Women aren’t feeling confident in their roles – how can leaders change this?

Women are struggling to stay confident at work. While this may seem like a personal issue, leaders play a significant role in rectifying this, with change required at the top.

The Voice of Women at Work 2023 report by Women Rising revealed that the biggest challenges women are facing at work right now are a lack of confidence and self-doubt.

One of the 53 per cent of respondents who agrees their confidence is lacking is Nicki, who works in software and IT services: “I feel my confidence has dropped over the last 18 months due to the environment I work in,” she said.

Megan Dalla-Camina, founder and CEO of Women Rising, says there’s more that can be done to support women in the workplace: “The confidence challenge that women face, the inner critics and imposter syndrome … [is] the number one challenge that women say they experience in pursuing their goals, in showing up how they want to show up and in fulfilling their own potential.”

“One of the biggest things that plays into confidence is the environment that I’m in … It’s how many times I get interrupted in a meeting when I’m trying to speak. It’s someone taking credit for my work, and we see really high numbers of women reporting on these things, and the impact that then has on women’s confidence together with our own socialisation of women can deeply impact the stories and the narratives that we tell ourselves about what we’re capable of.”

Building a psychologically safe workplace free of bias falls on everyone, especially leaders. Stamping out issues and striving to create an inclusive and risk-free environment should be the goal of any employer.

“One of the biggest things that we need, that women need around that is the self-compassion. We’re great at expressing compassion for others, not so great at turning that on ourselves,” Ms Dalla-Camina explained.

“And the support in having managers, HR leaders and peer groups be able to understand where there is a confidence issue underpinning a woman not speaking up, or not putting herself forward for the promotion … and having the tools and understanding [to say] ‘What do we now do about that?’”

For leaders, it’s important to learn how to deal with issues. Ms Dalla-Camina notes that berating people for bias tendencies isn’t the way forward. Instead, education and training are what will make a difference.

“At the end of the day, when it comes to bias, we’re human beings, we all have bias. We’re never going to stamp bias out. There was this whole wave for 15 years of unconscious bias training, and that’s a good thing, but we also saw that that didn’t really shift the needle,” she outlined.

“We have to help people really understand not just this is what bias is, but this is what you do about it. Here are the bias interrupters and build a culture of calling people in, not out. Calling people in to say, that just happened, maybe this would have been a better approach.

Ms Dalla-Camina continued: “And building that culture of knowing what it is, recognising it, having the interrupters in place, calling it out when we’re seeing it in a way that doesn’t shame people but helps us all move forward to creating that environment that we want around inclusiveness, belonging, acceptance, and greater levels of thriving.”

The transcript of this podcast episode was slightly edited for publishing purposes. To listen to the full conversation with Megan Dalla-Camina, click below: