My first leadership moment was when I was promoted into my first management role. It was helpfully announced in the middle of a meeting about reorganisation and was a complete surprise to me.  It was a long time ago, long before women routinely ran teams, I was 26.  Not only were almost all of the team that I was now in charge of between 10 and 30 years older than me, they were all men and one of them thought he should have got the job. It was also not a “natural” woman’s role – in other words it was dealing with logistics and stores and lorries and fork-lift trucks (I did learn to drive one!)

Apparently, I took it all really calmly and looked very confident, nobody believed that I hadn’t known in advance. The reality is that I was stunned.  Sometimes stunned looks like calm.

In fact, it really doesn’t matter whether you are stunned or calm, the important thing is how you appear.  The reality of leadership is that people want to have confidence in their leaders and they can only have confidence in you if you have it in yourself.  Sometimes you will really feel that confidence but sometimes (most times) you have to assume it.

I’m not a great fan of the “fake it till you make it” theory.  I don’t think the great actors who have played Hamlet were “faking it”.  They were taking on the personality, the habits, the actions, even the looks of their character.  They were not faking Hamlet, they were being Hamlet.  That’s possible to do even if you are never going to join the ranks of the great actors.  Try to understand how you would behave if you were really confident in the leadership role.  How would you behave, how would you look, what clothes would you wear, what would you say?  Then start to rehearse being that person. Rehearse a lot, practice the words, talk to a mirror, talk to a friend, do it until it sounds and feels natural. 

It’s important that this is about how YOU would behave in that role if you were confident.  Basing yourself on how other people would behave will never be remotely authentic.  This has to come from you, from your values, your thoughts, your vocabulary.  How do you want to treat people?  How do you want to appear?  In the beginning you will be acting that person.  Eventually you will become them – make sure they are someone you respect and like.