Working Girls’ Invites the Boys to Explore: The Confidence Gap

A panel discussion

Do women need to be nicer than men to get ahead?

‘The Confidence Gap’ is the theory that women don’t have the same confidence in their abilities as their male counterparts. Studies show that men overestimate their abilities and performance, and women underestimate both.

This lack of confidence can be devastating, especially to women in their early careers. Success, it turns out, can correlate just as closely with confidence as it does with competence.

To complicate things further, studies have found that women worry more about being disliked, inhibiting opportunities to display competency to grow confidence. And they are right to worry. When women do display confidence at work they may suffer a whole other set of consequences - being labelled rude, bossy, loud. It’s not just our competence that’s then called into question; it’s our very character. How can we win?

This panel discussion explored the evidence of how the confidence gap affects women and their careers, the different ways confident behaviours are perceived between men and women, and how we can close the gap.

MODERATOR

Matthew Cook, Company culture consultant

Matthew is passionate about helping people realise their potential and helping organisations create the right environment, systems and mindsets to nurture this. He is a Mental Health First Aider, CIPD L3 HR qualified and a practitioner of Non-Violent Communication.

PANELISTS

Safiya Karsan Michel, COO at Elliptic

Safiya is currently the COO at Elliptic – a Series C crypto compliance company where she runs operations, strategy, people and go-to-market execution. Prior to that, Safiya has held a variety of leadership roles in public and private businesses, most recently as the EVP Operations at Pollen. Safiya holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Washington University in St. Louis. She’s a proud mom, a travel junkie, and an avid reader.

Louis Jenkins Bluckert, Strategy & Capability Director at Mars

Louis is currently the Strategy Director in Mars Petcare UK. He is a passionate advocate of I&D and is in the group leading that agenda across Europe in Mars. Alongside this, he chairs the LGBT+ group and has spent time with Stonewall and several years volunteering at Switchboard LGBT+ Charity. He lives in London with his partner Richard and cat Piglet.

Alexa (Saller) Dalton, Global Brand Director at KIND and Founder of Working Girls' Network

Having worked in Sales, Design & Marketing, Alexa is a marketer that tries to strike the balance between the commercial and the creative. She's passionate about developing her team to leverage their strengths. On a weekend you'll find her frantically Pinteresting for ideas on how to style her next big bash or pottering around her postage-stamp sized London garden.

Katie Thompson, Co-founder of Voco; strategic communications advisor

Katie is the co-founder of Voco, a data-led matchmaking platform which unlocks the power of curated peer conversations to help people be better - and happier - at work. Previously Katie spent two decades in media and communications, leading teams at the Guardian, Coca-Cola, MSI Reproductive Choices, OVO Energy and Portland Communications, where she advised Google and Facebook amongst many other clients.

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