A few years ago, I was coaching a senior leader who had just started a brand new role with bigger responsibilities. She was sharp, organised, and well respected, the sort of person people wanted on their team. And yet, despite all of that, something wasn’t working.

Her once, high performing, team was struggling.

Energy had dipped, ideas had slowed, and the people who once brought curiosity and challenge into the room were staying quiet. They logged on, did the work, and logged off again.

“I ask how they are,” she said to me during one session, genuinely puzzled. “But they just say ‘fine’. I want to connect with them, I just don’t want to overstep.”

When I looked at her diary, the disconnect became obvious. Her check-ins were squeezed between operational updates and standing meetings, with barely a pause to reset, let alone build trust. There was no space for conversations to unfold, no room for people to discuss anything other than functional work matters.

So I asked her to try something different.

She carved out a short daily slots, just fifteen minutes, with no agenda and no performance lens attached. It wasn’t framed as a meeting, more a chance to catch up and reconnect as humans rather than roles. Melissa started by sharing small parts of her own story, nothing heavy or forced, just enough to signal that it was safe to be real.

Over time, the team followed.

Engagement picked up. Ideas began to resurface. The team started showing up with more confidence and intent, because empathy had shifted.

What struck me most was how often we misunderstand confidence at work. We tend to associate it with speed and certainty, with being the first to speak or the person who always has an answer ready. But that kind of confidence is often performative, sometimes even compensatory, and it doesn’t always come from a place of self-trust.

The most grounded confidence I see in leaders is quieter. It shows up in their ability to create space, to listen without rushing to fill the silence, and to let others grow without needing to be the centre of the conversation.

This is where empathy plays a far bigger role in that than we like to admit.

When people experience genuine empathy at work, something shifts internally. They feel safer asking questions they might otherwise keep to themselves, sharing ideas that aren’t fully formed, or admitting when something hasn’t landed as intended. Confidence doesn’t grow in environments where people feel scrutinised or judged; it grows where they feel understood.

That said, empathy is often misunderstood. Many leaders genuinely believe they’re empathetic because they’re friendly, approachable, or have an open-door policy. But empathy isn’t about intention alone; it’s about attention. If you’re listening while half-checking emails or mentally moving on to the next task, people sense it. And if a door is technically open but no one feels comfortable walking through it, that’s not connection.

Real empathy asks more of us. It requires us to step outside our own lens and engage with experiences that may be unfamiliar or uncomfortable, without trying to immediately fix or explain them away.

One of the biggest shifts I’ve seen in my own practice came when I started working with Cultural Intelligence. I had always considered myself emotionally attuned, but I hadn’t fully appreciated how often cultural context shapes how people communicate, make decisions, or show respect. Without that awareness, empathy can only go so far.

I remember working with another leader who described a colleague as overly direct and difficult to manage. Once he understood that their communication style was rooted in cultural values around clarity and honesty, rather than intent or attitude, their relationship changed almost overnight. Neither of them had changed who they were; the understanding had changed.

Presence matters too. Research consistently shows that people who experience empathetic leadership are more engaged at work, but empathy becomes fragile when it’s selective. Most of us have natural empathy sweet spots, people and stories we relate to easily, and blind spots where impatience or discomfort creeps in. Left unchecked, that inconsistency quietly erodes trust.

The leaders who build confident teams are the ones who notice those patterns in themselves and actively work against them. They show up fully in conversations, not just physically but emotionally, paying attention to what isn’t being said as much as what is.

Trust is where all of this comes together. It isn’t built in grand gestures or big statements; it’s built in small, consistent moments over time. How you respond when someone is nervous. Whether you do what you said you would. If you remember what mattered to them last week.

I often come back to the Trust Equation because it captures this so simply: credibility alone isn’t enough. Reliability and intimacy are what create safety, and safety is what allows confidence to grow.

When leaders combine self-awareness, cultural intelligence and genuine presence, empathy stops being something they perform and starts becoming something people experience. And that’s when confidence shifts from something individuals struggle to hold onto into something that’s embedded in the culture around them.

Confidence without empathy quickly turns into control. But when the two work together, people feel able to take risks, speak up, and recover more quickly when things don’t go to plan. Over time, that creates a kind of confidence that doesn’t rely on bravado or constant reassurance.

It lasts.

If you want to explore confidence in the workplace further, you can listen to my brand new podcast “Decoding Confidence” every week. New episodes are released every Monday. You can find and listen to all the episodes on my website or wherever you listen to your pods.