I had only three years of project management experience—and zero technical background—when I was asked to select and implement my company’s most important software system.
I didn’t hesitate.
Saying “yes” likely accelerated my career by years. But I made mistakes—expensive ones—that a more competent person would have certainly avoided.
I wasn’t ready. But I looked ready. And that was enough to get me the gig.
Now, I’m the one making those calls.
I help decide who we hire, who gets the big assignments, and who is ready for promotion.
And I see it so clearly now—how we mistake confidence for competence.
Sometimes it works out. But often, it doesn’t.
When the wrong people get promoted, or the right people get overlooked, the consequences touch every part of the organization.
Confidence is a performance. Not everyone learns the script.
I was lucky.
Confidence was something I was taught. My dad put me in front of every mic he could find—singing, acting, reading my own writing aloud to a roomful of adults. My mom, a concert pianist, coached me on how to recover from mistakes without the audience ever knowing.
“Everyone messes up,” she’d say. “But that doesn’t mean the audience has to know about it.”
Only later did I realize what a gift that was. Not everyone gets taught how to look ready. Especially not women. Or introverts. Or first-generation professionals. Or anyone who was raised to believe humility would speak for itself.
And so we confuse two things:
- The ability to project readiness and
- The ability to do the work well
We rarely separate those in practice, which means we end up rewarding whoever looks the part—even if they’re not ready to play it.
The research is Clear: Looking Ready Beats Being Ready
We’ve all felt it: the frustration of watching an overconfident person rise through the ranks while more competent colleagues stay stuck.
It’s not in your head. It’s been studied:
- Overconfidence pays off socially. People who seem sure of themselves are often granted higher status—even when that confidence isn’t backed by skill. The bigger their appetite for status, the more likely they are to overestimate their abilities. Source: Anderson, Brion, Moore & Kennedy (2012), A Status-Enhancement Account of Overconfidence
- We read status as competence. Once someone is seen as “high status,” we tend to assume they’re also highly competent—regardless of evidence. So confident behavior doesn’t just signal leadership—it gets misread as proof of ability. Source: Fiske, Cuddy & Glick (2007), Warmth and Competence: The Stereotype Content Model
- Confidence is persuasive—even to the person faking it. When people expect to persuade others, they become more confident—and that confidence makes them more convincing. In fact, people often start to believe their own hype. Source: Schwardmann & van der Weele (2019), Deception and Self-Deception
What Happens When We Mistake Confidence for Competence
When I led that first software project—with no earned confidence—I cost the company big money in preventable mistakes. But worse, I helped train the organization to reward the wrong signals.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
- Overconfident people rise fast—and start believing their own hype.
Without enough pushback or accountability, they stop seeking feedback. Rather than focus on succeeding where they are, they’re already thinking about the next big assignment. What could have been a confident and competent person becomes all sizzle and no substance.
- Competent, cautious people get stuck.
Meanwhile, competent people who haven’t been coached in confidence rarely volunteer to take on high-stakes work. When they do, it’s rarely visible. They don’t get the sponsorship they need to move up—and over time, they stop raising their hand for stretch assignments. Or worse, they leave.
- The organization loses a critical signal.
You start rewarding the people who sell ideas, not the ones who vet or deliver them. Project risk rises. Engagement drops. And your org chart starts to resemble a talent illusion: shiny at the top, underpowered in the middle.
And the worst part is that it’s self-reinforcing. The more confident-but-unready people you promote, the more you normalize performative leadership over actual readiness.
How We Built a Better Promotion System
Now I’m in a new position—one where I help make decisions about who to hire, who to promote, and what projects to assign to whom.
In our case, it’s doubly tough because not only do we need to hire competent people, but we also need to hire (or coach) confidence at a client site.
How do we measure both, without confusing one for the other?
It’s a challenge we’re always calibrating—but over time, we’ve built a system that helps us see real readiness better than we used to. Here’s what we do:
- We ask employees to write up their last project.
After each engagement, our PMs complete a short reflection: what they accomplished, what they learned, and what they’d do differently next time. It helps us understand how they think—and helps them track their growth. It’s also given us stronger case studies and surfaced coaching moments we might have missed. - We ask clients for feedback early—and often.
We check in at 30, 60, and 90 days, then every six months. But first, we train our consultants to ask for feedback themselves. That small shift builds confidence, reveals blind spots, and gives us real data about how someone’s performing on the ground. - We put every PM in a peer coaching group.
These are small, trust-based, boss-free circles where team members share real challenges, swap tools, and push each other’s thinking. For less confident PMs, this is often the first place they feel seen as a leader—and where true confidence begins to build. - We defined what “ready for promotion” looks like—behaviorally.
Instead of relying on “vibe” decision-making, we’ve clarified the specific behaviors that signal someone is meeting expectations and ready to take the next step. It keeps us aligned—and keeps high-potential team members from getting overlooked just because they don’t “feel ready.”
We Extend the Same Thinking to Hiring
The same biases that creep into promotion decisions show up in hiring, too.
So we’ve applied the same principle: don’t just reward confidence—test for competence.
Here’s what that looks like:
- We give candidates real project scenarios.
Instead of just interviews, we ask candidates to respond to written prompts that mirror real PM challenges. Sometimes they assess a project schedule. Sometimes they decide how to manage a tricky sponsor dynamic.
We give them 24 hours and let them use AI tools—but they’re still responsible for the output. - We assess responses using a structured rubric.
Both a human and AI review the work independently before comparing notes. It helps surface bias, and it ensures we’re not just swayed by style or presentation. - We ask behavioral and situational questions.
We want to know what they’ve done—and how they think. Both are critical to competence, and each tells us something different.
We still want people who are confident—our clients expect that. But now, we don’t assume confidence is enough. We look for depth, curiosity, and judgment underneath the polish.
What PMO Leaders Can Do Differently—Today
If you lead a PMO, you probably see both sides of this:
- The high-energy candidate who says yes to everything but stumbles in execution
- The quietly competent team member who waits to be asked—then overdelivers
To shift the pattern, we have to stop treating confidence as a proxy for competence. That doesn’t mean undervaluing presence—it means not mistaking it for readiness.
Here are a few small moves that help:
- Write down what someone has delivered—objectively.
Before you recommend someone for promotion, list their tangible results. Not “has good energy.” Not “steps up in meetings.” Real outcomes. If that’s hard to do, you may be overvaluing style. - Ask better readiness questions.
Instead of “Do they seem ready?” ask:- “What evidence do I have of their judgment under pressure?”
- “How do they respond to feedback?”
- “Do they know what they don’t know?”
- Coach confidence like a skill.
Don’t just reward it—build it. Help people connect what they’ve already done to what they can take on. Show them how to talk about their work with clarity, not apology.
The job of a PMO leader isn’t just to manage capacity—it’s to recognize potential.
And that means looking past the performance to see the person.