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ClarifyCoach

My Thoughts

The Confident You: Why Taking Charge Isn't What You Think It Is

Confidence gets a bad rap these days. Everyone's either trying to fake it till they make it or they're telling you to be humble. Here's the thing though – after nearly two decades of watching people climb corporate ladders, fall off them, and sometimes build their own, I reckon most folks have got confidence completely backwards.

Real confidence isn't about walking into a room like you own it. That's just performance anxiety dressed up in a power suit.

The Myth of the Alpha Personality

You know what I see in most boardrooms across Sydney and Melbourne? A bunch of people trying to out-alpha each other. It's exhausting to watch, let alone participate in. The loudest voice gets heard, sure, but that doesn't make them right. Some of the most confident leaders I've worked with are the ones who ask questions first and make statements second.

Take Sarah Chen, the operations director at a mid-sized logistics company in Brisbane. She transformed their entire workflow not by barking orders but by admitting she didn't understand why their delivery times were inconsistent. That admission? That was confidence. Real confidence is being comfortable with what you don't know.

But here's where it gets interesting. The people who struggle most with confidence aren't the quiet ones hiding in the corner. They're the middle managers who've been promoted based on technical skills but never learned how to navigate the murky waters of human psychology. These folks often need proper leadership training to bridge that gap between knowing their job and actually leading people.

The Confidence Paradox Nobody Talks About

Here's something that'll make you think twice: the most confident decision I ever made was admitting I was completely wrong about employee motivation. For years – and I mean YEARS – I believed that money was the primary driver for performance. Chuck a bonus at someone and watch them perform miracles, right?

Wrong. Dead wrong.

I learned this the hard way when I tried to motivate a brilliant software developer by offering him a 20% pay rise to take on a leadership role. He turned it down flat. Wanted to keep coding. Loved the technical challenges. The extra money meant nothing if it took him away from what energised him.

That moment taught me something crucial about confidence: it's not about being right all the time. It's about being willing to be wrong and learning from it. The paradox is that the more comfortable you become with uncertainty, the more confident you actually appear to others.

Why Your Inner Critic Might Be Your Best Friend

Now this is going to sound counterintuitive, but bear with me. That little voice in your head that questions every decision? Don't silence it completely. Learn to have a conversation with it instead.

I spent five years trying to eliminate self-doubt through various confidence-building exercises. Positive affirmations, power poses, visualisation techniques – the whole shebang. And you know what happened? I became overconfident. Started making decisions without enough information. Nearly tanked a major client relationship because I was too "confident" to ask for clarification on their requirements.

The turning point came when I realised that healthy self-doubt is actually a form of quality control. It's your brain's way of saying, "Hey, maybe we should double-check this before we commit."

Smart leaders don't eliminate their inner critic – they negotiate with it. They ask themselves: "Is this doubt based on legitimate concerns or just fear of failure?" There's a massive difference between the two.

The Australian Advantage (And Why We Sometimes Waste It)

Australians have a natural advantage when it comes to authentic confidence. Our culture values straight talking and cutting through BS. We're naturally skeptical of people who take themselves too seriously. These are actually confidence superpowers if you know how to use them properly.

But here's where we sometimes shoot ourselves in the foot: we can be so focused on not appearing "up ourselves" that we undersell our capabilities. I've seen incredibly talented people in Perth and Adelaide downplay their achievements to the point where they become invisible in their own organisations.

The trick is finding that sweet spot between arrogance and false modesty. It's about stating your capabilities matter-of-factly, like you're reading the weather report. "I'm good at project management. I've successfully delivered 47 projects over the past three years, with 89% coming in under budget." No drama, no boasting, just facts.

The Confidence Killers You Don't See Coming

Social media is obvious. We all know that Instagram highlights reels aren't real life. But there are subtler confidence killers that most people don't recognise until it's too late.

Perfectionism masquerading as high standards is a big one. I know a marketing manager who spent three weeks perfecting a presentation that should have taken three hours. She thought she was being thorough. What she was actually doing was procrastinating because she was terrified of receiving feedback.

