Confidence: Stop Waiting to Feel Ready

Hi there, and welcome to the Strategic Minute Podcast.

I’m Danielle, an HR and Leadership coach and founder of HR Ally, a community of professionals seeking to grow and develop the things that you don’t learn when you get your degrees and certifications, but that are so important for career growth.

The strategic minute is where we take one leadership skill at a time and break it down into what it actually looks like in your day-to-day work—because a hill I will die on is that leadership isn’t a one and done training… it’s something you build over time, through learning, practicing, reflecting and refining. And that’s exactly what we do inside of HR Ally, each week. We take one leadership concept and examine what it really means, how it shows up in your role, how to practice it in your daily work and reflect on what went well and refine what could have gone better.

This week we’re talking about Confidence.

I watched a movie this weekend—I Feel Pretty with Amy Schumer. Whether you like her or not, the message is spot on for this topic. In the movie, she bumps her head and suddenly believes she looks exactly how she’s always wanted to look. Nothing actually changed—but she thought it did.

And because of that, she started showing up differently. She spoke up more, went after opportunities and carried herself with confidence.

Here’s the key though:

Her life didn’t change because her appearance changed.

It changed because her confidence did.

She already had everything she needed; she just wasn’t acting like it. That’s how confidence works. It’s not about becoming someone new. It’s about showing up as if you already trust and believe in yourself.

At the beginning of the movie, she’s working in the basement of a makeup company. Then a receptionist role opens up—the face of the company, the first person everyone sees walking into this high-end New York City office.

Before, she never would’ve applied. But now? She goes for it.

She gets the job—and she’s amazing at it. Not because anything about her changed… but because she finally felt good about who she was.

We all have innate gifts, but over time, we’re influenced to question them. We compare, we second-guess, and we start shrinking to fit what we think we’re supposed to be, instead of owning who we already are.

That’s what confidence does.

It changes how you show up.

What you go after.

And how you move through the world.

The opportunity didn’t change—she did.

Let’s look at the definition of Confidence: per Merriam Webster: Confidence is a noun and defined as a feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities. Example: I have confidence in my ability to speak up.

Confidence is believing that you can handle what’s in front of you — even if you don’t have all the answers yet. And most professionals wait to feel confident before acting, but confidence isn’t a feeling that just shows up. It’s something you build. You add a block of confidence after each action you take.

Confident leaders are experienced. They try before they feel ready. They aren’t fearless, they just believe in themselves. When They fail, they seek to understand why and recalibrate instead of giving up. Confidence grows from evidence of past success. You’ve done hard things before and you can do hard things again. You wouldn’t be listening to this podcast if you haven’t already succeeded in something you set out to do. Confident leaders aren’t always right or always successful. But one thing I’m extremely confident about is that I have learned far more from my failures than from my successes. So, failing isn’t always a bad thing, as long as you learn from it.

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

Let’s look at an example of where confidence or lack of confidence can show up:

Imagine you’re in a leadership meeting…the operations leader is proposing a policy change that will impact employees’ workload and morale. You immediately see potential consequences in implementing the policy, including high turnover, burnout, unclear accountability.

But you hesitate in speaking up…you think to yourself:

• Maybe I’m over thinking this

• They’ve already decided this, it’s not going to matter what I say

• I don’t want to sound negative

• What if I don’t have all of the data to back up my response

So you stay quiet.

Two weeks later, the issues you anticipated begin surfacing, now you’re managing complaints, turnover risk and reactive conversations.

Confident leadership doesn’t mean you have all of the answers, all you would have had to say was “I’d like us to think more about this, as I’m worried about the impact on employee retention and workload if we make this change. Let’s explore this more before we finalize it and roll it out.”

That’s it, it’s not a perfect speech, it’s just raising your hand expressing your concerns and getting others to see them as well. And this is confidence. It’s trusting your abilities enough to speak up

So, let’s reflect on what happened - the hesitation you felt wasn’t about your ability to do your job, it was about waiting for certainty on your thoughts. Confidence in this case would prevent you from future firefighting when the policy change doesn’t go well.

We don’t have to have all of our thoughts fully baked before we express a concern. The fact that a flag went up in our minds should be confidence enough, because everyday we are operating based on what we already know and have experienced. So, that flag was probably a result of a past experience you have already had.

