When Confidence Creates Silence, Trust Cannot Travel
Why this article really matters
This is a longer article than most, and it is longer for a reason.
What we are dealing with here is not a new leader problem. It shows up whenever the pressure rises, scrutiny increases, and leaders feel they must prove they deserve the seat. It shows up early, and it returns whenever the stakes rise.
The goal of leadership is not to become indispensable. It is to build an organisation that can thrive without you. That requires trust, delegated responsibility, and the deliberate development of other leaders. It is how organisational capacity grows.
But there is a behaviour that quietly sabotages this. Leaders “perform”. They borrow certainty. They adopt “fake it until you make it”. It works for a time, but it carries a hidden cost: truth stops travelling, trust cannot move outward, and leadership becomes a bottleneck.
This article is about the courage to be real, not as disclosure or theatre, but as disciplined honesty, because that is what creates an environment where leaders can trust others with real responsibility, and capacity can finally grow.
If you want a culture where truth travels and leadership multiplies, this is the work.
“If this reflection is useful, and you want to turn it into real capacity in your team, I have created a Leader’s Guide to help you facilitate the conversation, surface what is really happening, and translate these ideas into shared practice. You can access the Leader’s Guide at the end of this article. If you know someone carrying the weight of leadership right now, please repost or share this article.”
Borrowed leadership and the loss of self
Imposter syndrome is not a beginner problem. It shows up whenever the stakes rise, scrutiny increases. In those moments, even experienced leaders can revert to the same reflex: borrow certainty, tighten the mask, and perform confidence.
Leaders rarely start by trying to be fake. They start by trying not to fail.
They feel watched. They feel judged. They assume people will pounce on their mistakes and remember them longer than they remember any success.
They start borrowing someone else’s leadership.
They take the leader they admire and begin copying the visible parts. The confident cadence. The polished language. The calm face in a tense meeting. The quick answer that sounds decisive. The certainty that leaves no space for questions. They study the style, the presence, the posture, and they try to wear it like a uniform.
To be clear, there is nothing wrong with learning from great leaders. We should. But there is a difference between learning from a leader and becoming a replica of one.
They are not trying to deceive. They are trying to survive.
But what they copy is the surface, not the substance. They borrow the signals of strength before they have the internal grounding that makes those signals true.
It comes across as performance, not leadership.
And once leadership becomes performance, the organisation adapts accordingly.
When confidence creates silence
This is how silence begins, not through malice, but through atmosphere.
When a leader feels the need to appear certain, people adjust what they bring. They soften risk. They keep doubts private. They manage mistakes quietly. They become careful with language and cautious with truth, not because they have changed, but because the environment has.
The organisation becomes skilled at looking fine, even as problems compound underneath.
The paradox: performing “right” erodes trust
This exposes a paradox most of us intuitively know, but many leaders miss when the pressure is on.
When leaders try to look right, people stop telling the truth, and trust erodes. When leaders are willing to be real, truth returns, and trust has room to form.
As Craig Groeschel puts it,
“People would rather follow a leader that is real than one that is always right.”
The question, then, is not whether leaders should be confident. It is what kind of confidence earns trust, and what kind of confidence produces silence.
Silence breaks only when leaders give people permission to be honest; disciplined vulnerability is how that permission is granted.
Vulnerability is the first act of trust
Vulnerability has earned its place in serious leadership conversation. It is rightly framed as courage, honesty, and humanity. Few would now argue that fear-based leadership produces healthy organisations, or that leaders must project infallibility to be effective.
People may admire polish; they rarely trust performance. They do not want a leader who seems to have it together at all times. They want a leader who is recognisably human, clear eyed about reality, and strong enough to carry responsibility without pretending to be untouchable.
Vulnerability is the link, not as disclosure or theatre, but as disciplined honesty. It is the willingness to say: I missed something; I need help; I am not sure; here is what I am seeing; here is what I am deciding.
And this is not a soft move. It is the first act of trust. The leader goes first.
What vulnerability produces
Vulnerability produces two outcomes, and the second depends on the first.
Trust toward the leader
When a leader is real, people do not have to guess what is going on. They do not have to decode tone, manage around ego, or protect themselves from optics. They can read the leader, and that readability builds trust.
Brené Brown’s work helps explain why this matters at the human level. When leaders lay down armour, people stop managing impressions and begin telling the truth. The risk of honesty decreases when the leader demonstrates that honesty will not be punished.
Patrick Lencioni brings it into team mechanics. In his model, trust is vulnerability based: the willingness to admit mistakes, ask for help, and be open without defensiveness. That foundation is what makes productive conflict possible, and what allows accountability to become normal rather than threatening.
An environment where honesty is practised
The second outcome is just as important: vulnerability creates an environment where honesty becomes the practice, and truth starts travelling again.
People become more willing to name uncertainty, surface risk early, and admit failure before it becomes costly. They stop telling leaders what they think leaders want to hear and start telling the truth.
This is where silence breaks. Not because the leader demanded honesty, but because the leader removed the need for performance.
When honesty is normal, trust can move outward
At this point, trust stops being a sentiment and becomes functional.
Trust is not only people trusting the leader. It is the leader handing over ownership, not just inviting input.
When responsibility moves outward, capability is revealed, and the organisation stops bottlenecking at the top.
This is the two-way street most leaders eventually discover. Leaders create trust toward themselves through honesty, and that trust creates the conditions for honesty to become normal. Only then can leaders offer trust outward, because they can see reality clearly enough to delegate without gambling blindly.
Trust is given before it is proven
This is also where the risk becomes unavoidable.
Practising vulnerability and trusting others is risky business for leaders. Dr Paul Browning puts it plainly, “One of the most powerful actions for gaining the trust of others is firstly to give it.”
That is where leaders feel the weight.
