The importance of confidence for success and why it is hard in male-dominated environment

Christmas Special & Women in AI community newsletter #7

The role confidence plays in performance is heavily underestimated - especially by women. Being confident in your abilities and projecting this confidence out towards others not only helps you be perceived as competent but actually increases your ability to perform and your chances of success.

In his book Feel Good Productivity Ali Abdaal cites studies that showed people’s performance increases if they are told their performance is above average even though it wasn’t (for athletic performance). This also holds for knowledge workers. Studies have shown that performance in math tests are highly influenced by whether the student is confident in their math abilities - which still often depends on gender (boys have more confidence in their math capabilities).

Confidence is also crucial for you to raise your hand and advocate for yourself when a new stretch project needs to staffed. You will only go after this new opportunity if you are actually confident you can do it, right?

Yet being confident as a woman in tech is easier said than done - at least this was true for me and what I heard and observed from the (few) women around me. Especially in the beginning of my career I struggled a lot with self-doubt. I was not confident in my abilities and only said something when I was 100% sure it was right. While this is normal to some extent and you get more confident over time, I was completely unaware that my self-doubt 1) is normal and is partially due to the male-dominated environment, 2) something I can actively work on, 3) essential to overcome for my career progress.

Women are often socialised to be less confident than men but this isn’t the only reason why it is hard for women to be confident in a male-dominated environment. Women often suffer from what has come to be known as Imposter syndrome - which basically means doubting their own achievements and attributing them to luck or as not justified.

Seeing people similar to oneself succeed by sustained effort raises the observers’ beliefs that they too possess the capability to succeed. However, since women have only few role models to look up to, it makes it harder for them to build confidence and believe in their success. Nevertheless confidence isn’t something you are born with, it is something you learn.

Here is what has helped me build confidence:

• adopting a growth mindset (aka you can learn anything you put your mind to)
• writing down my achievements, i.e. small wins at the end of the week
• breathwork, meditation & yoga (e.g. box breathing)
• doing things despite feeling scared or nervous (courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s doing things anyway, be ready even if you are not, you’ll get there).
• letting go of negative self-talk and adopting a more encouraging tone
• using the body to change the mind (use body language to convey confidence but also to make you feel more confident, i.e. power pose, dancing, jumping, long deep breath)
• changing communication to be more assertive

What confidence shouldn’t be about

Confidence is not about faking it or becoming aggressive. Instead focus on developing a nuanced and authentic form of confidence. This includes knowing when to assert yourself and when to collaborate, as well as rejecting the notion that your value depends solely on projecting confidence. Here are some pitfalls to keep in mind:

The crux with confidence

In male-dominated workplaces, women face a double bind when it comes to confidence: they are often criticized for showing either too little or too much of it. Assertiveness or self-promotion, celebrated in male colleagues, may provoke distrust or accusations of overconfidence in women, while being collaborative or less vocal about their achievements can be seen as a lack of leadership. This forces women to navigate a balance to avoid being labeled as "too aggressive" or "too passive," all while contending with gendered expectations that penalize them for not conforming to traditional notions of femininity. Yet feeling confident about yourself and your abilities is a non-negotiable.

Confidence is not being inauthentic

Mimicking traditional male styles of confidence—such as dominance or bravado—is not the kind of confidence I mean unless it would feel authentic to you. Putting on a role and pretending to be someone your are not will not help you. It will drain you. And others won’t buy it. The confidence I am talking about is a feeling that comes from within and projects outward. It comes from believing in and being certain about yourself and your abilities.

Confidence is not about blaming yourself

Sometimes unfair things happen. You are not responsible to correct those by being confident and ‘seize opportunities’ or ‘fight for it’. Women are often told that their lack of advancement is due to insufficient confidence, shifting the burden of overcoming systemic barriers onto the individual. This narrative obscures the role of bias, structural inequality, and workplace culture, leaving women feeling inadequate rather than recognizing that external factors are at play and cannot always be overcome by being more confident.

Vulnerability and Collaboration

Vulnerability and collaboration are essential parts of new leadership. Being confident about yourself and your abilities does not mean you cannot be vulnerable or encourage collaboration. In fact, to be vulnerable means to be strong. As Bréne Brown, a famous researcher who studies courage, vulnerability, shame and empathy, says: “Vulnerability is not weakness, it’s our greatest measure of courage”. Confidence also means you know your worth, your strengths and abilities and are at the same time fully aware that that doesn’t mean you need to know all the answers. It means you know that asking for help, support or collaboration to complement your strengths instead of comparing yourself to others and thinking you have to do it all by yourself is confidence.

Conclusion

Of course, fostering confidence isn’t the magic want that changes everything. It needs to go hand-in-hand with addressing systemic issues, ensuring that environments support and celebrate diverse leadership styles.

??? Christmas Special - Community Event ???

??? Let’s put it into practice and give our confidence a boost for the new year.

??? Join this free community event to work with the body to boost your confidence and set an intention for next year.

?? Let’s support each other in making courageous choices.

??? January 3rd, 6 pm CET, online (45 min)

?? Register here for free

Studies and stats ??

The women’s confidence report surveyed about 11 000 women around the globe. Based on a survey they calculate a confidence score between 0 and 10, where 8-10 means high confidence.

Just 3.4% of global participants rated their Confidence at 9-10.? Women in both Germany and the US have moderate confidence with scores of 6.5 and 6.7.

Source: Women’s confidence report published in 2021

AI ??

This time everything is about Agents. Agents are what will make GenAI into a real superpower. The term agent might not be hard to grasp for now. People use it for custom GPTs (basically specialized assistants) up to complex multi-agent systems where several agents interact with each other. Here are some resources to learn more about the what will change how we leverage and work with AI:

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