The Confidence Gap
This post contains edited excerpts from COMPOSURE: The Art of Executive Presence, available now wherever books are sold. Order your copy today!
A few years ago I was advising a thriving start-up with over a hundred employees. The CEO asked me to help initiate a search for a new CFO. His goal was to hire a woman.
At the time, the executive team at the start-up was composed of three men and one woman. For a new tech company, that’s a pretty good ratio, but at the next layer of the hierarchy, the numbers were abysmal. Managers were overwhelmingly male, and thus the CEO was committed to cultivating more gender diversity moving forward.
I asked our recruiter to make a special effort to find qualified female candidates. He was all for that idea but explained the challenge.
“There are very few female CFOs in your industry, so I might not be able to find a suitable candidate with the level of experience you’re looking for. What I recommend is to include candidates one level below that and consider VPs and senior directors at large companies. That will greatly boost our candidate pool of qualified women.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “Let’s do that.”
“Do you want me to present only female candidates?” he asked. “When looking to increase diversity, some of my clients exclude candidates from disproportionately well-represented demographics.”
After talking it over with the CEO, we decided to consider both male and female candidates. “Regardless,” I implored our recruiter, “please go the extra mile in finding qualified women.”
And he did just that. After rigorous assessments, our final candidate pool consisted of three women and three men. Each candidate had a stellar background in finance and relevant industry experience with high emotional intelligence.
I was satisfied, and I felt positive about our chances of hiring a woman, even after one of the female candidates dropped out at the eleventh hour because of a family crisis. We still had two highly qualified women in the running.
And yet, even after having every intention of hiring a woman for the CFO position, what did we do?
We hired a man.
Why Aren’t There More Women Leaders?
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is an organizational psychologist and professor of Business Psychology at University College of London. His groundbreaking research sheds light on why it’s so hard for some highly competent people, especially women and those in underrepresented groups, to advance to the top levels of their professions.
Chamorro-Premuzic starts with the basics. Adult women make up around 50% of the population. As college students, women outperform men in aggregate. But even though academic success should, in theory, set students up for professional success, that’s not how it works for women. Most senior managers are male, and women are remarkably underrepresented in top roles and leadership.
Why is that?
There are three popular explanations for this phenomenon:
Women are not capable.
Women are not interested.
Women are both interested and capable, but unable to break the glass ceiling.
Let’s use my story of failing to hire a female CFO to explore this reasoning further. The first assumption can be immediately scratched out. Our candidate pool consisted of highly capable women who were thoroughly vetted for their technical abilities, experience, and know-how.
The second assumption is also demonstrably false. These women took time out from busy professional and family demands to engage in a thorough, time-consuming process and worked hard on the hope, not the guarantee, to be given a unique opportunity.
The third assumption didn’t seem right, either. While I can’t completely discount unconscious gender bias, I can assure you that the systemic barriers were low for this role, if they existed at all. I witnessed the process firsthand, and I know that the CEO, in his commitment to promote upper-level gender diversity, was extremely eager to hire a female CFO.
I knew a key factor in any type of career advancement was what Chamarro-Premuzic describes as the difference in confidence between men and women. It’s a known fact that people in general can’t help but misinterpret confidence with competence. To put it succinctly, people assume that a lack of confidence must mean a lack of competence.
But according to Chamarro-Premuzic, when we make that assumption “we are fooled into believing that men are better leaders than women. In other words, when it comes to leadership, the only advantage that men have over women...is the fact that the manifestations of hubris — often masked as charisma or charm — are commonly mistaken for leadership potential, and that these occur much more frequently in men than in women.”
The hiring committee for the CFO position consisted of myself, the CEO, and three people on the finance team, all well-versed in the requirements of the job. Up to this point, we were the ones doing the first round of interviews. And even before we spoke to any of the candidates, we knew that based on competence, both the women candidates would be outstanding in this role.
Both also exhibited higher emotional intelligence than the male candidates. This assured us either female candidate would be able to build and maintain high-performance teams, develop and mentor reports, collaborate effectively with senior executives and across departments, and establish and execute broad strategic goals.
To be clear, assertive confidence was not a requirement for the CFO we were looking for. In fact, I’ve observed throughout my career that finance people are often quiet and introverted. The most effective CFO I’ve worked with is someone who didn’t say much, but when she did speak, everyone listened.
Although soft spoken, she was highly respected by her peers and the executive team. She had an uncanny ability to sense the best time to enter the conversation to make her point. Though shy, her communication style was direct, and when challenged, she remained calm and composed even when the emotional heat in the room rose. And she was really funny, often using her warm sense of humor to deescalate difficult situations.
When she was questioned or challenged, she stood her ground. In this way, she exemplified a quiet but powerful presence that people respected.
