Introduction
What would change if you felt more confident? Would you have a better job with more responsibilities, making more money? Would your personal life look different? Would your conversations be more honest? Think about this for a minute.
If you said yes to any of these questions, let’s look at some of the reasons why you aren’t where you’d like to be. You probably want to address both external and internal factors. Externally, women face cultural prejudices that impede our advancement—we are confronted by gender inequities every day. We get frustrated because sometimes our goals have to take a backseat to navigating through this resistance.
But despite these obstacles, some women have been able to move up to the C-suite. So how did they do it? Do they, internally, have more confidence than the average woman? These questions intrigued me.
As an expert on women’s issues, I am often asked how to develop confidence. This question kept coming up, so I thought it was time to write about the important topic of women and confidence. I interviewed a number of successful women leaders to find out their thoughts, and after talking to them and reflecting on my own experiences in the workplace, I realized that Confidence with a capital C is a myth. No one has the confidence issue all sewn up, but there’s this pervasive misconception that some of us do.
Confidence is often understood to mean
• Being comfortable with oneself (true)
• Courageously taking action while not knowing the result (true)
• Practicing fearlessness (false)
Fear is actually an inherent part of stepping out in a new way. Too many of us wait until we feel comfortable that all of our skills line up before we make a move, and as a result, we miss out on the big breaks needed to advance our careers.
The goal of this book is to demonstrate that most women in positions of leadership who have achieved high levels of success felt shaky at times, but they took action anyway. If they hadn’t, they would have missed valuable opportunities to make a difference.