INDUSTRY INSIGHT
From a system perspective, the organisation is not suffering from an absence of confidence among women. It is suffering from an excess of confidence being rewarded in some groups and punished in others. When organisations lean too heavily on confidence as a proxy for readiness, they systematically misread talent. Quietly competent people, especially those from under-represented groups, are overlooked. Highly confident individuals from majority groups receive disproportionate opportunities. Over time, the senior leadership layer becomes skewed toward a particular style: outspoken, highly selfassured and sometimes resistant to challenge. This is not simply a fairness issue. It is a strategicrisk issue.
For CXOs, the implication is clear. Focusing on women’ s confidence as the main problem is a distraction from levers that sit squarely within organisational control. When performance reviews contain vague phrases such as‘ needs more confidence’ or‘ lacks gravitas’, they often mask a mixture of stereotype and preference for a narrow behavioural style. A more productive approach is to ask where and how the system is miscalibrating. Three levers matter in particular. a manager can describe specific situations and behaviours, for example,‘ in the steering committee you handed questions in your area to your colleague; next time, I would like you to take the lead’. The same behavioural lens can be applied to overconfident leaders whose certainty is shutting down useful challenge.
The emerging research message is not that confidence is irrelevant. It is that a simplistic story in which women’ s lack of confidence explains inequality is untenable. Ultimately, we need to retire the confidence myth and CXOs need to consciously calibrate confidence themselves. When senior leaders are willing to say“ I am 60 % confident in this path, here are the key risks, and here is what would make me change my mind”, they redefine what confidence looks like across the organisation.
Professor Ginka Toegel is Professor of Organisational Behaviour and Leadership at IMD Business School and author of The Confidence Myth: How Women Leaders Can Break Free from Gendered Perceptions( Palgrave Macmillan) x
First, selection. If promotion panels rely heavily on interview performance and impressions of presence, they will favour candidates who speak in the language of certainty and self-promotion. Quietly effective candidates will be missed. Structured criteria that emphasise track record, quality of judgement, capacity to learn and the ability to build trust create a fairer and more accurate picture of potential.
Second, decision processes. When leadership teams present strategies with explicit probability ranges, documented assumptions and clear risk indicators, they create space for calibrated confidence rather than performative certainty. Forecast tracking and post-mortems then help distinguish leaders whose self-belief is supported by evidence from those whose confidence is mostly style.
Third, feedback and everyday communication. Meetings that reward rapid, dominant contributions encourage displays of overconfidence and sideline those who prefer to think aloud more cautiously. Meetings that deliberately draw in a range of voices and encourage leaders to speak last make it easier for different confidence styles to coexist. Feedback can also be reframed. Instead of telling someone that they‘ need more confidence’,
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