What If Confidence Didn’t Require Performance?

But what if leadership didn’t mean striving for more? What if it meant being more yourself?

At our recent Network for Black Women Leaders (NBWL) Elevate Session, confidence coach and activist Mars Lord invited Black women leaders to rethink what confidence looks like.

Too often, we’re rewarded for performing confidence. Over-preparing, over-delivering, people-pleasing, silencing our truth. But this “performance” comes at a cost: burnout, resentment, and disconnection from who we really are.

Instead, Mars challenged us to practise a different kind of leadership: quiet, rooted confidence. Confidence that doesn’t need applause to be real.

The heart of the session was reflection. Here we share some of the powerful questions Mars asked us to sit with. Why not take a few minutes for yourself and explore them too?

Reflect on Performance

What one word describes how you usually perform confidence? (e.g. smiling, over-preparing, silencing your truth)
Where in your life are you performing more than you are being?
Where do you feel most pressure to perform?

Imagine Confidence Without Proving

If you didn’t have to prove anything to anyone, what would confidence look and feel like for you?
What would change if you put down the mask of performance, even for a moment?
What stories about leadership are you ready to let go of?

Quiet confidence is...

Rooted

Self-trusting

Truthful

Free

...like the sun, shining without apology, allowing others to step into the shade if they wish.

Challenge Perfectionism & People-Pleasing

Where is perfectionism holding you hostage — and what would freedom look like instead?
When was the last time you swallowed your truth?
What would it have felt like to actually say it?

Embody Truthful Presence

How can you root yourself in confidence even when nerves show up?
What does it mean for you to embody confidence — not as an act, but as a way of being?

The Three Shifts

Let go of perfectionism

Perfection is performance; progress is freedom. Ask yourself: Where is perfectionism holding me hostage?

Reclaim your voice

People-pleasing is self-silencing. Your voice isn’t something to earn — it’s your inheritance. Reflect: When was the last time I swallowed my truth?

Embody truthful presence

Confidence isn’t about the absence of nerves. It’s about being rooted despite them. It’s the silence after you’ve said what you really mean.

A Final Commitment

Mars closed the session with this challenge: “I will lead with quiet confidence by…”

Take a moment to finish that sentence for yourself. Write it down, return to it often, and let it guide how you show up in your work and life.

Confidence is not an act. It is embodied truth. It is the freedom to step into our leadership not by performing, but by being — rooted, unapologetic, and real. As Mars put it: “Your voice isn’t something you earn. It’s yours because you exist.”

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