Real confidence is actually trusting yourself and self-trust is built through experience and action. Your experience led you to the realization of the impact of the policy. You didn’t just start in HR yesterday, you’ve seen these kinds of things before and you know what impact they can have. And if you don’t speak up on these things, who will? Especially if you are the only HR person in the company. That alone should make you feel confident enough to speak up.

Confidence grows when actions match intentions. You want to make sure you’re managing risk for the organization as well as supporting the people and when your actions match both of these, you become more confident in what you do or what you want to say.

Strategic confidence is speaking up at the right moment. It doesn’t have to be “STOP! This isn’t going to work.” It’s simply raising your hand, expressing a concern and circling back around to re-visit the topic. You may end up moving forward with the proposed plan, but your confidence increases because you saw an issue, spoke up and reviewed it. And just because the plan still went through doesn’t mean you failed. You did what you are there to do, and that alone should give you confidence in your abilities.

Confidence is about trusting your own voice, it’s not always being right or never failing. It’s what you do with those failures.

Let’s look at Where Confidence Breaks Down in HR

If you’re a Mid-level leader or HR Department of One, you may often hesitate because:

• You have responsibility without clear authority - you may be a department of 1 and even have the title HR Manager, but you’re still seen as administrative or operational and not a strategic leader. This sometimes makes it challenging to step up and lead the way HR should.

• You are making decisions without a sounding board - you don’t have a fellow HR leader to run things by, someone more experienced than you, your trusted sounding boards may be finance and operations and while they are great colleagues, they don’t always understand or think about HR first.

• You don’t see models of strategic confidence around you because your role is unique to the organization. You don’t have someone else in HR to go first and you have to just learn as they go

So you wait…to feel ready, But as I stated before, readiness is rarely what creates confidence, action does. And confidence isn’t something you wait for, it’s something you build, like any skill, it grows through action and evidence, such as small wins, completed challenges and showing up even when you’re uncertain.

Let’s look at ways you can begin strengthening your confidence this week:

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

1. Keep Promises to Yourself

Start small. If you say you’ll speak up in a meeting, do it. Follow-through is where your trust in yourself grows. If you continue to fulfill your promises to yourself, you’ll grow that confidence. This is both in your personal and your professional life, if you say you’re going to work out tomorrow, do it. The more you follow-through on what you say you will do, the more confident you’ll become.

2. Know Your Strengths

List 3 things you do well, then think about 3 times those strengths made a difference, whether in your personal life or professional life. Confidence grows when you recognize your impact and reflect on your past wins.

3. Practice Self-Talk that Supports You

Your inner dialogue matters. Start replacing “I can’t” with “I’m learning how to…” or “I’ve handled things like this before.”

Remember: Confidence isn’t waiting for you on the other side of fear. It’s built as you move through it.

This week, reflect on What Would I do Differently if I believed in myself? What if I had Amy Schumer’s confidence in that movie? What would my life look like if I didn’t have negative self-talk and thought I could achieve anything?

Where are you holding yourself back because you lack confidence?

What would happen if you stepped forward, fear and all?

This Week I want you to Build Evidence because it grows confidence.

This week, choose one of these:

1️⃣ Speak once in a meeting where you normally stay quiet.

2️⃣ Make one decision without over-researching.

3️⃣ Set one boundary where you normally over function.

Then document what happened. Just the facts.

What did you expect (or fear) would happen?

What actually happened?

When we start to understand that gap, that’s where we grow.

So, remember, confidence is something you build from small actions, borrow it from future you when you need it for present you and back it up with the actions you take.

A lot of people think confidence comes after success, and that’s true, but it also has to come BEFORE success, from doing the hard things without a guarantee. So, you don’t need to feel confident to be confident. Confidence is built every time you take action, despite the doubt. Every time you hit “send,” speak up, ask the question or make the decision, you’re laying another brick on the foundation of belief in yourself.

When you think about confident people, what do they have in common?

I think about how:

They keep showing up.

They try things before they feel “ready.”

They fail, but they don’t let failure have the last word.

This week, don’t wait to feel confident. Look at the past evidence of where you showed up before you were ready and just know you are capable.

Most of the scenarios we rehearse in our minds never even happen, resulting in the cost of inaction often being much higher than the cost of action.

I’m going to leave you with our quote of the week:

“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” ~Theodore Roosevelt

This is exactly the work we do inside HR Ally—supporting HR professionals in moving from reacting to leading with clarity and confidence.

This is how you move from reacting…to leading.

If this resonated, you can find more about HR Ally in the show notes. I’ll see you in the next Strategic Minute.