After we interviewed all the candidates, Dan, the CEO, and I spoke about how they all presented themselves. “In my view, all the candidates are strong. But the women are showing up differently than the men,” I explained.
“Although I know they have really relevant experience, they seem reluctant to promote their accomplishments and often attribute their success to their teams, rather than to their leadership. This makes them seem less accomplished than the male candidates.”
The final interview team was made up of four people — two board members and two non-finance executives. I was concerned that these interviews would not go well for the female candidates.
“Dan, I’m really worried about this next round of interviews,” I admitted. “None of these interviewers have the necessary finance experience to effectively assess CFO competence based on the needs of the role, so I’m concerned they’ll choose confidence over competence. In which case, the male candidates will definitely have a leg up, and we won’t end up hiring either of the women. That means a final decision probably won’t be grounded in ability.”
That day, I also reached out to the recruiter to share what I’d witnessed. “Is there any way to offer the female candidates some coaching so they present with greater confidence?” I asked hopefully.
“I see your point, Kate,” he replied. “I will do some extra prep with them, but it’s too late to hire an outside coach to make enough of an impact with the next round of interviews just days away.”
The Confidence Gap
Chamarro-Premuzic cites the Confidence Gap between men and women as an almost universal truth.
All over the world, in just about any industry, men overestimate their own intelligence, while women are generally more humble than men.
Ironically, Chamarro-Premuzic’s research also shows that the best leaders are typically humble, a trait tied to high emotional intelligence, which is more prevalent in women.
But all that aside, the number of women in the top ranks of most organizations substantiates the Confidence Gap phenomenon. The McKinsey and LeanIn.org Women in the Workplace 2019 report reveals that female representation falls from around 50% in entry level ranks to about 25% at the executive level and around 7% at the CEO level. In summary, the higher up you go on the corporate ladder, the less you’ll find women.
But if Chamarro-Premuzic is right, and confidence is a differentiating factor, how does this play out in practice?
Let’s take a look at the people behind the numbers.
In entry-level positions, the ranks of women and men are roughly equal. Not coincidentally, these roles are heavily tactical in nature and require practical abilities that are observable and quantifiable. And although confidence is always a plus at any level, competence ranks very high at this level because it’s visible. The managers and leaders above these entry-level positions can see who is doing what.
But as people ascend the hierarchy and become managers and leaders, things change rapidly. The tactical proportions of jobs at the upper levels dramatically decrease, while the intangible qualities (i.e., their personal leadership style, strategic planning, risk tolerance, integrity, influence, vision, etc.) assume more importance. Thus, a key to being promoted into the executive ranks lies not just in one’s abilities, but also in our perception of those abilities.
Self-confidence thus becomes extremely valuable when considering whom to promote for leadership roles — or so we’ve been led to believe.
Lack of Confidence: A Common Impostor Behavior
What are Impostor Behaviors? ➞
In our research, we’ve linked that Confidence Gap to the Impostor Syndrome. Some people call it the X-Factor, that powerful perception that an individual has some special set of attributes that gives others confidence in their abilities and likelihood of success.
These attributes have almost nothing to do with actual competence or level of experience. But because of the X-factor, white male candidates for higher-level executive roles are assessed very differently than women or minorities, irrespective of their actual abilities.
The key to making gender, racial, and ethnic diversity a reality in the executive ranks lies not in women’s abilities, but rather in our perception of those abilities. While we may hope to replace our insistence in confidence with a focus on competence, that shift will be difficult and a long time coming.
The solution is to give women the tools and training they need to elevate their own internal sense of confidence. It all starts with awareness at the individual level. Once people — especially women and members of all underrepresented groups — can recognize the areas where their self-confidence is lower than their abilities, they can begin the process of resolving the Impostor Behaviors behind those beliefs and elevating their confidence to a healthier level.
On the other hand, the onus for creating change must not be entirely on the members of underrepresented groups.
Male mentors and allies can also play an important role. When men highlight the competence of the high-performing women they work alongside, they provide critical support so these women own and project more of their well-deserved confidence. The support of influential men also ensures that others can appreciate the competence of their female colleagues.
It’s critical for organizations that are committed to diversity in the executive ranks to invest in coaching and development for their top employees from underrepresented backgrounds, and to encourage and train male executives to become effective mentors and allies.
Kate Purmal is a former CEO and Technology Executive, Board Director, Business Advisor and Executive Coach. She is also a Senior Industry Research Fellow at Georgetown University McDonough School of Business and a lecturer at University of Michigan Ross School of Business. She is the author of two books: COMPOSURE: The Art of Executive Presence and THE MOONSHOT EFFECT: Disrupting Business as Usual.
