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STRIKE A POSE AND FEEL THE POWER

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”

—ALICE WALKER

BEYONCÉ STRUTS ON STAGE, SWAGGER beaming off her couture bejeweled bodysuit. A glittery halo of Girl Power envelops her—it’s so palpable you feel fierce just witnessing it. In addition to our verbal language, our body language projects another aura of confidence or lack of it. Queen Bey commands attention even standing still—perhaps more so as she stands still. Hands on hips, shoulders back, head tilted upwards, she occupies space in a way that communicates confidence and authority. She is a natural “Power Poser,” and studies find that Beyoncé probably feels pretty awesome standing this way too. It turns out that posture and presence have a boomerang effect. A strong pose makes people feel powerful, and it has others see them as powerful.

Social psychologist Amy Cuddy, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, became an Internet sensation after her 2012 TED Talk on “Power Poses” and the Impostor Syndrome. The Impostor Syndrome is that feeling of phoniness in people who believe they are not intelligent, creative, or capable, despite evidence of high achievement. With more than thirty million views, Cuddy’s talk is the second most watched TED Talk in history. Cuddy’s research found that when people make themselves physically big—stretching out, taking up space, putting hands on hips Wonder Woman style—they can raise their testosterone levels, lower anxiety, and temporarily elevate their confidence. Shockingly, your body language can affect your physiology.

The psychology of presence began to fascinate Cuddy when she came across research involving entrepreneurs pitching potential investors. The strongest predictor of who got the money was not connected to the substance of the pitch or the person’s credentials, but rather who exhibited traits of “confidence, comfort level, and passionate enthusiasm.” The findings were shocking. Did the research suggest that massive investment decisions were being made based solely on charisma?¹

It turns out that traits like enthusiasm and self-assured confidence are crucial to who gets called back for a job interview and who ultimately gets the job. In fact, those candidates who don’t convey those traits are widely considered less capable. With presence packing such a serious punch, Cuddy decided to dive into understanding the effects of how we present ourselves and how we can manipulate our personal presence. As she describes it, presence is not a permanent mode of being; it comes and goes from moment to moment. We can all tap into it and bring it when we need it. But first, we need to feel powerful. “Presence emerges when we feel personally powerful, which allows us to be acutely attuned to our most sincere selves,” Cuddy writes.²

FAKE IT UNTIL YOU BECOME IT

Cuddy’s personal story is as compelling as her research. She was a sophomore at the University of Colorado when a horrific car accident left her with a traumatic brain injury. Her doctors told her it was unlikely she would ever finish college or feel like herself again. Cuddy’s IQ dropped thirty points. Nevertheless, she refused to accept that fate. She fought back, and after starting and stopping college a few times, she graduated, taking an additional four years to do so.

Cuddy went on to Princeton for graduate school, where she says she couldn’t shake the idea that she didn’t belong there—that it was a big mistake. Terrified to speak in public, Cuddy was prepared to quit school rather than give the requisite twenty-minute talk to her classmates. Cuddy’s adviser assured her that she knew the material and explained all she needed to do was fake it. In other words, fake the confidence to show what you know and keep doing it until you own it. Cuddy’s personal experience, together with what she saw in her students, inspired the research that ultimately became the famous TED Talk and the findings for her book, Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges.

The fake-it-until-you-make-it idea is not new, but Cuddy’s findings that your posture can impact your confidence and therefore your ability to perform has taken the self-perception theory to a new level. If we want to see ourselves as creative, smart, and successful, then we need to behave that way, and part of that behavior is how we physically carry ourselves. Cuddy’s mantra: fake it until you become it.

“It’s not about deciding that you’ll become the best tennis player in the world without ever having picked up a racquet. It’s about how when we trick ourselves into feeling powerful by adopting these big postures, we can then reveal who we truly are. And the more we do this, the easier it becomes, and the more we become the best version of ourselves,” Cuddy told NPR in an interview.³

Cuddy became intrigued with the power of posture on performance while watching her students at Harvard. Women, she observed, tended to shrink when asked questions, while the men shot their arms up and leaned forward. The women made themselves small, touched their necks and faces, and crossed their ankles. Clearly, these postures projected less confidence, but Cuddy wondered if they also impacted the way the women behaved in class. Could looking small cause the women to feel less confident and hamper their participation and performance in graduate school?

