“You just need to speak up more.”
That’s the feedback my coaching client received from someone on the executive team. She’s a brilliant woman, promoted six months ago, building her team, and is delivering consistent results. Her response? “Speak up more? I’m going hoarse trying to be heard.”
This is what lazy feedback sounds like. It lands with a thud and no instruction manual. It’s like being told to ‘just play better’ – without knowing which game you’re in, what the rules are, or who’s even keeping score. And yet, women still show up, adapt, and perform. That’s not a confidence gap – that’s a context gap.
CONFIDENCE ISN’T A CHARACTER TRAIT
Often, signs of wobbly confidence are treated like a personal failing, or like something women need to ‘fix.’ But that’s not how confidence works. Confidence is a response to context. It’s not that women lack confidence. It’s that they’ve learned there is a cost to displaying it.
Research from Yale, McKinsey, and Catalyst confirms what many women already know in their bones because they’ve lived it: when we assert ourselves, advocate for our work, or step confidently into leadership space, we’re often judged more critically than our male peers. In cultures like these, success doesn’t automatically follow confidence; it follows calibration. Women learn to weigh every word, tone, and gesture to reduce the potential risk of backlash.
Women don’t dial themselves down out of fear; they do it because experience has taught them how the room tends to respond. We see it every time our ideas are restated by others and only then are taken seriously; when we’re interrupted mid-sentence in a way our male peers aren’t; or when we’re judged as abrasive for using the same tone that makes a man “decisive”.
THE CREDIBILITY-COMPETENCE TIGHTROPE
Here’s the impossible equation women are expected to solve: Be warm AND authoritative. Approachable AND assertive. Powerful but NOT pushy. Focus too much on competence, and you’re labelled cold. Lead with approachability, and you’re often underestimated.
This dynamic, often called the “competence-likability trade-off,” shows up consistently in executive coaching conversations. Sheryl Sandberg described it in her acclaimed book ‘Lean In’ as one of the core tensions women face in leadership. While this pattern is especially well-documented for women, it also affects racialized leaders, neurodiverse professionals, and anyone whose communication style doesn’t match the dominant leadership norms that reward confidence only when it looks and sounds a certain way.
It creates a constant pressure to perform, but only within a narrow set of rules. “Be confident, but not cocky. Speak up, but don’t overshadow. Be authentic, but only in ways that feel familiar and safe to others.” Telling women to "just project more confidence" doesn’t fix that tension. At best, this advice is unhelpful. At worst, it quietly holds women responsible for navigating a system that still penalises them for showing up fully.
THE REAL COST OF PERFORMATIVE CONFIDENCE
I’ve coached hundreds of women who had mastered the ‘act’: the composed tone, carefully measured eye contact, impeccable posture, firm handshake, and polished executive presence. They’d done everything ‘right’. And still, many felt invisible, disconnected from their own voice, and bone-tired from keeping up the performance.
Performative confidence doesn’t empower – it depletes.
Grounded confidence feels different. It’s anchored in purpose, emotional congruence, and what I call your ‘ness’: the distinctive wiring that makes you uniquely you. This isn’t about acting. It’s about aligning. We don’t need more women adapting to a narrow version of leadership. We need more workplaces that create the conditions for authentic confidence to thrive.
SO WHAT ACTUALLY HELPS?
Here’s what I’ve learned from almost two decades of coaching:
Confidence grows in context, not in isolation. Instead of asking, “Why doesn’t she speak up?”, ask, “What makes this environment unsafe for her to contribute fully?”
Visibility is relational. Confidence doesn’t live inside one person. It grows in rooms where people are invited in, where their contributions are amplified, and where feedback fuels growth, not fear.
Self-awareness beats self-promotion. Encouraging women to double down on their authentic leadership identity – their ‘ness’ – is far more powerful than any tips on vocal tone or standing tall.
The real work is rewiring the system. Instead of ‘fixing’ women with one-size-fits-all advice, we need to take a closer look at the systems and cultures that still reward confidence in some forms – and penalise it in others. The question isn’t “How do we help women show up more confidently?” It’s “What needs to shift so their confidence can actually land?”
READY FOR A CHANGE?
If you're a woman in leadership, you don’t need to fake anything, or turn up the volume, or fit into someone else’s version of presence. You need the space to ground yourself in your wiring, your values, your way of leading. And if you're a leader or ally who wants to support that, the shift starts with curiosity, not critique.
Try asking:
What messages do we send about who gets to speak up, and how are those messages being communicated, implicitly or explicitly?
How is confidence interpreted differently depending on who’s expressing it, and who’s listening?
In what ways does our culture invite real presence, and when might we be unintentionally rewarding performative behaviours instead?
What might shift or become possible if we broadened our definition of executive presence to include a wider range of authentic leadership styles?
Confidence isn’t something women are missing. It’s something that’s often misinterpreted, undervalued, or penalised, depending on who’s expressing it and how closely they match the ‘acceptable’ template.
If you're a woman in leadership ready to trade performative behaviours for authentic presence, let's talk. Executive coaching can help you reconnect with your voice, your values, and a leadership style that doesn’t require you to shrink or shape-shift.
And if you're a leader or ally working to foster a more inclusive leadership culture, coaching can help you examine how confidence is encouraged, interpreted, and rewarded in your organisation – and what may need to evolve.
