One of the most persistent assumptions about confidence is that we need to feel it before we act.
We wait until we’re confident enough to speak up in the meeting. Confident enough to have the difficult conversation. Confident enough to challenge an idea. Confident enough to make the decision.
But what if we have the sequence backward?
In a recent conversation on Leading Through Growth, leadership expert and former U.S. Marine Jill Schulman offered a different way to think about the relationship between confidence and action.
“Actually, it’s action that precedes the confidence,” she said. Pasted text
That distinction matters not only for individual leaders. It has implications for how organizations develop people, create psychological safety, and build cultures where employees are willing to say what needs to be said.
Confidence may be the result, not the prerequisite
Fear is easy to interpret as information.
I’m nervous about this, so maybe I’m not ready.
I don’t feel confident enough yet.
I’ll wait until I’m more comfortable.
Jill argues that waiting can become its own trap. If people wait until they feel completely ready, they may never act—or may act much later than they should. Instead, she describes bravery almost like a muscle: growth happens through manageable exposure to discomfort rather than avoiding discomfort entirely. Pasted text
That doesn’t mean throwing someone who fears public speaking onto a stage in front of a thousand people.
It might mean preparing one idea before the next team meeting. Rehearsing how to articulate it. Then committing to saying it when the opportunity comes.
The action is small enough to be achievable but uncomfortable enough to provide new evidence: I did that.
Over time, those experiences become the raw material for confidence. Pasted text
Psychological safety can’t remove every ounce of fear
This idea becomes especially interesting when applied to psychological safety.
Organizations have spent years talking about creating environments where employees feel safe speaking up. That’s important. But Jill makes a distinction that deserves more attention.
Creating psychological safety is a leadership responsibility. Leaders can lower the perceived risk associated with offering an idea, raising a concern, admitting a mistake, or disagreeing.
They can explicitly tell employees their voices are wanted. They can ask for input rather than waiting for it. And perhaps most importantly, they can pay attention to how they respond when someone actually challenges them.
But leaders cannot reduce the perceived risk to zero.
At some point, the employee still has to speak.
That’s where bravery enters the equation. Jill describes the combination of an environment that encourages speaking up and people willing to act despite residual fear as “courageous candor.” Pasted text
That’s a useful distinction for People leaders.
The goal isn’t choosing between a supportive culture and an accountable one. Nor is psychological safety a promise that work will never be uncomfortable.
A healthy environment can make courageous behavior easier. It cannot make courage unnecessary.
Courage has to exist below the executive team
Organizations often associate courage with the big decisions made at the top.
A CEO makes the acquisition. An executive changes strategy. A senior leader makes the difficult call.
But Jill argues that organizations need bravery much further down.
Individual contributors interact with customers. They’re often closest to operational friction. They see processes that don’t work, customer needs that aren’t being met, and problems that may never appear on an executive dashboard.
And because they’re closest to those problems, they may also have some of the best ideas for solving them. Pasted text
That information only becomes useful to the organization if someone is willing to say something.
For a growing company, this becomes increasingly important. As headcount increases, senior leaders inevitably become further removed from some of the day-to-day realities of the business.
A culture where people see problems but hesitate to surface them creates an information problem.
A culture where people are expected—and equipped—to speak up creates a different kind of operating system.
Attack the hill
Near the end of our conversation, Jill shared a phrase she carried from the Marine Corps:
Embrace the suck.
Her point wasn’t simply that work should be hard.
It’s that difficult things don’t usually disappear because we avoid them.
She uses another phrase: attack the hill.
If a difficult conversation sits between you and the outcome you need, worrying about the conversation doesn’t remove it. Talking about how difficult it will be doesn’t remove it. Moving it to tomorrow’s calendar doesn’t remove it.
The hill is still there.
The only thing that changes your position relative to it is movement. Pasted text
That brings the conversation back to confidence.
Perhaps the question isn’t:
Do I feel confident enough to do this?
A more useful question might be the one Jill recommends asking when fear shows up:
What does my future self want me to do in this moment? Pasted text
Then take the next reasonable step.
Even if your knees are still shaking.