Cuddy decided to test the theory that making yourself physically bigger by using open expansive postures could affect hormone levels. She took saliva samples from the people she was testing before and after they struck their poses. The increase in testosterone was significant, as was the decrease in the stress hormone cortisol. Cuddy has done multiple studies confirming that “getting big” for two minutes raises testosterone and lowers cortisol levels in the brain, temporarily boosting confidence and lowering anxiety. She also found that the opposite postures—those small, wimpy ones—had the reverse effect: They caused cortisol to rise and testosterone to fall. Cuddy writes in Presence that big, expansive, take-up-space poses create the perfect hormonal profile for being on your A-game and drawing out your best. They create the ideal cocktail of assertiveness with low anxiety.

The stresses of the workplace, from job interviews and important meetings and pitches to performance evaluations, can put people into a primitive fight-or-flight state. These stressful situations can cause great anxiety, making some of us shut down or not perform well. But Cuddy argues that by adopting expansive positions, we can trick our brain into believing what our body is doing so we can better handle those stressful moments. “We are allowing our bodies to tell our minds that you are not in a threatening situation. You can rest and digest,” she says.⁴

POWER POSING: CHANNEL YOUR INNER WONDER WOMAN

Confidence is rooted in the animal kingdom and wired into our biology. Among apes, the dominant males are the ones who throw their arms up in the air and literally take a stand. In the human world, the position of confidence is arms on hips, legs spread Wonder Woman style. And then there is the classic alpha male I-run-this-place pose, arms folded behind the head with legs kicked up on the desk. Think President Obama in the Oval Office. The other “power pose” is what Cuddy calls the “starfish”—arms thrown up in a “V” as the sprinter crosses the finish line of a race. Interestingly, researchers have found that the starfish pose, arms up wide in the air, is a universal sign of pride and confidence and actually hardwired into us. Even congenitally blind people use that gesture when they win.⁵

At the June 2015 G7 Summit in Bavaria, a photo of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Obama went viral. The image was of Merkel with snowcapped mountains behind her, arms open wide facing Obama as he stretched out on a bench facing her. His arms were draped out across the bench and his legs were wide open. Even if Obama tried, he couldn’t get any bigger. The image was spoofed and Photoshopped, making Merkel appear as though she were Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, singing with her arms outstretched and the picturesque mountains in the background. When the image made the rounds on social media, I was struck by how physically large both of these world leaders appeared. They were power posing without even posing. At the G7 Summit, a conference of the most powerful nations in the world, it’s not surprising that both of these world leaders demonstrated confident body language. These postures are as natural to them as breathing. The G7 Summit image spoke volumes in a context where image is everything.⁶

After watching Amy’s TED Talk on poses, I wanted to give it a try before my next job interview. Since interviewing for my first job on Capitol Hill, I have had my own pre-game performance rituals. Before I interview or give a speech, I go into a bathroom and have a pep talk with myself in front of the mirror. I also make sure there’s nothing in my teeth. But this time, I decided I was going to channel Wonder Woman.

A few weeks later, I was up for a senior vice president position at a well-known New York City public relations agency. I put the timer on my iPhone for two minutes and stood in front of a bathroom stall, chatting silently to myself as I struck my Lynda Carter pose. My interview went smoothly, and after four callbacks (each time prepping with my Wonder Woman stance) I was offered the job. Did this power pose affect my ability to interview well? Perhaps. I was keenly aware of my posture during each interview. When I interview, I tend to lean in to show enthusiasm and interest. This time, as I did that, I tried to make myself a little bigger in the chair too, not Obama big with legs spread open, but bigger than my slight self. Who’s to know if that impacted my performance or the aura I projected, but it felt good.

STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD

When Heidi Davis walks into a room, you notice. At nearly five feet ten inches tall, she carries herself like she’s six foot two, which she often is because of the heels she favors. Being the tallest person in the room is largely genetics, but in Heidi’s case it’s also intentional. “I’m not comfortable not being the tallest person—I like being the tallest person always,” Heidi says matter-of-factly. Hence, her high heels.

In many ways, Heidi’s height defines her. It epitomizes her spirit, a bold, fierce, balls-to-the-walls type of energy and crisp confidence. Growing up in Marblehead, Massachusetts, with a head of kinky curls in a pre-Keratin era and taller than all the other girls, Heidi was described as “interesting looking,” rarely pretty. “You can’t buy height. I didn’t get blonde hair and I didn’t get blue eyes. I didn’t get everybody else’s look. So it’s either embrace it or don’t.”

Heidi has always been tall, but she didn’t always project confidence. It started blooming at Ithaca College, where she was eager to reinvent herself. At Ithaca, no one knew that in high school she had cleaned offices at night with her father so their family could eat something other than pizza or mac-and-cheese for dinner. No one knew that her family went bankrupt after her dad’s deli failed, moved to Florida, and moved back to Massachusetts all within a year. No one knew that she never had a high school boyfriend or that she would be the first person in her family to graduate from college. Ithaca would be Heidi’s fresh start. There she felt she could be anyone she wanted to be.

In October of Heidi’s freshman year, her dad died suddenly of a heart attack. He was forty-four years old. The devastating loss took its toll on Heidi. She flunked her first semester and thought about quitting. But giving up is not in Heidi’s DNA. She went back to school and became known around campus as much for her determination as for her height. Fully inhabiting her identity, she stood out and blossomed. Heidi was also always hustling, and in college she worked at the local lingerie store, Isadora.

“I think a lot of my drive comes because I had to. I came from a town where I was the Jewish girl in the J.Crew catalogue with my curly hair, no hair products, amid all of these Yankee girls and their sailboats. I always wanted something,” Heidi says. “If I wanted it, I needed to get it myself.”

Going After Her Dream

On the first day of her sophomore year, Heidi met Seth Davis, a smart guy with a wry wit and crates of bootleg Grateful Dead tapes. His five foot six stature never fazed Heidi. They clicked. They got each other. They were inseparable, and eventually they married. Just like a classic John Hughes rom-com where the ballsy girl from humble beginnings finds love and goes after her dream, Heidi packed up a truck and drove to New York City to start her life after graduation. It was December 1991, a week before Christmas, when Heidi, sporting suede shorts and a matching button-down fringe jacket, knocked on the door of the Hanky Panky lingerie office in the Garment District of New York. She introduced herself to the owner as the Heidi from Ithaca who would order the thong underwear for the Isadora store. They immediately hired her as the receptionist. In the elevator, Heidi did a little dance. She was pumped. Making $16,900 a year was going to be brutal in New York, but it was her first step.

After about a year at Hanky Panky, Heidi moved to another company in the Garment District and later landed at a job in the Times Two showroom. This put her on the path to becoming a fixture in the fashion world of Seventh Avenue. Heidi’s plan was to own her own business by the time she was thirty years old. Now married to Seth, Heidi borrowed $20,000 from her in-laws and brought in a friend and former colleague as her partner. They took over a lease on West Thirty-Ninth Street in the Garment District and opened Hotline Showroom. Heidi had fulfilled her dream. At thirty years old, she was her own boss, building a company and a team of salespeople around the world. Within a year, she had repaid the $20,000 loan and had started collaborating with Joe Dahan, a hot emerging fashion designer from Los Angeles. He was designing T-shirts and dresses that would ultimately become the trendy brand Joe’s Jeans.

For a decade, Heidi ran Hotline Showroom, until one day when her partner walked in and announced she wanted to buy Heidi out of their business. It wasn’t friendly; it was a takeover. Her partner wanted lawyers, not mediation, and within weeks it was over. A fast divorce. Heidi had a deal, said goodbye to her employees, and walked out the door. While she felt some relief, she went through the many stages of grief. “At first, I felt woohoo, I’m free of almost ten thousand square feet of leases in Manhattan. I’m free of a six-figure line of credit. I’m free of a million-dollar payroll. But now where do I go? What do I do? I started this before I had children. Now I have children, but I’m not doing the PTA,” Heidi tells me, her eyes tearing up.

