The Three Types of Confidence

Guest article written by Victoria Liu, Master Executive Coach and Amazon bestselling author of Quiet Perseverance.

One of the things I come across most often in my work is the belief that confidence is something you either have or you don't.

A client will come to me and say that she lacks confidence. She wants to speak up more in meetings, put herself forward for opportunities, or share her ideas without replaying every word in her head afterwards, and wondering if she should have stayed silent.

And yet, when we start talking, something interesting occurs. She knows her subject. She has the experience, the qualifications and the track record. She has solved difficult problems and spent years building expertise. If I looked purely at the evidence in front of me, I would struggle to argue that capability is the issue.

But she still doesn't feel confident. Which, given everything she brings to her work, can feel like a contradiction.

It is not. Confidence is not linear. It is made up of three different elements:

• Confidence in competence

• Confidence in identity

• Confidence in visibility

These do not exist as separate compartments in everyday life. You do not walk around thinking, "my confidence in competence is strong today, but my visibility could use some work." You simply feel confident, or you don't.

In practice, these arenas do not announce themselves separately. You simply feel confident, or you don’t. But understanding the difference between them can be genuinely liberating.

Confidence in competence

This is the type of confidence most of us recognise immediately. It is the confidence that comes from knowing how to do something.

Think about learning to drive. In the beginning, every action requires conscious effort. You are thinking about the clutch, the mirrors, the gears and the road all at once. Over time, something changes. Not because driving becomes less important, but because practice changes your relationship with it. What once required conscious effort now becomes second nature.

Confidence in competence develops in much the same way. It is built through experience, repetition and learning.

Most of my clients have already developed this type of confidence. They know their subject. They know their role. They know how to do the work. Which is why it is always interesting when they tell me they still don't feel confident. It usually means the challenge is not competence at all.

Confidence in identity

This is where things become more personal. Identity confidence has nothing to do with whether you can do something. It is about how you see yourself.

It is the felt sense - beneath everything else - that you belong. That you deserve to be where you are. Deserve to embrace the opportunities in front of you. That what you have to say, genuinely matters.

When confidence in your identity is strong, you act from it without needing to think about it. When it is not, something shifts. You begin to question yourself in ways that have nothing to do with your ability. “Am I really qualified enough? Have I done enough? Is what I have to say worth saying?”

The question that sits underneath all of that, often unspoken, is this:

Not "can I do this?" but "should someone like me be doing this?"

It is one of the most common things I hear in my work, and one of the things women are least likely to say out loud. Because it does not feel like a confidence problem. It feels like a fact about who they are.

This is the type of confidence that holds us back from things we could be doing. The promotion we do not apply for. The business we have been thinking about for years, but cannot quite let ourselves begin. The room we could speak up in, but hang back from. The opportunity that arrives, and the first thought is not "am I able to?" but "is this really for someone like me?"

None of those decisions feel like confidence problems in the moment. They feel like sensible self-awareness. But often, they are not.

Many of my clients arrive convinced they need another qualification, another year of experience, another piece of evidence before they can feel more confident. What they are wrestling with is rarely any of those things. It is how they see themselves. And until that begins to shift, no qualification will quite settle it.

Confidence in visibility

If identity confidence is about letting yourself try, visibility confidence is about letting yourself be seen.

Being comfortable that you are able to share your experience and be visible, rather than hiding somewhere so people can't see you. The willingness to step forward. To speak when something matters. To say what you think when the moment to say it arrives.

Many of us have been given a very narrow definition of what visibility looks like. The loudest voice in the room. The person who speaks first. The person who appears completely certain. If that does not feel natural to you, it is easy to conclude that confidence is something other people have and you don't.

Confidence is not a personality type. I am an introvert. I am unlikely to be the person commanding a boardroom through sheer volume. And yet I still have a presence – through the ideas I contribute, the quality of my listening, the questions I ask. That is confidence too. It simply looks different.

Your confidence does not need to look like anyone else's to be valid. It simply needs to be your own.

A client once came to me after returning to work following the birth of her baby. Her boss valued her. Her team respected her. She knew her material inside out. When I asked her to rate her competence, she gave herself nine out of ten. And yet every time she was asked to present, she would find a reason not to. She told herself she wasn't confident enough.

What she lacked was confidence in visibility. She held an unspoken belief that the kind of person who stands at the front of a room and presents, sounds a certain way. And she had decided she was not that person.

Over the months that followed, we worked together on that belief. Where it had come from. Whether it was true. What it was costing her. And gradually, she came to understand what was really missing. It was not more competence she needed. It was permission. Permission to be seen as the kind of woman who could stand at the front of a room. Permission to take up space in her own way, not someone else's.

Six months later, she was asked to deliver a significant presentation. This time, she said yes. And she was excellent. Not because she had suddenly become someone else, but because she had stopped waiting to become someone else.

The phrase ‘fake it till you make it’ can only take you so far. Confidence is not a costume. What lasts is built from the inside. It comes from trusting your own strengths, your own style, and your own way of showing up.

The goal is not to become the loudest person in the room. The goal is to become more comfortable being yourself in the room.

So where do you begin?

In my experience, the answer is rarely more competence. Most clients already have far more evidence of their capability than they give themselves credit for.

The work is often about building confidence in identity and visibility. Trusting that your contribution has value. Allowing yourself to step forward.

One practical place to start is what I call the Evidence Vault – a simple running record of things you have done that you previously doubted you could. Not a wins list. Evidence feels different from wins. It’s harder to dismiss. If you would like a structured worksheet to help you get started, you can download one for free at victorialiu.com.

One of the things I remind my clients of most often is that readiness rarely arrives first. We tend to think that confidence comes before action, but more often it works the other way around. We act. We gather evidence. We learn. And confidence builds from there.

You do not need to eliminate self-doubt before you begin. You do not need certainty. You do not need permission from anyone else.

You simply need to give it to yourself.