepare you for the room
- The better question to ask the next time you’re googling “how do I become more confident”
- Why the woman who waits sometimes understands the stakes better than the one who jumped in first
SKILL, CONTEXT, OR POWER
Before you call it a confidence challenge, ask what’s missing.
Skill: Practice it. This is where confidence is real; it just shows up on a different schedule. Not “I feel confident.” More like “I have evidence I can deal with this. I’ve screwed it up before and recovered.”
Context: Go get it. Ask more questions. Listen longer than feels comfortable. Learn who’s really deciding, what they care about, what they’re afraid of.
Power: Learn how it works and where it lives. Who has authority? Who has influence? What is the senior person trying to solve that you can’t see from your seat? Whose support matters before the meeting ever happens? Taking up space without understanding the space is incomplete advice, and it can be dangerous.
And access isn’t equal. The 2025 Women in the Workplace report found only 31% of entry-level women have a sponsor, compared with 45% of entry-level men. You can’t affirm your way into a relationship you don’t have access to.
TRY THIS THIS WEEK
Pick one thing you’ve been calling a confidence challenge. Ask yourself, out loud if you can: is what’s missing here skill, context, or power? Then go get that one thing.
SEND THIS TO ONE WOMAN
Think of one woman who’s been told she needs more confidence. Send her this episode. What she may need is better information, better preparation, or more power, and she deserves someone who will help her figure out which one.
RESOURCES
Women in the Workplace 2025, McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org
The West Wing and Scandal, for a crash course in how power moves through rooms
CHAPTERS
[00:00] The day I got overridden in front of the whole room
[02:30] Plenty of confidence, zero context
[03:30] What a power pose can’t tell you
[05:50] Skill, context, or power?
[09:00] When patience looks like hesitation
The confidence comes afterwards.
Send this episode to one woman who’s been told she needs more confidence. This comes straight from your on-air ask, and it fits a Thursday episode, whose job is growing the audience.
“Confidence isn’t something you put on before the risk. It comes afterwards.”