The showroom had been her dream. She birthed it before she birthed her two children and grew it into a big business. Heidi, who has watched Amy Cuddy’s famous TED Talk, says she can relate to that loss of self that Cuddy describes after a car accident left her with a traumatic brain injury. “Like Amy Cuddy says, she lost points on her IQ and that was her identity. She was the smart girl.” Heidi says. “And I created fashion. I created trends. I created designer denim. I did that.”

Heidi didn’t want to drop out of the fashion industry, so she launched her own T-shirt line, Wash + Fold. But even after getting her T-shirts into Bloomingdales, after about a year she pulled the plug. It wasn’t growing fast enough.

Slow Down, Then Reboot

Not knowing exactly what to do next, Heidi thought maybe she should take a break. It was good timing because her youngest child needed more of her attention. She started playing tennis, fully embracing the suburban mom cliché. She joined a tennis team. She became active in her kids’ school but hated it. Ultimately, the uber-competitive doubles tennis culture with its full-time tennis regimen didn’t sit well with Heidi. It became an unhealthy experience, one she described as akin to an addiction or an obsession. “You’re enrolled. You travel. You take lessons. You buy a wardrobe for it. It’s a full-on commitment,” Heidi says. “And the women live for the affection from their pros.”

Heidi started toying with the idea of becoming a realtor. She loved to renovate, and she loved the fashion and style of homes. Heidi saw that her skillset in style, fashion, and sales transferred seamlessly into real estate. The bar to entry is relatively low; getting a real estate license can be done fairly quickly. Heidi studied for her license and within a couple of months she was an agent with a job.

She pivoted from selling clothes to selling homes. Seth, always Heidi’s biggest fan, told her she would kill it at real estate. He was right. The average realtor in New Jersey sold two houses in 2015. Heidi sold eleven.

Sell Yourself

“Welcome to my office,” Heidi says to me as I slip into the front seat of her SUV. It’s a day when agents view what’s on the market, and I’m along for the ride. The first stop is a $400,000 home in a gentrifying middle-class neighborhood in Maplewood, New Jersey, that has recently flipped. Heidi jumps out of the car and talks at length to the Haitian contractor who owns the home and is hanging around outside. He’s hustling too and wants to sell his property fast. Heidi matches the contractor’s energy, speaks purposely, and takes his card. Flipping homes is the next business Heidi is considering. And yes, she tells this guy, she thinks his property will move quickly. I have no idea if Heidi really believes it will, but she’s so self-assured in her delivery no one would doubt her.

Then we’re off to a $3.9 million property in Short Hills, New Jersey. When we tour the homes, you must cover your shoes. “Look at the ugly surgical shoe covers they put out for a $4 million home,” Heidi says incredulously. “I bought slippers at Ikea for people to put on when they walk through my houses. These are the things that I do differently.”

It’s the details that make a difference. The tacky blue surgical slip-on shoe covers would never fly for Heidi. She puts out Fiji water and homemade guacamole. She helps owners stage their homes with the right furniture, flowers, and plants. She will move a ceramic vase or bowl to show off a counter. She will buy the proper pillows to give a facelift to a sofa. She’ll play music and open doors, just so. This is where Heidi’s creativity and skillset in fashion and business come together. This is where her career pivot shows just how much of her background she can bring to something new. And as an effective salesperson, Heidi’s dogged persistence may be precisely how her mojo manifests best.

For realtors, strong relationships with builders are the Holy Grail. Heidi had her eyes set on one builder and his historic house in Short Hills. Heidi called and texted the builder at five thirty in the morning—when she got up to ride her bike—almost every day for a year, just checking in to see when he might be ready to sell. He finally called back. They met in person, and Heidi snagged the $4 million listing—an unusual feat for a newbie realtor, but it didn’t surprise her. Heidi sees how her former sales experience folds perfectly into what she’s currently doing in real estate. She has big plans for using blogs, podcasts, and social media in ways that the old-school brokers don’t think about. “I’m not a realtor, I’m a salesperson,” Heidi says. “It satisfies my sales energy, and it satisfies my creative energy.”