Another killer? Comparing your chapter 3 to someone else's chapter 20. LinkedIn is particularly brutal for this. You see someone celebrating their promotion and forget that you don't see the ten years of 6am starts, rejected proposals, and failed initiatives that led to that moment.

Then there's the advice trap. Everyone's got an opinion about what you should do with your career. Family members who mean well but don't understand your industry. Colleagues who project their own limitations onto your situation. The key is learning whose opinions actually matter and politely ignoring the rest.

What Actually Builds Confidence (Spoiler: It's Not What You Think)

Here's what actually works, based on watching hundreds of professionals develop genuine confidence over the years:

Competence comes first. You can't fake your way through everything indefinitely. Get really, really good at something specific. Master your craft. Confidence built on competence is unshakeable because it's based on evidence, not hope.

Collect small wins obsessively. Big victories are great, but they're sporadic. Small wins compound. Finishing that report early. Having a difficult conversation go better than expected. Receiving positive feedback from an unexpected source. Write them down. Your brain forgets the positive stuff and remembers the negative. Don't let it.

Embrace the uncomfortable. This doesn't mean saying yes to everything or putting yourself in genuinely dangerous situations. It means gradually expanding your comfort zone. Speak up in meetings when you usually stay quiet. Volunteer for projects that stretch your skills. Apply for roles that seem slightly beyond your current capabilities.

The magic happens at the edge of your comfort zone, not in the middle of it.

The Leadership Confidence Gap

Something I've noticed particularly in the Australian market is the confidence gap that appears when technical experts get promoted to leadership roles. You can be the best accountant, engineer, or analyst in your company, but managing people requires a completely different skill set.

This transition often creates an identity crisis. Your confidence was built on technical mastery, but now you're being measured on things like team engagement, strategic thinking, and stakeholder management. It's like being really good at tennis and then being asked to coach rugby.

The supervisory training programs that actually work focus on this transition explicitly. They don't just teach management theory – they help people rebuild their confidence on a new foundation.

What's fascinating is watching people discover that leadership confidence isn't about having all the answers. It's about being comfortable with ambiguity and helping others navigate uncertainty. That's a completely different skill from being the technical expert who always has the right solution.

The Impostor Syndrome Industry

Can we talk about impostor syndrome for a minute? It's become this catch-all explanation for every moment of professional self-doubt. Sometimes you feel like an impostor because you actually don't know what you're doing yet. That's not a syndrome – that's just learning.

The impostor syndrome diagnosis becomes problematic when it stops people from taking appropriate action. Instead of thinking, "I feel unprepared, so I should get better prepared," they think, "I have impostor syndrome, so my feelings are invalid."

Sometimes the solution isn't therapy or affirmations. Sometimes it's just getting better at your job.

The Compound Effect of Confident Decisions

Here's something most people don't realise: confidence compounds. Every time you make a decision and it works out reasonably well, you build evidence that you can navigate uncertainty. Even when decisions don't work out perfectly, if you handle the consequences well, that also builds confidence.

I've tracked this with several clients over the years. The ones who build sustainable confidence aren't the ones who avoid making mistakes. They're the ones who recover quickly from mistakes and extract lessons from them.

This is why I'm always suspicious of people who claim they never doubt themselves. Either they're lying, or they're not paying attention, or they're not taking on challenges difficult enough to generate doubt.

The Culture Trap

Australian workplace culture can be tricky to navigate when you're building confidence. We value humility, but we also respect competence. We're suspicious of big-noters, but we admire people who deliver results. Threading that needle requires a different approach than what works in, say, New York or London.

The most successful professionals I know have learned to let their work speak first and their personality second. They build relationships through reliability rather than charisma. They influence through expertise rather than politics.

This doesn't mean being boring or invisible. It means being strategically authentic. Showing your personality in ways that enhance rather than undermine your professional reputation.

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