If you’ve been waiting for someone else to boost your confidence, here’s how to build confidence on your own terms.
When Marcus first came to coaching, he wanted help preparing for a job interview, but soon he found that what he really wanted was to build confidence in himself.
Customer Journey: Marcus
Marcus was a tech executive who came to coaching during a career transition. Over the years that followed, he navigated new roles, organizational change, difficult bosses, and periods of uncertainty.
Marcus’s journey explores self-leadership, resilience, confidence, and learning to take ownership of his own growth.
Each post explores a real coaching conversation or leadership challenge from that journey. This is post six of six.
What neither of us knew at the time was that the interview would be the easiest part of his journey.
Over the following years, Marcus would navigate new roles, new teams, new bosses, layoffs, reorganization, uncertainty, and periods where he questioned himself more than he wanted to admit.
Looking back, the most important lesson was not about the technical work.
It was not about interviewing.
It was not even about leadership.
It was about learning to trust himself.
To sum it up, he learned that no one was coming to manage his career for him. If he wanted to grow, he would have to advocate for himself, challenge himself, and continue developing regardless of who happened to be his boss.
At different points in his journey, Marcus learned:
- How to be more approachable by becoming less judgmental.
- How to replace certainty with curiosity.
- How to lead himself when his boss wasn’t providing direction.
- How to survive difficult leadership without losing himself.
- How to create boundaries during stressful periods.
- How to get out of the weeds and keep growing.
Most importantly, he learned that confidence is not the absence of doubt. Confidence is trusting yourself to keep moving forward despite the doubt.
Over time, Marcus stopped looking for external validation to tell him he was doing well. He still appreciated encouragement, feedback, and good leadership. But he no longer depended on those things to know his own value.
He knew he was capable.
He knew he could learn.
He knew he could adapt.
And he knew that even when circumstances changed, he could find a way forward.
That’s what made him successful. His success wasn’t about a title, a promotion, or a boss.
It was the ability to stay grounded in his values and continue growing through whatever came next.
Marcus’s journey reminds me that leadership growth usually isn’t a straight line. Promotions, reorganizations, supportive bosses, difficult bosses, successes, and setbacks all shaped his development.
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