What does confidence look like?

Walking with swagger. Talking over and down to people. Taking credit for others’ ideas. Overestimating one’s abilities. These are the hallmarks of arrogance. Too often those around us – and sometimes even we ourselves – mischaracterize these actions as confidence.

This is another reason I believe that many women are put off from claiming their self-assurance. In last week’s post I talked about our difficulties getting past perfectionism and embracing failure. Just as abhorrent to us, though, is the thought of being lumped in with people who are unable to read the other people in the room and honor their contributions.

Confidence, at its heart, is our ability to trust our own competence and experience. It affects perception – our own and others’ of us – and our actual performance. But it is not a one-size-fits-all suit. As Katty Kay and Claire Shipman point out in The Confidence Code, we can tailor confidence to our personality and, when needed, our environment. In fact, we have to custom-make it, or else we’ll look like someone playing dress-up. And we’ll lose any of the benefits to our sense of self and people’s views of us that confidence offers.

Authentic self-assurance must include an ever-growing understanding of ourselves and a willingness to act (and to fail). It has to avoid denial of our gifts and contributions, our growing edges and shortcomings. Beyond these parameters, however, we can define how we show up as confident people. We can be humble. We can collaborate and share credit. We can be quietly self-possessed.

Don’t let anyone convince you that you must be braggy and bossy to show confidence, if that’s not your style. Rest in your belief that that’s not you, and carry on in your perfectly-suited self-assurance.