Why Leaders Confuse Confidence with Clarity
Typically, humans respond instinctively to confidence, believing the speaker to know more than they actually do.
The leader who speaks decisively, simplifies complexity, and moves quickly is often perceived as strong, which we admire as it makes us feel safe. The leader who pauses, asks difficult questions, or holds ambiguity is perceived as uncertain and weaker. Over time, this can create issues within organisations, subtly but powerfully distorting how leadership capability is assessed. Decisive speaking is associated with proper thinking, which it is a dangerous conflation.
We can all acknowledge why we fall back on instinct with this. In environments characterised by pressure, pace, and scrutiny, certainty feels reassuring. It signals control and reduces anxiety. But confidence is not the same as clarity, and mistaking one for the other has consequences, particularly in complex change, transformation, and AI-enabled programmes, which are fast-paced but need considered but agile approaches.
Friction goes down with Confidence, but often rises in the search for Clarity
Clarity requires a bit more time, time to question and challenge. You need to surface trade-offs, name constraints, and acknowledge what is not yet known. Doubt can also be mistaken for negativity and resistance rather than a quest for deeper understanding or potential issues that need resolved. It may slow the conversation, but it has a superior impact on execution, as the chance is taken to resolve roadblocks early. However, I don’t doubt that it can feel uncomfortable, especially in senior forums where performance and authority are on display.
Confidence, by contrast, reduces discussion. It moves teams quickly to a conclusion, assuming competence, often before the underlying problem has been fully explored. This is not incompetence; it is a human response to cognitive and social pressure. Leaders are rewarded for decisiveness, not for sitting with uncertainty.
The risk is that organisations prefer confidence at precisely the moments when clarity matters most.
This shows up clearly in change and transformation work
In project and transformation settings, confident leadership often manifests as strong narratives: milestones, frameworks, and reassuring reporting on progress. (More green, please!) These are not inherently problematic. Structure and direction are necessary, but the problem arises when confidence shuts down debate.
Confidence is performative, often political. Clarity can be downright irritating.
Clarity is often the fly in the ointment. We see it in the space of difficult questions rather than glib answers. It is also visible in how leaders respond to challenges, which can make them appear vulnerable. However, judging strength in how forcefully they impose their perhaps not fully informed view leaves plenty of room for error.
Leaders who value clarity create space for:
competing interpretations of the same data
disagreement without personal cost
revisiting decisions when conditions change
This is cognitively demanding and socially risky; it is a brave thing to do. It requires leaders to tolerate not knowing, and to model that not knowing is not a failure of authority.
The cost of confusing the two
When confidence is consistently rewarded over clarity, organisations drift toward performative decision-making. Progress is performative: blunt, visually digestible instruments on Power BI, and not enough time is given to dig deeper. Curiosity is rarely given any airtime over our need for speed. AI and digital programmes, in particular, suffer from this dynamic: technical confidence masks unresolved behavioural and cultural questions.
The danger is that, eventually, the organisation pays for this confusion through rework, stalled adoption, or a sudden loss of trust when reality catches up with the narrative.
A different leadership signal – are you brave enough?
Strong leadership in complex environments does not eliminate uncertainty, but it does make it discussable.
Clarity is not about having better answers. It is about creating the conditions in which better answers can surface. That requires judgment, humility, and psychological safety far more than it requires overt confidence.