Heidi’s big presence is the fabric of her being. Many women don’t carry themselves with the same level of overt confidence. As I walk through the homes with Heidi and then spend another day watching her interact with prospective buyers and other agents, it becomes obvious that Heidi can sell anything. She presents with such confidence that I would buy the property in the up-and-coming neighborhood or splurge on the multi-million manse if I could afford it, just because Heidi told me to. I ask Heidi how she thinks her posture and how she carries herself in the world impacts her business success from her Seventh Avenue days to selling real estate. She’s never really thought about it. “I work on my forehand because that’s not natural to me, but being confident is natural to me. Standing up tall is natural to me, and when someone says no, and I can turn it to the yes. That comes easily to me,” Heidi says. “In my work now, I’m able to see the positives of a place—not because I’ve been a realtor for the past year and a half, but because I’ve been a professional salesperson since I was twenty-one. When the realtors I work with are learning their scripts and dialogues, it’s like I’m at the US Open of that—I got that. That’s the easy thing for me.”

Turns out Beyoncé and Heidi may have something more in common than their posture. For Destiny’s Child’s first album cover, Beyoncé and the four other women are wearing black dresses from Follies, a designer Heidi had discovered and represented. And like Beyoncé, who uses her art as her voice (and as often is the case, has a voice because of her art), Heidi too is never shy of saying what she feels. “I always have to be heard,” Heidi says. “I always have an opinion, and I often think I have a better way to do it. But that’s part of my confidence.”

HARDWIRED FOR CONFIDENCE

Many of us may think of confidence as a state of mind—an optimistic “can do” attitude. Some people like Heidi seem to brim with confidence, while others of us don’t. We may also suspect that when it comes to confidence, men in general appear to have more of it. Deeply curious about the elusive nature of this seemingly intangible quality and wondering how gender impacts it all, journalists Katty Kay and Claire Shipman set out to explore female confidence in their best-selling book The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance—What Women Should Know. Their research was shocking and disturbing. They discovered that we apparently are either hardwired for confidence or we’re not. Like blue eyes, this inheritable trait is something we are born with—imprinted in our genetic code. Kay and Shipman found that the correlation between genes and confidence may be as high as 50 percent and may be even more closely connected than the link between genes and IQ.⁷ Through their research they also discovered something that supports what Amy Cuddy saw earlier—that “success correlates more closely with confidence than it does with competence.”⁸ It turns out that when it comes to getting ahead, confidence is more important than ability.

In their book, Kay and Shipman write about Robert Plomin, a behavioral geneticist at King’s College in Britain. Plomin, an expert in studying twins, has examined everything from intelligence to disease. Recently, he measured confidence in twins at ages seven and nine. The children were given standard IQ tests and tested in math, science, and writing. The children were asked to rate how confident they were about their abilities in each subject. Plomin found that the student’s self-perceived ability rating (SPA) was a better predictor of achievement than IQ. The researchers also separated the fraternal twins from the identical ones and found the scores of identical twins were more closely related. These findings show how closely tied genetics are to our innate level of confidence.⁹

Cameron Anderson, a psychologist in the business school at the University of California, Berkeley, also studies confidence. In 2009, he conducted tests among his students analyzing the importance of confidence compared to competence, and how the students perceived each other within the group. Did confidence affect rank in the social hierarchy? Anderson concluded that confidence does matter more than competence. “When people are confident, when they think they are good at something, regardless of how good they actually are, they display a lot of nonverbal and verbal behavior,” Anderson explained. From body language to a lower vocal tone to speaking in a calm and relaxed manner, he says confident people do a lot of things that make them look very adept in the eyes of others. “Whether they are good or not is kind of irrelevant.”¹⁰ And apparently all of this overconfidence is not a turnoff to others. In fact, Anderson found that the most confident people in the group were the “most beloved” and admired. The key here is that those with overconfidence weren’t faking it—it wasn’t simply bravado or bluster—they actually believed they were that good. When the level of confidence is authentic it fosters respect.¹¹

This finding may be frustrating and troubling, but sadly it tells us something that many women in the workforce already know. Why is it that some people seem to always get the promotion or the better project or the job, even if they don’t seem smarter or more qualified? I have experienced this firsthand—wondering why a guy was chosen over me. Did he just know how to “manage up” better? Was he going out for drinks after work with the boss? Did he have better chemistry with someone important? Or did he just come off as more capable because he appeared more confident?

