Workplace self-belief affects who speaks up, progresses, takes risks and contributes ideas, making it far more than an individual concern. Penny Haslam argues that organisations should actively develop confidence through training, supportive managers and everyday conversations. This helps employees perform more effectively while strengthening inclusion, wellbeing, engagement and business performance.
Most people see confidence as something you’re born with, or not, like brown eyes or curly hair. But I have seen over the last decade, as an executive coach and speaker, that confidence is a skill. Why does confidence matter for each of us personally and for every organisation? How can we treat it not as a personality trait but something that can be learnt, practiced and improved to boost individual prospects and company performance?
Confidence ebbs and flows. It is not consistent for anyone
When I ask people, “Are you confident at work?” they typically say: “It depends”. It depends on who they’re with, what they’re doing and sometimes, just how they feel that day. This is perfectly natural: confidence ebbs and flows. It is not consistent for anyone, and true even for me, a TV presenter turned motivational speaker.
You’re not alone
In fact, it’s estimated that 70% of people will feel imposter syndrome in their lives (Gravois, 2007). Some people tell me that colleagues comment on how confident they appear, when they don’t feel at all sure of themselves.
Social psychologists call this ‘pluralistic ignorance’ – everyone thinks everyone else is having a common experience. We see others looking confident and imagine they feel confident too. It’s lonely, and it keeps the problem hidden. When I start group discussions about this, the relief is palpable. “It’s not just me!” is a phrase I often hear.
Uncertainty costs
What is even more worrying is that some people report that a lack of apparent confidence has held them back. A participant on one of my courses had a boss who told her to ‘stop being a shy little bird’ – the implication being that her career would stall if she couldn’t dial up the self-belief swagger.
Projecting confidence may help people get ahead, while actual personal confidence influences the speed at which people put themselves forward. A colleague might decide not to apply for promotion, volunteer for a project, speak at an event or share an idea because they assume somebody else is more experienced.
I have seen that this is a particular issue for underrepresented groups. I ran a coaching programme at an investments and savings bank where one cohort member expressed a lack of enthusiasm for career progression. When I asked why, she replied: “I don’t want a higher-level job if it means being like ‘them’ [the leaders] – all full of bravado and swagger.”
Understanding confidence and how to control it, matters, not just of each of us as individuals but for our organisations. It does not remove all barriers, but it helps build stronger networks and makes people’s contribution harder to miss.
The value of collective confidence
So, confidence supports diversity, and diversity of thinking and ideas is vital right now. We operate in a knowledge-based economy, no longer using our hands to plough fields or spin looms. We use brains, not brawn. Minds, not muscle. In the same way we cared for and maintained machinery to keep production flowing, we need to get better at tending to the thoughts and beliefs that shape people’s abilities in the modern workplace.
People are employed to think, solve problems, communicate and make sense of complicated issues. But a brilliant idea is no use if its owner cannot say it out loud, and good decisions do not get made when everybody is waiting for somebody else to sound more certain.
“I don’t want to come to work to sit there and talk to AI all day long. What’s the point?”
Course delegate
Recent changes in the way we work compound the problem. People spend days at home on their own, travel into offices where half their colleagues are somewhere else and increasingly interact with technology rather than another human. A delegate at one of my workshops said recently: “I don’t want to come to work to sit there and talk to AI all day long. What’s the point?” Over time, lower feelings of self-belief show up in rising stress, burnout, absences and disengagement.
According to the Gallup, State of the Global Workplace Report, 2025, feelings of confidence at work are hugely under threat:
- Only 33% of employees globally are thriving
- 58% report that they are struggling
- Almost one in ten (9%) are suffering
The CIPD reports record levels of UK workplace absence in its 2025 report, with employees taking an average of 9.4 days off sick per year, the highest in over 15 years. This rise is driven by increasing long-term health conditions, costing businesses billions each year (UK Government and think-tank analysis, Keep Britain Working review, 2025). Mental ill health is the primary cause for long-term absence.
