There is a version of leadership that a lot of people are taught early in their careers. It involves projecting conviction, having an answer ready, and never letting doubt show in a room. Sure, the logic behind it is understandable, as people follow leaders who seem sure of themselves, so appearing sure of yourself becomes the priority.
The problem is that this type of leadership conflates two quite different things: confidence and certainty. And mixing them up can cause real problems for both the leader and the people they lead.
Here’s what separates the two, and why the difference matters more than most leaders realize
What Is Confidence in Leadership?
Confidence, in the truest sense, is trusting your ability to handle an outcome, whatever it is. A confident leader does not need every variable accounted for before they can move. They have a grounded belief in their own judgment, their capacity to adapt, and their ability to bring people with them through the unknown.
Confidence is a personal belief built over time through experience, self-awareness, and a willingness to sit with discomfort rather than run from it. Confidence can coexist with doubt. A confident leader is fully aware that things could go wrong — what sets them apart is the ability to act thoughtfully anyway, which is a completely different skill than pretending the doubt isn’t there.
In a recent Harvard Business Review article, INSEAD’s Annie Peshkam argues that what holds experienced leaders back is rarely a missing skill or framework — it’s the unexamined assumption that speed, reassurance, and control are what every complex situation requires. Growth at that level comes from unlearning. Competence is what lets a leader run things well when conditions are stable; capacity is what lets them stay grounded when conditions aren’t, and it’s the second one people actually depend on.
How Certainty Differs
Certainty is something else entirely, as it requires perfect information, no meaningful doubt, and a guarantee about how things will unfold. In a controlled environment with predictable variables, certainty is sometimes achievable. In the environments most leaders operate in, it almost never is.
The trouble is that certainty feels reassuring. Both to the leader who projects it and to the people receiving it. When a leader says, “I am certain this will work,” there is a short-term comfort in that. People feel settled. The anxiety in the room drops. But when the certainty turns out to be false, as it often does, the damage to trust and, interestingly, confidence is significant. People shift their perspective on the decision that went wrong, as well as on the leader who told them the outcome was certain.
The leaders who build their authority on certainty struggle more when things do not go according to plan. Having claimed to know, they find it harder to adapt without losing face. The rigidity that comes with certainty spreads beyond the leader’s own thinking and into the culture. Teams that follow a leader who insists on certainty become more risk-averse over time and less likely to surface problems early.
Shifting from Certainty to Confidence
The shift from performing certainty to leading with confidence is one of the most common areas of focus for executives in leadership coaching. It sounds simple, but for leaders who have built their reputation on having answers, it requires a real change in how they relate to not knowing. It also requires comfort with admitting when they are wrong and confidently pivoting to another solution.
Part of the work is learning to distinguish between the two internally. Noticing when the impulse to project certainty is driven by conviction or by the discomfort of being seen as uncertain. A lot of leaders discover, when they examine this closely, that the certainty they have been performing for years has been exhausting, and that their teams would have responded better to honesty.
The other part of the work is developing the language and presence to communicate confidence without overclaiming. Learning to say “I don’t know” in one breath and “here’s what we’re doing” in the next takes practice. It is a different kind of leadership than projecting certainty, and it builds more durable trust over time.
What Teams Truly Need
When you ask people what they want from a leader in an uncertain situation, the answer is almost never “I want them to tell me everything will definitely be fine.” What people want is someone who is honest about the situation, clear about what they are doing about it, and steady enough that the uncertainty does not feel chaotic.
A 2025 scoping review in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, which synthesized research on psychological safety across high-stakes fields such as healthcare, law enforcement, and aviation, found that leaders’ openness and transparency were consistently linked to teams feeling safe to speak up. Among the specific leadership behaviors tied to psychological safety are explaining the reasoning behind decisions and naming uncertainty out loud rather than papering over it. In other words, honest, composed communication about what is unknown is one of the most practical things a leader can do to keep a team functioning well under pressure.
What teams need is not a leader who has eliminated doubt. They need a leader who can think clearly in their presence, communicate honestly about what is known and what is unknown, and make decisions grounded in judgment. Jerry Colonna, a renowned executive coach and author, has emphasized that true confidence is rooted in radical self-inquiry, embracing the unknown, and facing reality rather than a false sense of security.
Redefining What Effective Leadership Looks Like
Strong leadership looks very different from leadership built on certainty. Instead, an effective leader is transparent about the complexity of a situation without being paralyzed by it. It’s the leader who makes decisions thoughtfully rather than definitively, and one who changes course when the evidence warrants it and explains why, rather than holding a position to protect a prior claim of certainty.
This kind of leadership builds trust that continues to grow over time because the people around the leader always have a clear and honest picture of what’s happening, even when things don’t go according to plan. That is what confidence as a leadership quality really offers. Not the guarantee of a good outcome, but the assurance that whoever is leading is being straight with you about what they know, what they do not, and what they are going to do about it.
David Prior
David Prior is the editor of Today News, responsible for the overall editorial strategy. He is an NCTJ-qualified journalist with over 20 years’ experience, and is also editor of the award-winning hyperlocal news title Altrincham Today. His LinkedIn profile is here.