The Gender Divide is Real

A growing body of research in recent years points to a true gender divide when it comes to confidence. Studies find that men overestimate their abilities and performance, while women underestimate both. This happens even when women perform equally well as (if not better than) men. Yes, guys can also feel insecure and self-doubt, but interestingly it doesn’t stop them from moving ahead as frequently as it does women.¹² The gender disparity in salary negotiations is also well documented. Among business school students, studies have found men were asking for raises four times more frequently than women and were negotiating for 20 to 30 percent more.

Kay and Shipman dug deep into what it is that holds women back. Is a female brain wired differently from a male brain, therefore impacting confidence? It’s a radioactive subject to suggest that women’s brains somehow differ from men’s. Historically, this is one of the issues that penalized women, a myth that women’s minds were inferior to men’s. But, in fact, men and women do have different ways of processing information. The majority of women’s brain cell matter is located in the frontal cortex (the hub of reasoning) and in the limbic cortex (the emotional headquarters of the brain). Men’s brain matter is distributed more evenly throughout the brain. Scientists also know that women’s brains are more active than male brains in almost all areas, particularly the regions responsible for empathy, intuition, collaboration, and yes, even worry. But a byproduct of all of this emotional strength is our inability to turn off thoughts. We ruminate. We obsess. We can jump to conclusions.

“We think too much and think about the wrong things,” write Kay and Shipman. “We are more keenly aware of everything happening around us, and that all becomes part of our cognitive stew. Ruminating drains the confidence from us.”¹³ Overthinking is debilitating. We might believe that we are problem solving, but instead our brains can start spinning out of control, interfering with our instincts and preventing us from moving forward. It becomes a vicious cycle: If we don’t feel confident, we don’t project competence and we become paralyzed.

Reframe and Stop Ruminating

There are tricks to end the rumination so we can take healthy action. Research shows we have to recognize the debilitating thoughts we are having and then give them an explanation—and it doesn’t even have to be a reasonable one. For example, many of us feel if a phone call or email isn’t returned quickly, then maybe that person doesn’t like us or our work. Or maybe somehow we offended them, or worse, they want to fire us. But having even a ridiculous explanation for why you haven’t heard back—like maybe the person you emailed broke their hand and can’t type—suddenly reframes the situation and as Shipman says, “It gets you off the high speed train to darkness. It lets you step back again and become an observer of your thoughts and it’s easier to say, ‘I’m moving on. I’ll email again in another two days, but I will stop putting all of this negative energy into it.’”

Shipman says that men simply don’t agonize over these thoughts the way women do. They are better able to separate and externalize why an email or call didn’t get returned. In fact, they are better equipped to process many situations that involve their personality, skills, and abilities. There has been extensive research on the gender differences in how students perceive their academic competence. Stanford psychology professor Dr. Carol Dweck famously found that when middle school boys did badly on a math test, they blamed the test for being too hard, but the girls blamed themselves for being bad at math.¹⁴ The boys externalize. The girls, on the other hand, internalize and believe they are at fault. Other subsequent studies among older students and even adults yielded similar results. Women will fall on their sword, assuming they are somehow personally responsible, while men will find external circumstances rather than themselves to blame.

Rewire Your Brain to Become More Confident

While confidence may be partly genetic, the good news is that it is also very malleable. It’s like a muscle that can be strengthened, or, with Amy Cuddy’s “power posing,” fooled. We can stand big, wide, and tall for two minutes to bring on confidence when we need it. We can also rewire our brains, even as adults. When we scrub those mental habits that hold us back and change our thinking, the science shows us there are physical changes in our brains as well. “You may be born with a propensity for confidence but it’s something you build, and the root of confidence and confidence creation is very active. It’s about taking action,” Shipman says.