When you trust others, you give responsibility.
When you give responsibility, you absorb risk.
When things go wrong, responsibility does not stop at the point of failure, it returns to the leader.
That is the cost of leadership. It exposes the leader to consequences created through others.
And yet leaders practise vulnerability anyway. Not because it is safe. Not because it is fashionable. But because leadership cannot be exercised alone. Without trust, everything bottlenecks. Without honesty, risk hides. Without vulnerability, people manage optics instead of telling the truth.
Responsibility moves, accountability remains
This is where the conversation gets serious: trust can move outward, but accountability never moves off the leader.
Leadership responsibility forces a particular lens.
A leader with organisational accountability cannot always act in the best interests of every individual, because they are accountable for the stewardship of the whole.
You hope, and often it is true, that what is best for the organisation is also best for the people. But sometimes it is not. When those two come into conflict, the leader must make a hard choice and carry it.
Followers want to believe their leader will always choose them. They want reassurance. They want certainty. But leadership does not allow for that guarantee.
Leaders carry the outcome. Not only for what they decide, but for what happens through the authority they delegate. Relationship does not reduce that accountability; it increases the personal cost of carrying it.
And this matters, because leadership is exercised through people.
Care without sentimentality
The reality of organisational stewardship can sound cold when it is stated plainly. It is not. It is the necessary language of responsibility, and it must be held alongside something equally true: leadership is exercised through people, and people are never just a means to an end.
None of this comes from indifference. It comes from care.
Responsibility is given to others even when the leader could do the work faster or better, because leadership is not about personal competence; it is about organisational capacity. Developing people is slower, riskier, and harder, but it is the only way an organisation outgrows any one individual.
Care is expressed in that decision: care for people, care for their growth, and care for the organisation enduring beyond any one person.
Holding that tension is not theoretical. It is daily, practical, and often uncomfortable.
What holds vulnerability in place
This is where many discussions on vulnerability drift, because vulnerability cannot be the organising centre of leadership. It is a catalyst, not a compass.
What holds it all together is clarity and accountability.
Andy Stanley is right to protect the boundary. Leaders can afford uncertainty, but they cannot afford unclarity. People need direction, and they need to know who carries responsibility for the whole.
Lencioni is right that trust must lead somewhere, into healthy conflict, accountability, and results.
Browning is right that trust is not sustained by intention alone; it is sustained by disciplined practices, listening, admitting mistakes, offering trust, consultation, visibility, discretion, and care that is expressed in behaviour, not sentiment.
In other words, vulnerability works when people are not confused.
They are not confused about purpose.
They are not confused about decision rights.
They are not confused about what is negotiable and what is not.
They are not confused about who is accountable when it goes wrong.
Vulnerability creates the conditions for truth.
Clarity decides what to do with that truth.
Accountability ensures it does not dissolve into talk.
The cost of real leadership
This is the part that is often left out.
If you lead in a way that is real, not always right, you do not become lighter. You become more exposed.
It increases personal risk.
It removes the shield of distance.
It invites disappointment.
It forces you to carry the outcomes of decisions made through others.
But it is also what allows an organisation to function with honesty, courage, and momentum.
This is not soft leadership.
It is not consensus leadership.
It is not emotional leadership.
In the end, this is why disciplined honesty matters. It is not to make leaders look more human. It is to make organisations more capable. When leaders stop performing and start telling the truth, truth travels again. Trust can move outward. Responsibility can be shared. Other leaders can grow. And over time, the organisation becomes less dependent on the person at the top, because leadership has been multiplied, not protected.
ABOUT THE LEADERS REFERENCED
Craig Groeschel
Craig Groeschel is the founding and senior pastor of Life.Church and the host of the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast. He is widely known for leadership teaching that focuses on practical clarity, personal discipline, healthy organisational culture, and the risks leaders create when performance, pace, or complexity start to outrun purpose.
Brené Brown
Brené Brown is a researcher and author whose work centres on vulnerability, courage, shame, and empathy. In leadership contexts, she is best known for articulating how trust and psychological safety are strengthened when leaders lower armour, model honest self awareness, and create environments where people can speak truth without punishment.
Patrick Lencioni
Patrick Lencioni is an author and organisational consultant recognised for his work on team effectiveness and leadership health. He is best known for framing trust as vulnerability based, the practical willingness to admit mistakes, ask for help, and be open, and for linking that foundation to healthy conflict, accountability, and results.
Andy Stanley
Andy Stanley is the founder of North Point Ministries and a prominent voice on leadership clarity and organisational alignment. He emphasises that leaders owe people clarity more than certainty, and that clear direction, decision rights, and accountability structures are essential so that honesty does not drift into confusion.
Dr Paul Browning
Dr Paul Browning is an Australian educator and leadership author who has written extensively on trust in schools and the practical behaviours that sustain it. In Principled: 10 leadership practices for building trust, he frames trust as something built, repaired, and protected through repeatable practices, especially in seasons where confidence is damaged and scrutiny is high.
Leader’s Discussion Guide
A Leader’s Discussion Guide has been created to help teams move beyond reading and into disciplined leadership conversation. It is designed to be used with this article as a shared reference point, creating space for clarity, challenge, and alignment.
The guide is intentionally short and practical. It can be used at the beginning of a team meeting or as a standalone leadership development conversation, and works best when the article is read in advance with the expectation of discussion.
In my experience, it is these regular, thoughtful leadership conversations that build real organisational capacity. They create shared language, surface assumptions, and strengthen alignment. More importantly, they signal that leadership growth is not optional or peripheral, but central to the work.
When leaders grow in clarity, judgement, and discipline, the impact extends well beyond the leadership team. It shapes culture, decisions, and outcomes across the organisation.
You can download the Leader’s Discussion Guide by submitting the form below.
