Confidence

THE TENSION

Confidence. Most technical leaders have genuine confidence in their domain - in their ability to analyse data, solve spatial problems, and produce accurate outputs. What many discover, often unexpectedly, is that this confidence does not automatically transfer when the room changes.

“Domain confidence and leadership confidence are different muscles. The first got you promoted. The second is what the role actually requires.”

THE SCENARIO

Ben Sandoval has been Environmental GIS Team Lead at South Australia’s Department for Environment and Water for nine months. He coordinates spatial data management for national parks, marine parks, and water resources across the state — technically complex, multi-stakeholder work that Ben navigates with genuine skill.

In his own team’s environment, Ben is assured. He moves through technical problems with ease, explains complex spatial concepts clearly to colleagues, and makes decisions with confidence when the domain is familiar.

In executive briefings and cross-department governance meetings, he is a different person.

Last Tuesday, Ben presented his team’s work on marine park boundary datasets to a group of senior executives and external stakeholders. He had prepared thoroughly. The data was sound. Halfway through, a deputy director asked a question that was less about the data and more about the strategic direction of the project. Ben gave a technically accurate answer that did not address what the deputy director was actually asking.

Afterwards, his manager noted - gently - that Ben had seemed hesitant in the room. Ben knew. He had felt the shift the moment the question moved away from the spatial domain and into the organisational one. His certainty, which is reliable when he is on home ground, does not yet extend to the territory where leadership actually plays out.

He has started avoiding governance meetings where possible. His manager has started noticing the pattern.

WHAT’S DRIVING IT

Confidence is how you relate to certainties, uncertainties, doubts, and hesitation - the belief or understanding that you can rely on your own abilities and qualities in a given context. For technical professionals, confidence is context-dependent in a way that can be invisible until a new context arrives.

Ben’s technical confidence is real and well-founded. What is not yet present is the confidence to operate effectively in the ambiguous, interpersonal, strategically inflected environments that leadership requires. This is not a character deficiency - it is an unfamiliar terrain. The risk is in how Ben is responding to it: by avoiding rather than developing.

Confidence that is protected by avoidance does not grow. It consolidates around the territory it already knows and shrinks from anything new.

A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP WITH CONFIDENCE

A healthy relationship with confidence means you are predominantly able to forego your doubts and uncertainties and not allow them to stop your progress. Others experience you as self-assured, even in challenging or unfamiliar situations. You leverage your strengths and available resources to move forward despite hesitation - aware of your limitations, but not governed by them.

In practice, this looks like Ben choosing to stay in the governance meeting rather than finding a reason to send a delegate. It looks like him preparing not just the technical content but the strategic framing - because he knows that is the territory that challenges him. It looks like him walking into an executive briefing knowing he will not have every answer, and being confident enough in himself to say so clearly when that moment arrives.

REFLECTION PROMPTS

- In which rooms or situations does your confidence reliably disappear - and what have you been doing with that pattern?

- What are you currently avoiding that, if you engaged with it directly, would build the kind of confidence the role requires?

- What is the difference between preparing for a technical question and preparing for a strategic one - and which one do you currently spend more time on?

- What would it look like to be in the difficult room, not perform flawlessly, and still consider it a development rather than a failure?

If the gap between your technical confidence and your leadership confidence is one you’ve noticed but not yet addressed - The Being Profile maps how confidence operates in your specific way of being as a leader: where it is available, where it is not, and what becomes possible when it extends into the whole role.

Get in touch at hello@mappingbeing.com.au

While the organisations referenced exist, the team lead, other people and the team name have been used for demonstration purposes only. Any resemblance to real-life people, teams, organisations or situations is purely coincidental.

Reference: Tashvir, A. (2021). BEING (p. 495). Engenesis Publications.

[Published: 24 August 2026]