Why Imperfect Leaders Build More Confident Teams

Building team confidence through authentic leadership.

Your team doesn't need a perfect leader. I think this should come as something of a relief to all of us because I don't know any perfect leaders. In fact, I don’t believe that such a person exists. Humans aren’t perfect.

Some of us feel a pull towards perfection, setting unreasonable standards for ourselves. Perhaps you do that? Perhaps you quietly berate yourself for inevitably falling short of the impossible bar of perfection? I want to offer encouragement to acknowledge and embrace your human imperfection. My suggestion is that imperfect leaders build more confident teams.

Why does confidence matter? Put simply, confidence powers performance. Individuals who approach a task with ‘I think I can’ at the forefront of their mind will tackle it with energy and initiative - the very things that will help them to succeed. A team that’s united by a belief that ‘we’ve got this’ is more likely to take bold action, persist through setbacks and find creative solutions. In contrast, doubt - whether individual or collective - leads to tentative steps, to procrastination, to stalled effort.

I see three threads that connect a leader’s willingness to be imperfect to the strength of confidence in their team: admitting imperfect knowledge, acknowledging imperfect action, and being an imperfect human. Let’s start with imperfect knowledge and the confidence-fueling power of saying “I don’t know.”

Admitting imperfect knowledge

“Doubt is not a pleasant state, but certainty is a ridiculous one” (the words of French philosopher Voltaire.) You don’t have all of the answers. None of us do. Admitting imperfect knowledge by saying ‘I don’t know’ gives team members a space to step into. I like the way former US Navy captain David Marquet talks about this in his book Leadership is Language: “When leaders admit they don’t know, they allow the team to admit that they don’t know. Ironically, a leader admitting they don’t know also allows the team or a team member to admit that they do know. If a boss says, “I don’t know,” it might allow someone junior to say, “I know …” or “How about this?””

I think the three-word phrase ‘I don’t know’ has even more confidence-fueling power. If it’s not already a regular feature of your leadership vocabulary, you might consider deploying it more often because as well as providing space for your people to step into, it can also convey a number of confidence-fuelling messages:

Reasonable expectations: It’s OK not to have every answer.
Collaboration: I don’t know, you don’t know. We can work it out together.
Empowerment: I don’t need to know. I trust that you’ve got this.
Humility: I’m not the expert here. I’m keen to learn from you.
Experimentation: I don’t know whether this will work, let’s give it a try.
Belief: I don’t know how we’ll deliver this, but I know that we’ll find a way.

Acknowledging imperfect action

We make mistakes. It’s a fundamental part of being human. Our mistakes might be tiny, insignificant and easily hidden from view, or they might be spectacularly public and embarrassing. It’s not the mistake itself that’s the issue, but the way that we respond to it. In the words of American poet James Russell Lowell: "Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle."

How you respond when you make a mistake will send a signal to your team, a signal that will shape their willingness to risk imperfect action - to risk getting things wrong. I would argue that ‘wrongness’ is core to the way that we grow confidence. Mistakes are steps on the route to success – they help us to find our way and in doing so they help us to find out what we’re really capable of.

What might you be transmitting to your team about the OK-ness (or not) of imperfect action? Are you able to laugh at yourself? To embrace the learning that comes with mistakes? Or do mistakes evoke a feeling of discomfort? Do you find it easy to put your hand up and admit to a screw up or do you dislike having to acknowledge it in front of others? Do you tend to dwell on it? Or perhaps race to leave it behind? There might be a clue here about something to work on in your own relationship with imperfect action. A leader who grasps their mistakes by the handle gives their team permission to do the same.

Being an imperfect human

You can’t know everything, and you can’t get everything right. Leaning into these forms of imperfection can be powerful levers of individual and collective confidence in the team. There’s a bigger point too. Your team needs you to be your imperfect self. They need you to be real.

If you're confident to be you - imperfections and all - it gives your team members the confidence to be themselves. It's reassuring to know we're not the only beautiful mess of a human being - that colleagues (and even the boss!) are imperfect too.

There's something else too. Trying to be perfect as a leader sends a signal to your team that perfect is what you require from them. In response, team members are likely to offer a pretend (polished) version of themselves and to perhaps harbour a confidence-sapping worry; if they have to offer a ‘pretend’ version of themselves, does that mean that their true self isn’t good enough?

How ‘real’ are you at work? I invite you to consider: if a good friend from outside work were to come and observe you with your team, what aspects of 'work you' would they recognise - and what would they be surprised by?

There’s an important nuance to add here. When I say that your team needs you to be the real, imperfect you, I’m not suggesting that it’s OK to inflict an entirely uncut version of yourself on your team, grumpiness and all. Being real comes with a responsibility to be thoughtful and intentional about your impact on those around you.

The bottom line

Your team doesn't need a perfect leader. They need a real one. A leader who admits what they don't know, who grasps their mistakes by the handle, and who shows up as themselves - imperfections and all. That's belief-building leadership in action.

Julie Smith is an experienced leadership coach and speaker with a mission to encourage and enable leaders to deepen their awareness and grow their impact. Since founding boutique leadership consultancy Talent Sprout in 2010, Julie has partnered with executives in well-known organisations including Avon, Cambridge University Press, Chubb, and PepsiCo. An award-winning author, Julie’s latest book is Contagious Confidence: A leader’s guide to building belief and powering potential.

Career, Work and Identity