These challenges are going nowhere. The next generation of managers and leaders are most at risk. Nearly half (47%) of those in their late 20s, say they feel anxious or stressed most of the time (Deloitte UK, Gen Z & Millennial Survey, 2024). Plus, we all know that organisations and their people are dealing with constant change, economic uncertainty and rising burnout.
Confidence sits at the intersection of all these issues. I believe we can draw a direct line between the numbers above, that paint a terrible picture, and the continued flatlining of productivity and growth in the UK. Simply put, organisations are losing ideas, energy, capacity and capability. Remember, it’s now ‘minds not machines’. So, how are we looking after those minds before they reach crisis point?
Wellbeing and performance gap
Of course, most decent organisations now accept the importance of supporting mental health and quite rightly too. We have wellbeing programmes, mental health first aiders and support for people who reach that point of not coping well. But the subtler aspects of positive mental wellbeing are overlooked and underdiscussed.
Employees question themselves and their abilities:
- “Can I trust my judgement?”
- “Can I handle this conversation?”
- “Should I say what I really think?”
- “What if I make the wrong decision?”
- “Was that presentation all right?”
- “Did I sound stupid?”
These questions rattle around people’s heads every day affecting performance long before anyone reaches a crisis. So why is confidence treated as a private problem? If someone holds back or struggles to speak up, the unspoken response is often: they need to be more assertive, toughen up or ‘just believe in yourself a bit more’. Easy to say, much harder to put into action without the right tools – especially if you’re the one with the ‘confidence problem’.
Training for confidence
I have spent years watching what happens when people stop treating confidence as something they either have or do not have. They try things. They speak up. They make decisions more quickly, with a clearer head. They worry less. They seek career development.
My research proving this is the case has been published in Training Journal previously. A real life example brought this into sharp relief recently. Following the confidence and communication programme at the bank, every female participant went on to progress their career and ultimately earn more money. For the bank this meant moving the dial on the gender pay gap. Confidence was not the only factor, of course, but building confidence skills helped them become more visible, make connections more easily and put themselves forward in their day-to-day working lives.
After another training session for a group of public sector accountancy professionals, one participant told me: “I have been trained on most things in my career, but never on confidence, which now seems ridiculous. Because once you know how to build confidence you can handle pretty much anything that life throws at you.”
Beyond a personal burden
People are best at building confidence when their managers understand it and give them opportunities to practise it, leading part of a meeting, applying for an acting role or being backed when they offered a different view.
The opposite is also true. An unsupportive manager, an impossible workload or another round of restructuring squash new-found self-belief remarkably quickly. The skill of confidence can be taught but the responsibility for continuing the work, keeping it alive, lies with the whole organisation.
It isn’t a one-off, tick-box exercise. It can’t be handed back to the individual with a workbook and a cheery instruction to ‘keep practising’ and ‘believe in yourself’.
There’s no doubt that workplace confidence shapes business performance, so teaching people how to build it isn’t soft; it’s strategic, because the future success of our knowledge economy depends on minds that are well supported and ready to thrive.
Three ways people leaders build workplace confidence
- Question how confidence is considered at your organisation. Are people who display greater confidence rewarded or treated differently? People leaders should also look at where confidence affects progression. Who contributes during meetings? Who gets noticed? Who puts themselves forward? Who has the ability but repeatedly steps back?
- Training provides colleagues with a shared language to break the stalemate of pluralistic ignorance. Because once we can all accept that self-doubt is normal and part of the human condition the subject becomes far easier to discuss and therefore support.
- Finally, make workplace confidence part of ordinary organisational conversation. Talk about it in teams, include it in development conversations and help people recognise what they can do next. Ask, ‘Do you feel confident?’ or ‘On a scale of 1-10, how confident would you say you are right now?’
Confidence grows when people do things, try things and connect with others. It develops through speaking, listening, asking, challenging – through collective, supported experiences.
Penny Haslam is an Executive Coach at Bit Famous
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