Beyond “Fake It Till You Make It”: Building Anchored Confidence at Work

Mar 14, 2026 • 8 Min Read

Source:
Freepik

In many workplaces, confidence is treated as a kind of currency. The person who speaks first, fastest, and with the most conviction is often assumed to be the most capable. The leader who sounds certain is seen as more credible than the one who pauses, weighs the evidence, and names the risks.

Confidence, at least the visible kind, can be equated with competence. People consistently rate confident speakers as more competent, even when the content of their advice is no better than anyone else’s.

That’s one reason the advice to “fake it till you make it” has had such staying power. It offers a shortcut.

Don’t feel ready? Act ready. Don’t feel certain? Sound certain. Don’t yet trust yourself? Project confidence until everyone, including you, believes it.

It’s tidy advice, yet incomplete.

Why does this idea persist?

If you wait until you feel fully ready before you take on the bigger role, have the difficult conversation, or back your judgement in a high-stakes meeting, you may wait a very long time, or in some cases, forever. And, confidence doesn’t always arrive neatly packaged beforehand; instead, it arrives after you have taken action. So, there is some merit to the advice.

On the flip side, however, the whole “fake it till you make it” approach can easily slide from courageous action to confidence theatre. Instead of helping people to stretch, it can encourage them to confuse self-belief with certainty, visibility with credibility, and bravado with leadership.

You’ve likely seen it (I know I have). Someone enters every meeting holding a strong point of view, polished language, and very little openness to challenge. They look strong and certain. But beneath the façade, genuine confidence is lacking, and their behaviour is designed to cover how they really feel.

Why people see through performative confidence

Outward displays of confidence can be persuasive in the short term. But over time, people are usually not just evaluating whether you seem impressive; they’re watching whether you are trustworthy.

Many professionals, particularly those stepping into larger roles, believe they need to look more confident than they feel. Consequently, they try to present a version of themselves that feels more forceful, decisive, and polished.

The trouble is that your colleagues and team members are surprisingly good at detecting strain. They may not always name it, but they feel it. Something about your behaviour feels guarded, overdone, or just a little off.

A study¹ published in the Journal of Management found that authentic self-expression at work was positively associated with coworker trust and, through trust, job performance. By contrast, exaggerated self-enhancement damaged trust.

The signal here is clear: people respond better when they see their colleague as authentic.

There is also a personal cost. Research² on managers’ surface acting, in which they display what they think they should feel rather than what they genuinely feel, found negative effects on job satisfaction and work engagement over time.

Sustaining a version of yourself that is misaligned with your internal experience takes work, and in time, that effort becomes depleting.

In contrast, genuine confidence (what I call anchored confidence) is deeper and more helpful because it centres on self-trust. You trust that you can respond capably to what is in front of you, even if the situation is messy, unfamiliar, or not fully under control.

From certainty to self-trust

Professor of Social Science Albert Bandura’s work on self-efficacy suggests that what matters is not whether you can project certainty, but whether you believe you can organise and execute the actions needed to handle a situation³. In other words, anchored confidence is less about saying, “I know exactly how this will unfold,” and more about trusting, “I can work with what is in front of me.”

The latter is more useful because leading today rarely happens in neat conditions.

Consider a familiar workplace scene. A leadership team is discussing a difficult decision. One executive speaks quickly, confidently, and in absolutes. Another is calmer. They say, “Here’s what we know. Here’s what we are assuming. Here’s what I think we should do next.” The first person might come across as more confident, but the second is more useful.

That distinction matters.

Today, you’re often making decisions with incomplete information, navigating ambiguity, and balancing competing priorities. In those moments, performative confidence can be seductive, but it is often a poor guide. Anchored confidence, by contrast, leaves room for judgement.

Four ways to step ahead with anchored confidence

Source: Freepik

So, if self-trust is a crucial part of developing anchored confidence, where do you start?

Self-trust grows through evidence. Referencing Professor Albert Bandura’s work again, his research showed that self-efficacy is strengthened through mastery experiences, social learning, and credible encouragement, with mastery experiences being especially powerful.

This means your confidence grows when you tackle hard things, learn from them, and keep a record of your capabilities.

Consequently, your path to confidence isn’t about faking it; it’s about practising.

1. Build proof, not posture

If your confidence only exists when things are going well, it’s too dependent on external validation. Stronger confidence comes from accumulating evidence that you can handle challenge, learn under pressure, and recover when things wobble.

Keep a simple evidence log where you record what worked and what didn’t. It helps to build a regular practice. For example, at the end of each week, note three things: what you handled well, what you learned, and what that says about your capability.

2. Replace certainty with clarity

Many leaders speak in absolutes because they think it makes them sound confident. Usually, it just makes them sound brittle.

More helpful and disciplined language sounds like this:

“My current view is…”

“The trade-off I’m weighing is…”

“The risk I don’t want us to miss is…”

“I’m confident in the direction, but still testing the detail.”

3. Take smaller courageous repetitions

Confidence rarely arrives in one grand leap. It accumulates over time through repeated smaller acts of courage.

It might be you speaking up earlier in a meeting, or offering a perspective that you haven’t shared before. It might be asking the hard question, making a recommendation, or naming an assumption.

4. Stop using self-criticism as a performance strategy

Confidence is much harder to access when your inner voice is acting like a hostile board member. Yet many highly capable people still believe that being hard on themselves is what keeps them sharp.

Research on self-compassion at work suggests the opposite. A self-compassionate mindset has been linked to lower depletion and higher work self-esteem, engagement, resilience, and goal progress.

Self-compassion does not lower standards. It helps you sustain effort without burning out.

Humility is not the enemy of anchored confidence

As you do this work, it’s crucial to remember that humility and confidence are not in conflict. At their best, they reinforce one another.

Emerging research⁴ on intellectual humility suggests that recognising the limits of your knowledge is a strength rather than a weakness. It enables clearer thinking, greater openness to new information, and better judgement when complexity rises.

Intellectual humility is not about making yourself smaller. It’s about being honest about what you know, what you do not know, and what you still need to learn.

Many leaders get caught here because they mistake confidence for certainty, assuming it means they must have the answer. Without humility, confidence can harden into arrogance. Without confidence, humility can drift into hesitation. Influential leadership calls for both.

There’s a Serbian proverb I return to often when I think about this tension: Be humble because you are made of earth. Be noble because you are made of stars.
The task is not to choose one over the other, but to hold both at once.

When you do that, you don’t need to dominate the room and rush to speak first. Nor do you pretend that uncertainty has vanished. Instead, it sounds like this:

“I have a view, and want to test it.”
“Here’s what we know, and here’s what we’re assuming.”
“I don’t have the full answer yet, although I am clear on the next step.”
“That’s a risk worth naming before we proceed.”

Your next steps this week

When confidence is built around your contribution, it becomes steadier and more anchored. When it is built around an impression you are trying to curate, it becomes more fragile.

This week, start anchoring your confidence in self-trust rather than in an impression. For example, before an important meeting or conversation, instead of asking, “How do I look confident?” ask, “Who do I need to be in this moment?”

Perhaps the answer is clear-headed, calm, helpful, honest, commercial or compassionate. Those words are more anchored and centred than “impressive.” And importantly, they direct your attention back to contribution rather than performance.

You want to stay grounded enough to learn and tall enough to act, because influential leadership is about being trustworthy. First to yourself. Then to others.

That’s how you step ahead and step up.

Republished with courtesy from michellegibbings.com.