Professor Ginka Toegel is Professor of Organisational Behaviour and Leadership at IMD Business School and author of The Confidence Myth: How Women Leaders Can Break Free from Gendered Perceptions (Palgrave Macmillan).
There is a quiet moment that happens in many women’s careers.
It arrives just before a promotion, just before a leadership opportunity, just before the moment when years of preparation are finally meant to bear fruit. On paper, everything looks ready. The skills are there. The results are there. The feedback is strong. Yet internally, something tightens. A familiar voice begins to whisper questions that feel deeply personal and strangely convincing. Am I really ready? What if I am found out? What if I disappoint everyone who believes in me? This moment is often described as a confidence problem. It is treated as something women must fix within themselves, as if self-belief were a missing muscle that simply needs more training. But the truth is more complex and far more hopeful.
Confidence is not a personality trait. It is a relationship between a person and the system they operate in. It grows where expectations are clear, feedback is fair and opportunities are distributed consistently. It weakens where rules are ambiguous, standards shift and visibility is uneven. What many women experience, is not a lack of belief in themselves. It is the emotional echo of environments that quietly ask them to prove readiness again and again.
Research shows that women do not lack ambition. Girls express strong aspirations from a young age, and adult women negotiate for promotions at rates equal to men. Women’s confidence also grows rapidly with experience. By mid-career it often matches or exceeds that of their male peers. Yet women remain under-represented at the top. This tells us something important. The hesitation that appears just before advancement is not a personal flaw. It is a learned response to systems that reward potential differently depending on who you are.
For many women, success has required excellence. Consistency. Evidence. Proof. Over time this creates an internal rulebook that says you must be fully ready before you step forward. Men, on the other hand, are more often promoted on promise. They are encouraged to grow into roles rather than qualify for them in advance. Women often receive higher performance ratings than men, yet are assessed as having lower leadership potential. When the criteria differ, so do the inner stories people tell themselves.
Self-doubt is not weakness. It is awareness shaped by experience. It reflects a history of needing to be careful. Of being evaluated more closely. Of knowing that mistakes are not always forgiven equally. The body remembers these patterns even when the mind wants to move ahead. Nerves appear. Caution rises. The moment becomes heavy.
The key to change does not lie in silencing doubt. It lies in understanding it. Self-doubt is a signal, not a verdict. It does not mean you are unqualified. It means the moment matters. It means you are stretching into new territory. It means your system is preparing you for growth.
What transforms this moment is not bravado. It is reframing. Reframing is the ability to pause, notice the story you are telling yourself and ask whether it is the only story available. It is the gentle act of widening your perspective when fear narrows it. Imagine being offered a leadership role that excites you and unsettles you in equal measure. The first interpretation might be that the role is too big or that you will struggle to meet expectations. Reframing does not deny the challenge. It invites additional truths to stand beside it. You might also consider that you were chosen because someone sees potential you have not yet fully recognised. You might remind yourself that growth has always felt uncomfortable at the beginning. You might notice that feeling unsure does not mean you are unready. It means you are human.
When you change the meaning of the moment, your emotional response shifts. Anxiety softens. Curiosity returns. Courage becomes accessible again. How we interpret stress shapes how our bodies and minds respond to it. When stress is seen as danger, performance contracts. When it is seen as preparation, people become more focused, more energised and more capable. The situation does not change. The story does.
This matters not only for individual women but for organisations as well. When talented women hesitate, systems lose future leaders. When doubt is misread as lack of ambition, opportunities are quietly redirected elsewhere. Over time, this reshapes leadership pipelines in ways that look natural but are anything but. True progress begins when we recognise that confidence is co-created. It is shaped by how roles are framed, how potential is discussed, how mistakes are treated and how readiness is defined. Women do not need to become someone else to belong at the top. Systems need to become fairer in how they invite people there.
Confidence is not the absence of doubt. It is the willingness to move forward with doubt beside you, choosing stories that support growth rather than fear. Every time a woman reframes a moment of hesitation into a moment of possibility, she is not only changing her own path. She is gently reshaping the culture that once taught her to wait.
And in that quiet shift, leadership evolves.
