Do you feel confident leading projects?
If you don’t, do you want to?
Do you want to be the project professional who can walk into a room full of conflicted stakeholders with a smile, knowing you have what it takes to get them moving in the same direction and to shepherd your project’s big, important goals toward reality?
Especially in a professional setting, we tend to associate this type of calm poise with experience. If a project manager seems confident, we assume they’ve spent years leading hundreds of projects.
Experience certainly helps. But when it comes to exuding confidence in your project leadership role, lack of experience does NOT have to be a barrier. You do not have to wait years to feel—and convey—confidence in the value you offer your projects and teams.
I don’t struggle with confidence much these days, in my project leadership career or otherwise. But I believe that’s because I DID struggle with social confidence as an adolescent, and I did a lot of the hard internal work at that time to address my obstacles to a confident mentality. In my experience:
- Feeling confident comes down to identifying what you can be confident IN and WHY—and then facing the reality of your sources of your confidence, letting them push back against your doubt.
- Showing confidence comes most easily when you feel confident, but there are confident actions you can choose to take as a project leader regardless of how you feel.
In this post, I’ll talk about both feeling confidence and showing confidence with your project teams. Whichever parts you can act on, I know both you and your projects will benefit.
How to Feel Confident
Typically, when I see confidence elevated as a valued trait on social media or in other cultural spaces, people are encouraged to “be confident” without any real direction on how to enter such a state of being. In my teen years, I realized something that helped cut through this vague fog around confidence and allowed me to get in touch with a confidence of my own.
The Confidence Formula:
Confidence is always IN something, and usually BECAUSE OF something.
Let me explain using examples.
If a person is confident, what could they be confident IN?
- Jerry is confident IN his ability to lead project meetings.
- Alice is confident IN the security of her relationship with her partner.
- Ben is confident IN the reliability of his project team.
- Abdul is confident IN his likelihood of getting a promotion.
Now, looking at the same list, what might be the reason behind the confidence in these situations?
- Jerry is confident IN his ability to lead project meetings BECAUSE he leads efficient, effective project meetings every week.
- Alice is confident IN the security of her relationship with her partner BECAUSE her partner has stayed with her through many difficult situations.
- Ben is confident IN the reliability of his project team BECAUSE they’ve nearly always completed tasks on time in the past.
- Abdul is confident IN his likelihood of getting a promotion BECAUSE of the positive feedback his boss has given him lately.
Can you see how people aren’t just “confident” in a general sense, but their confidence is based on beliefs or narratives like the examples above? If you don’t feel confident—as a project leader or otherwise—this is good news for you. Because now you have a path to find confidence. You just need to fill in the blanks:
I can be confident IN ____________ BECAUSE ____________ .
We’ll talk in a bit about how you could fill in these blanks as a project leader, especially if you’re new to the role. But understanding this formula is the first step.
An Important Note About Your Value as a Human
Do you, or does anybody you know, fill in the blanks this way?
I can be confident IN my value as a human BECAUSE OF my professional accomplishments. In other words, are you looking to your professional accomplishments as the basis for your self-worth?
If this is true for you, I really encourage you to take some time to identify another more solid and stable basis for confidence IN your value as a human. Aside from the tremendous personal benefits, you’ll see numerous professional benefits as well:
- You’ll have a seed of confidence to carry with you into all professional situations, regardless of how you’re performing.
- You’ll bounce back from professional failures more quickly because you weren’t asking them to carry the full weight of your value as a person.
- You can be more objective about your professional abilities, and this objectivity will be a catalyst for faster professional growth.
Now, with all this in mind, let’s talk about how you might find a feeling of confidence as a project leader.
As a project professional, what can you have confidence IN?
Professionally, a realistic place to put much of your confidence in is your abilities:
I can be confident IN my ability to __________ BECAUSE ____________.
I would describe much of my confidence as a project leader as “confidence IN my ability to handle whatever a project throws at me.” At the beginning of this post, I painted a picture of a project leader who has “confidence IN their ability to align difficult stakeholders and to shepherd project goals toward reality.”
Even as a new project manager, abilities can form a major part of your confidence picture, but other factors can help as well. Let’s look at some basic ways you might fill in the confidence formula that are honest and genuine.
Your Existing Abilities
Do you lack confidence in specific abilities you need for your role, or your ability to handle certain situations? If so, I still think filling out the confidence formula this way would be honest for you:
You can be confident IN your ability to handle many types of situations BECAUSE you’ve faced similar situations before, and someone gave you a chance because they believe in your abilities.
Key project management skills like good communication, negotiation, conflict management, planning, problem-solving, organization, pivoting, and attention to detail are needed by every human to some extent. If you’re on a project management path, you likely already exercise these skills more than the average person, and excel in at least some of them, if project management feels like a good-fit career for you. You don’t need to use skills as a project manager to have the skills of a project manager.
Furthermore, if you’ve already been given projects to manage in your job, one or more people at your company see these competencies in you even if you don’t see them in yourself. So on the days you doubt your abilities, remember the other people who believe in them enough to be trusting you with their projects.
Your Ability to Grow
But what about abilities you just don’t have, or completely new situations? You can still be a great learner and problem-solver, no matter the setting. Maybe your confidence formula would look like this:
You can be confident IN your ability to figure out how to handle new situations BECAUSE you have many resources available to you.
