TL;DR: Confidence can make someone look like a natural leader, but confidence and leadership competence are not the same thing. Strong leaders develop the capabilities to lead themselves, lead others and contribute to the organization. As competence grows, confidence often follows.
When we think about someone with leadership potential, certain qualities often stand out. They speak up, comfortably share their opinion, appear decisive and are willing to take charge. Those can all be valuable qualities, but they don’t necessarily tell us whether someone is ready to lead.
Some highly capable leaders are naturally confident. Others are quieter, more reflective or still developing confidence as they take on greater responsibility. For organizations, the challenge is making sure we don’t confuse how someone presents themselves with how effectively they can lead.
Confidence and Competence Aren’t the Same Thing
Confidence is our belief in our ability, while competence is our actual ability to perform effectively. Ideally, the two develop together as a leader gains experience, builds new capabilities and sees the results of putting them into practice. But a confident leader isn’t necessarily a competent one. Someone can confidently talk about accountability while avoiding difficult conversations. They can appear decisive but struggle to listen to other perspectives, or communicate well while having difficulty delegating and developing the people around them.
The reverse is also true. A capable leader may question themselves when taking on a new responsibility or stepping into a larger role. That doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t ready. In some cases, it may demonstrate an awareness of how much they still have to learn.
Confidence matters in leadership, but it shouldn’t be our only measure of leadership capability.
What Does Leadership Competence Look Like?
One of the challenges with leadership development is that leadership isn’t a single skill. What makes someone successful in one role may not be enough as their responsibilities grow.
A new supervisor may have been promoted because they were excellent at their job. Now their success depends less on what they can accomplish themselves and more on their ability to communicate expectations, delegate, give feedback, manage conflict and help others perform. As leaders move into more senior positions, the requirements continue to change. They need to influence across the organization, navigate change, make more complex decisions and think beyond the immediate needs of their own team.
At X5 Management, we look at leadership development through three interconnected areas: Leading Self, Leading Others and Leading the Organization. Leading Self includes areas such as self-awareness, emotional intelligence and personal accountability. Leading Others includes communication, delegation, coaching and conflict management. As responsibilities increase, Leading the Organization brings greater emphasis on influence, change, decision-making and strategic thinking.
Looking at leadership this way shifts the conversation from whether someone looks like a leader to a more useful question: What capabilities does this person have today, and what do they need to develop for the role ahead?
Are We Developing the Right People?
This distinction is particularly important when organizations are identifying emerging leaders. The people who naturally speak up, volunteer for responsibility or appear comfortable taking charge tend to get noticed. There may be good reasons for that, but leadership potential can show up in other ways too.
Consider who takes accountability when something goes wrong, who asks good questions and who can listen to a different perspective without immediately becoming defensive. Look at who builds trust with the people around them, seeks feedback and then does something with it. Those behaviours may tell us more about someone’s leadership potential than how confidently they present themselves.
Rather than simply asking, “Who looks like a leader?” organizations can ask, “Who has the potential and willingness to develop the capabilities leadership will require?”
Building Competence Builds Confidence
When someone lacks confidence in a leadership role, our instinct can be to focus on building their confidence. Sometimes that’s needed, but it’s also worth asking what is sitting underneath it.
A new manager who isn’t confident having difficult conversations may need more than encouragement. They may need to learn how to prepare for and navigate those conversations. Someone struggling to delegate may need to better understand how to set expectations and maintain accountability without taking the work back. A leader hesitant to contribute strategically may need opportunities to practise thinking beyond their immediate responsibilities.
As those capabilities develop and leaders experience themselves handling these situations more effectively, confidence often develops with them. That’s an important part of leadership development.
The objective isn’t to turn people into a particular type of leader or simply make them appear more confident. It’s to help them understand what their role requires, recognize where they need to grow and intentionally build those capabilities over time.
Confidence grounded in competence is ultimately much more valuable than confidence on its own.
At X5 Management, our Leadership Development Framework looks at development across Leading Self, Leading Others and Leading the Organization, helping leaders and organizations identify where development is needed and where to focus next.
Interested in developing the capabilities of your current or emerging leaders? Let’s talk.
About the Author
Kris Schinke, MBA, is VP Integration and a Leadership Coach with X5 Management. She works with leaders and teams to strengthen leadership capability, improve communication and turn development into practical action. Her coaching focuses on helping leaders build greater self-awareness, strengthen how they lead others and develop the capabilities they need as their responsibilities grow.
