The Invisible Foundation of Leadership - Building Confidence

Step into the new year with confidence and intention.

As we turn the calendar to January, the retail world collectively exhales from the holiday peak and immediately inhales for the year ahead. Boardrooms and corporate offices fill with strategy sessions, roadmap discussions, and financial forecasting. Team kickoff meetings get scheduled. All so we can set goals for sales growth, inventory turns, and customer satisfaction. We often refer to these as planning sessions, the aforementioned "kickoffs," or a jumpstart to the year. Depending on your business's fiscal year, it may already be underway in early January or scheduled for February when the year begins. But a plan, no matter how detailed, is merely a wish without the courage to execute it.

In my experience, the difference between a "same old, same old" year and a breakthrough year isn't usually the strategy itself. It's the "invisible foundation" upon which that strategy rests: confidence. The belief that you can make the changes you're aspiring to, both personally and with your team. In most cases, we can at least fake the belief when we're executing someone else's strategy, knowing it won't work and we'll need to change. But even that reveals your personal confidence in achieving the outcome, even if through other means.

Confidence fuels all other leadership skills: coaching, decisive execution, and difficult conversations all depend on it. Without confidence, competence goes to waste and influence remains limited. As we enter this new year, think of confidence not as a personality trait you hope to have, but as a discipline you build. Mindset matters.

If you've struggled with confidence, shift your thinking: "I am not as confident as I'd like, yet."

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t — you’re right.”

— Henry Ford

Defining the Stakes

Why focus on confidence now? I hear from a lot of leaders, at all points in their careers, that they don’t always feel confident in what they are doing or how they are leading their team. Your friendly personality and engagement with others can get you a long way, but it rarely gets you to a place where you feel as though you are influencing real change, especially on a larger scale. As you are completing your honest assessments and review sessions (as many people have done at the end of the year), now is a perfect time to look at the power of confidence in leadership.

It is a changing world out there, especially in retail. We face shifting consumer behaviors, supply chain hiccups, and a labor market that demands more from leaders than ever before. It can be easy to lose confidence in the uncertainty of the environment. After all, none of us really know what will happen in the coming twelve months. How many people had everything that happened in 2025 on their BINGO card? In these environments, a lack of confidence can to "hedging bets" or worse, inaction. The fear of doing something that might fail is paralyzing for many leaders.

No one follows a leader who is constantly protecting themselves, taking the safe approach, or looking for an exit strategy before the work even begins. People can sense when a leader is holding back. When a leader lacks confidence, they unintentionally create a culture of hesitation. They hoard knowledge because they fear that sharing it diminishes their value. They snuff out better ideas because they view them as threats rather than contributions.

In contrast, the confident leader believes that success is inevitable, not because they know the future, but because they believe in their ability to handle whatever the future brings.

Confidence is Courage

It is vital to clarify early on what I mean by confidence. It is not about knowing everything. It is not about bravado. It certainly isn’t arrogance.

Confidence is courage. Confidence done well is authentic. It is the internal attribute that allows a leader to take chances, knowing that failure on its own is not catastrophic. It is the courage to break out into new areas, try new merchandising strategies, or try new processes, accepting that there are different ways to do things.

When you lead with this type of courage, you create an environment that pulls your team forward. You demonstrate that you will grow and learn from experiences, rather than fearing you will be fired or thought less of for a single mistake. This psychological stability is what allows teams to weather the storms when they occur.

The Roadmap for January

Over the next four articles, we are going to break down the misconceptions about confidence and rebuild it as a tangible leadership skill. We will move beyond the "fake it ‘til you make it" thought processes and look at the structure of what makes a leader truly grounded.

Here is where we are going:

• Part 2: We will distinguish the fine line between confidence and arrogance. We will explore why true confidence is quiet and how humility is actually a sign of high self-esteem.

• Part 3: We will look under the hood at the science of confidence. Don’t worry, you won’t need a chemistry degree to understand, but there are some interesting elements in our biology that impact how we feel about ourselves and the way we function under pressure.

• Part 4: We will connect confidence to influence. We will look at how your internal state bridges the gap between strategy and frontline execution.

• Part 5: We will wrap up by looking at the "Confident Servant," the leader who combines competence with connection to drive results.

The goal of a plan is not to say you have a plan; it is to have specific steps with clarity to achieve a defined outcome. Let this series be your plan for building the internal strength necessary to lead effectively in the coming year.

Get started right away. Start with thinking about one thing you can do differently related to your mindset around confidence. If you thought about it from a confident perspective, what would you do differently? Write down your thoughts and then put it into practice during a one-on-one conversation, team meeting, or huddle discussion today.

What else are you looking forward to getting from this series on building confidence?

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