Why confidence is not the same as competence – and what that means for your talent decisions
By Professor Rebecca Jones, Managing Consultant and Professor of Coaching
In many organisations, confidence has quietly become one of the strongest signals influencing talent and promotion decisions.
It is rarely stated explicitly. You will not find it written into a competency framework or a set of promotion criteria. Yet in practice, how someone presents in meetings, how readily they put themselves forward, or how assertive they appear under pressure often shapes perceptions of leadership potential.
The problem is simple: confidence and competence are not the same thing. And when organisations conflate the two, they consistently make poor decisions about who is ready to lead.
Our research with women working in large European organisations found that 51% of women perceived self-confidence as a significant barrier to their progression, with the effect even more pronounced for Black and Asian women, as well as disabled women.[i] Research consistently shows that women tend to understate their performance, while men are more likely to overstate theirs. As Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic has argued, we are collectively prone to mistaking self-assurance for ability [ii], and in talent decisions, that tendency has real consequences. Men, on average, display higher levels of overconfidence, and this contributes, at least in part, to why men are 21% more likely than women to be internally promoted into a leadership position.[iii] That gap is not explained by differences in performance. It is, in significant part, explained by the confidence premium that organisations apply without fully realising it.
The evidence consistently demonstrates that the so-called “confidence gap” is less about women lacking confidence, and more about biased systems. Men benefit from being rated on potential, whereas women are more likely to be assessed on performance and track record.[iv] Confidence continues to be judged through a predominantly male lens: relative to men’s overconfidence, women can appear underconfident and suffer career penalties as a result – simply for not adopting the same behaviours.
This creates a particular challenge for women in senior roles. Many describe, through coaching and leadership development programmes, an experience of trying to calibrate a moving target. Be confident enough to be taken seriously, but not so confident that you are perceived as aggressive or unlikeable. Be ambitious, but not in ways that make others uncomfortable. Be assertive, but remain warm and approachable.
It is entirely understandable for women to internalise this as a personal failing – a sense that they have not quite found the right register, or that something about how they show up needs adjusting. In reality, they are navigating a system that was not designed with them in mind, one in which the unwritten rules of leadership still tend to reward a particular style of confidence over evidence of actual capability.
The challenge is compounded by another well-established pattern. Business leaders (who are still predominantly male, cisgender, and white) tend to struggle to advance members of underrepresented groups because they model their development strategies on their own routes to success.[v] Addressing the confidence gap is therefore ultimately about addressing the inequities baked into how talent is reviewed and recognised.
A more effective approach is to stop using confidence as an informal proxy for leadership readiness, and instead focus on building more structured, evidence-based approaches to identifying and developing talent.
Across our work with organisations across sectors, a consistent pattern emerges in promotion decisions: the candidates who progress tend to be those who perform well in unstructured senior discussions, present with visible self-assurance, and are comfortable advocating loudly for themselves in talent review conversations. Many high-performing individuals, disproportionately women and others from underrepresented groups, are consistently underrated, not because they lack capability, but because they are less likely to display confidence in the same way.
When organisations examine their promotion data carefully, this pattern can be difficult to ignore. The issue is often not readiness. It is visibility, and the way visibility has quietly become a substitute for potential.
So, what can organisations do differently?
- Review what evidence your promotion process actually relies on
In practice, many promotion decisions rest heavily on impressions formed in senior meetings or informal interactions. Asking what objective evidence is being gathered, and whether it is gathered consistently across individuals, can surface bias that would otherwise remain invisible. Reviewing selection criteria for fairness, and ensuring line leaders are actively encouraging women with potential to apply for opportunities, are practical places to start. - Structure talent review conversations more deliberately
Unstructured talent discussions tend to favour those who advocate most loudly for themselves. Introducing clearer criteria, requiring evidence to support assessments, and ensuring a broader range of perspectives contribute to the conversation can significantly improve the quality of decisions. - Support evaluators to name the confidence-competence confusion
Many people involved in talent decisions have never been invited to question whether confidence is a reliable signal of capability. Naming this pattern explicitly in training, in calibration conversations, and in how talent frameworks are written can change the discussions that shape career trajectories.
The confidence bias in leadership decisions is rarely intentional. More often, it is simply what happens when organisations have not created the conditions to look for anything else.
The organisations that address this most effectively are not the ones trying to coach women into being more self-assured. They are the ones building fairer, clearer processes, as well as stopping themselves from mistaking self-assurance for potential.
I would be interested to hear how your organisation currently approaches this, and what has been most effective in improving the quality talent decisions.
FAQs
Q. Why are fewer women promoted to leadership roles despite strong performance?
A. Research shows that promotion decisions frequently favour candidates who display visible self-assurance and advocate loudly for themselves, rather than those with the strongest track record. Men tend to be assessed on potential, while women are more often evaluated on demonstrated performance. This tendency to reward confidence over demonstrated capability is a significant factor behind the persistent gap in women’s representation at senior levels.
Q. What is the difference between confidence and competence in leadership?
A. Confidence is how readily someone projects self-assurance; competence is the actual ability to do the job well. The two are not the same, yet in many organisations confidence is used as an informal proxy for leadership potential. This means overconfident individuals — who are more often men — are disproportionately advanced, while capable but less self-promotional leaders are overlooked.
Q. How can HR leaders reduce gender bias in promotion decisions?
A. HR leaders can improve the fairness of promotion decisions by taking three practical steps: reviewing what objective evidence promotion processes actually rely on and whether it is gathered consistently across individuals; structuring talent review conversations with clearer criteria rather than leaving them open to impression-based assessments; and training evaluators to recognise and name the confidence-competence confusion so it is less likely to shape career decisions unchecked.
References
[i] Shape Talent (2024) ‘The Reality Gap: Three Barriers to Women’s Advancement in European Corporates’, https://shapetalent.com/the-reality-gap-three-barriers-to-womens-advancement-in-european-corporates/
[ii] Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2013). Why do so many incompetent men become leaders. Harvard Business Review, 22.
[iii] LinkedIn Economic Graph (2022) Gender equity in the workplace: Breaking down gender barriers and biases. Available at: https://linkedin.github.io/gender-equity-2022/
[iv] Science Daily (2015) ‘Employers Prefer Male Managerial Potential to Female Proven Track Record’, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150506164244.htm
[v] Harvard Business Review (2018) ‘Beating the Odds’, https://hbr.org/2018/03/beating-the-odds