What are those resources? One very helpful resource is simply telling people you need time to find a solution. The phrase “I’ll get back to you” is your friend. This works in person, by phone, or by email. Nobody expects you to answer every question or handle every problem immediately—a good solution commands more respect than a quick but bad solution.
Maybe you just need the time to think it through. Maybe other project stakeholders or coworkers can help. Maybe your mentors can provide suggestions or an objective perspective. Maybe you could look up ways others have solved the problem, using a tool like the Disciplined Agile Browser from PMI. When you have additional time, the possibilities are endless.
Your Teams
If the previous two approaches don’t help, and you still feel lost, remember you are not alone:
You can be confident IN the willingness of team members and other stakeholders to help you BECAUSE nobody expects you to be good at everything, and this is what teams are for.
In contrast to the previous approaches, this is not about your abilities—it is about the abilities and willingness of others. A few of you might be in particularly unhealthy work scenarios and not have much support. But for the most part, people like to and want to help other people. Just like you get a feeling of satisfaction in helping your project teams, your team members will likely also feel satisfied and empowered when they get to help you.
Yes, this takes some of the control out of your hands as the project leader. But ultimately, this is how healthy teams work. When you struggle to complete a task your project needs to move forward, even if you think it’s your job, can a team member help you out? Ultimately the goal is that you all work together to get the project across the finish line.
Write Out Your Confidence Formulas
Do you see yourself in any of the confidence narratives above? Can you take any of these basic ideas and update the blanks to be more specific to your situation and role?
Writing them out and looking at them regularly can be a powerful force to push back against your doubts. It might actually convince you that confidence is the most honest and realistic way for you to feel about your ability to lead projects.
And don’t limit yourself to just one formula. Why not identify as many foundations for professional confidence as you can? Different statements are likely to be more helpful or resonate with you more on different days.
How to Show Confidence
So we’ve talked at length about how to feel confident in your project leadership role. But maybe the confidence formula doesn’t resonate with you—or maybe it does, but you’re still looking for practical tips for behaving like a confident project leader. Great! This section is for you.
Here are some actions that will communicate confidence to others, and bring you the benefits of confidence, no matter how confident you feel.
Prepare.
I’m sure you’re no stranger to the benefits of preparation, or how confident a prepared person seems. But don’t overlook this time-tested tool. Do the research you’re able to do, and practice what you’re able to practice in the time you have.
Sometimes it’s better to ask for additional time to prepare before a group event like a meeting, so that the meeting will make the best use of everyone’s time.
Look people in the eye, wait an extra second, then smile at them.
Confident people are likely to look people in the eye when they talk, while less confident people are likely to look away. Practice doing the former, maybe with trusted friends at first, and then with people you know less well. If you’ve prepared what you want to say, this can be easier.
Also, when you first look at somebody, if you pause for a second and then smile at them, this will start the interaction off on a great foot while painting you as a confident person. This is an excellent tip I learned from the book “How to Talk to Anyone” over a decade ago and still use regularly.
Speak up about what you know. Be honest about what you don’t know.
When confident people have something genuinely helpful to share, they make a point to share it, even if it requires interruption. Likewise, if they don’t know something, they don’t pretend to know…because they don’t need to boost their own confidence by sounding smart.
You can project confidence by being honest about your knowledge in both scenarios.
Use fewer words.
Using more words to explain an idea usually has the effect of making a person seem nervous, emotional, or defensive. In contrast, you seem more confident in your idea when you don’t feel the need to use as many words to support it.
You don’t need to go to the point of being snippy or curt; still use positive language, a positive tone, and a smile. But confident people do err on the side of being more direct.
Be honest about what you need to do a good job.
Do you agree to do things without enough time or resources because you’re afraid to ask for what you need?
Confident people avoid this. They are honest up-front about the time, help, or materials they need to do a good job so they will be more likely to succeed at what they agree to. And if they don’t know what they need, they ask for time to assess and return with a realistic proposal.
Be authentic, not necessarily extraverted.
This one is for my fellow introverts. While extraverts can seem confident, I have a hard time emulating that level of energy while staying authentic. Instead, I find alternative ways to express confidence that work with my introverted energy—having more one-on-one discussions, taking time to write out my thoughts in an email, preparing for presentations extensively, etc. If you’re an extravert, lean into it! Use that energy to project confidence! But if not, show confidence in ways that are more authentic to you.
Why Confidence Matters
Let me leave you with a few practical benefits of professional confidence to inspire your journey toward building and showing confidence with your project teams.
- Confidence typically inspires trust. People like to follow people who appear confident about what they say and the direction they are going.
- Abilities exercised confidently are more easily noticed. If you do something confidently, those in a position to promote you or offer you a new opportunity are more likely to notice and believe you can perform.
- You’re likely to be more satisfied with your work and enjoy it more. As genuine confidence builds inside you, you won’t waste energy worrying about situations or your abilities. You’ll have more energy to be present in your work and with your teams, and to feel real joy about your contributions.
I hope in the next few days there will be a sticky note in your office, on your refrigerator, or on your bathroom mirror with a confidence formula statement that is authentic for you, and you’ll have tried some confident actions with your project teams. And I hope through these steps, you’ll begin to see that the power to become a confident project leader is already in your hands.
Megan Mehrle, PMP, is a member of the PMI Metropolitan St. Louis Chapter. She has been leading projects since 2016, and she blogs weekly at projectswithimpact.com.
