Building Confidence as a Leader in Difficult Times
Key takeaways
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Confidence in leadership isn’t about having all the answers, it’s about showing up consistently and honestly, even when things are uncertain.
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Leaning into your values and communicating transparently builds trust with your team, which in turn reinforces your own leadership identity.
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Seeking mentorship and community during hard seasons isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s one of the most strategic things a leader can do.
There’s a version of leadership that consistently looks polished and certain from the outside. As leaders, we generally understand that our charge is to be the steady for our team(s), orienting them toward a common goal no matter the environment we may be navigating. But anyone who has actually led through a hard season knows that confidence rarely arrives fully formed. Instead, it’s built, slowly, deliberately, and often in the middle of the mess.
Research supports what many leaders learn the hard way: that confidence is less about personality and more about behavior. Psychologist Albert Bandura’s work on self-efficacy shows that confidence grows through what he terms “mastery experiences”—those small, consistent wins that reinforce our belief in our own ability to handle what’s in front of us (Bandura, 1977). In other words, you don’t wait to feel confident before you act. You act, and confidence follows.
For those of us leading through difficult times or times of transition, this means resisting the urge to wait until conditions are “more stable” before fully stepping into your role. Instead, our charge is to create those more stable conditions. One of the most effective ways I’ve found to do that is by identifying two or three concrete things within your control and executing them well, then building on them consistently. Letting those small commitments compound, when done with intention and care, creates lasting change over time.
Equally important is the practice of transparent communication. Leaders who acknowledge uncertainty without catastrophizing it, those who can honestly say “Here’s what I know, here’s what I don’t, and here’s how we’re moving forward,” earn a kind of trust that polished certainty never could. Your team doesn’t need you to be infallible. They need you to be present and honest.
Finally, don’t underestimate the power of community. Seeking out mentors, peers, and spaces where you can be challenged and supported is not a detour from leadership—it is leadership. The strongest leaders I know (and those I am most interested in learning from in my own practice) are also the most intentional about who they learn from. Remember that difficult times don’t disqualify you as a leader. In many ways, they’re the very thing that forges one. Lean into your values, act in alignment with them consistently, and trust that confidence will meet you there.
References
Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.191
