How Great Leaders Truly Build Confidence and Resilience: Part 1 of 3 in our Leadership Practices That Drive Engagement and Performance

Right now, the leaders I work with are carrying a lot of pressure to perform, anxiety that comes with so much uncertainty, and a concern about holding on to their best people. What’s striking is that these three things, as different as they feel, may all be connected to the same parts of leadership behaviour.

Research identifies three engaging leadership practices that together create remarkable outcomes:

• At an individual level, people become more optimistic, more resilient, and more confident in their own abilities.
• At the team level, trust deepens, communication improves, and people feel more involved in the decisions that affect their work.

Over three newsletters, we’ll look at each of the three practices in turn and help you apply them with your own teams. First: Inspiring your team members.

What we know: This research on engaging leadership showed that when leaders inspire their people by sharing a compelling vision and helping them see how their work connects to something that matters, four specific outcomes follow:

• People develop stronger belief in their ability to do the work tied to that vision.
• They form a more positive view of what’s ahead.
• They build greater capacity to bounce back from setbacks because a meaningful future feels within reach.
• When circumstances shift, they stay flexible, because they believe the goal is still achievable.

These psychological resources determine how effectively people perform under pressure.

POV: There’s a misconception that inspiring teams is for big moments. When we make a habit of sharing where we’re going and why it matters, and connecting people’s work to that picture, we are regularly building the belief systems that carry our teams through hard stretches.

As a Leader, what can you do?

• Share your thinking about the future, even if it isn’t fully formed. You don’t need a polished vision to inspire. What people need is to see that you are thinking ahead with intention. Try opening your next team conversation with: ‘Here’s what I’m seeing coming, here’s I think it means for us… I’d love to hear your thinking.’
• Connect each person’s work to the bigger picture explicitly. People develop stronger self-efficacy when they can see how their specific contribution ties into something worth doing. In your next one-to-one, name that connection directly: ‘What you’re working on right now shapes how we’re positioned for [outcome].’
• When the path changes, call out the difference between the direction of travel and the planned route. One of the strongest findings here is that inspiring leaders build flexibility: the belief that goals remain reachable even when circumstances shift. Rather than announcing a change, try: ‘The direction hasn’t changed. Here’s what we now know, and here’s how I’m thinking about the adjusted path.’ People who believe in the direction and destination goal can adapt the route.

What difference will it make? When you lead this way, people bring more confidence to their work and more resilience when things don’t go to plan. For you, that means fewer conversations managing anxiety and more energy moving the work forward together. The uncertainty doesn’t disappear. But your team carries it differently.

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