Confidence creation is about taking risks. There is no specific formula because we each have different concepts of what’s risky. For some, it may be speaking in public. For others, it’s negotiating a salary or applying for a job that maybe they feel underqualified for or don’t have the specific experience for. For others, it’s going out on their own and launching a business. But the root to building confidence is to challenge yourself, taking on whatever may be risky for you. “The key is getting yourself into a mindset every day where you are examining what your brain is telling you,” Shipman says. “Can I push that? Can I try that? And why don’t I just do that and move on?”

Other techniques that can rewire the brain to generate thought patterns that encourage confidence include cognitive behavioral therapy and meditation. Both have been found to be incredibly beneficial in calming the brain and stimulating confidence. When you meditate, the brain’s fear center, the amygdala, shrinks and you can think clearly, which is obviously important for achieving goals.

When in Doubt, Act—Even if You’re Afraid

Make no mistake—inertia kills confidence. Studies find that the most effective way to push back against self-doubt is to act. “Nothing builds confidence like taking action, especially when the action involves risk and failure,” write Kay and Shipman.¹⁵ Small steps (baby steps even) are essential to becoming confident—and confidence begets confidence. There is a snowball effect; the more you put out there, the stronger you will feel. “Having confidence propels us to take action, and the more we take action the more confidence we build,” Shipman says. “It’s a virtuous cycle.”

But this may be easier said than done. Taking a risk and a leap will always require something to get you there. And what that something is can differ from person to person. Some suggest to “do it afraid”—acknowledge that yes, I’m scared and I’m going to do it anyway. You’re owning your fear and being authentic about how you feel. The flip side of “doing it afraid” is what Cuddy discusses as “faking it until you become it.” Shipman says you should do whatever it takes to get over that first hump. “In some ways we are all saying the same thing,” she says. “Sometimes we need a crutch in order to take the first step that starts the process of creating the ability to take more action.” And action is everything.

Don’t Worry About Perfect

“Fail fast” is a mantra often heard in the tech industry. It’s been embraced as the ultimate business model, and for founders who fail—at least for the guys in the hoodies—it’s a notch in the belt and an essential part of risk-taking. The concept is that you push out a bunch of different prototypes or ideas and see what sticks, ignoring the rest. The expectation is that nothing that you first launch is perfect. It doesn’t need to be. There’s no time for perfection.

The quest for perfection is often what can keep women from getting ahead. “I think this ‘perfectionist gene’ that too many young women have holds them back, and instead they should really be aiming for ‘good enough,’” Hillary Clinton told Glamour magazine. “You don’t have to be perfect. Most men never think like that. They’re just trying to figure out what’s the opening and how they can seize it.”¹⁶

An often-cited internal report from Hewlett-Packard shows the importance of confidence for women in the workplace. It found that women only apply for open jobs if they think they meet 100 percent of the criteria listed. Men apply if they meet 60 percent of the requirements. Sheryl Sandberg writes in her book Lean In that women need to shift from thinking “I’m not ready to do that” to thinking “I want to do that and I’ll learn by doing it.”¹⁷

The hinge to any type of career pivot is taking action—having the confidence and courage to try something new. All of this may explain someone like Heidi Davis. She may have won the genetic lottery on confidence; it may be imprinted into her DNA just like her curly hair. And perhaps because Heidi tends to naturally stand like Wonder Woman, the cocktail of power hormones may surge through her more frequently than the rest of us, giving her an extra boost. But Heidi also benefits from the byproduct of confidence. She believes and projects that she can succeed, which we now know helps her to succeed. Even in a major career pivot, from selling T-shirts to selling $4 million real estate, Heidi doesn’t ruminate about what she doesn’t know. She leans on her strengths and her skillset and goes all in.

“I always think, I’ve got to go for it myself,” Heidi says. “I never think I don’t belong here. Instead, it’s yeah, I belong here! When I started in the Garment Center, I just did it. I brought results. I made it happen and it came back to me.”