May 14, 2026

Confidence, Executive Coaching

Black women executive standing at boardroom table; Performative Confidence for Black Women Leaders_ Twanna Carter; find Black executive coach near; best Black executive career coach

By Dr. Twanna Carter | Executive Presence Coaching for Black Women

She rehearses the meeting the night before. Not the content, that she knows cold. She rehearses how she will sound. How she will sit. How she will make sure her certainty reads as composed authority and not as the kind of directness that makes people uncomfortable in ways that always seem to circle back to her.

She is not insecure. She is not unprepared. She is exhausted from performative confidence. Performing a version of confidence that was never designed in her image.

This is one of the most common and least-discussed realities for senior Black women in leadership: the difference between performing confidence and leading from it. These are not the same thing. One is sustainable. One quietly drains you of the energy that belongs in your work.

Executive presence coaching for Black women, done well, begins with this distinction, because until you can name it, you cannot change it.

What Is Performative Confidence – and Why Is It So Common for Senior Women Leaders?

Performative confidence is not weakness. It is a learned response to environments that have consistently asked you to prove your authority rather than simply exercise it.

The Archetype Problem: When the Standard Wasn’t Built for You

For decades, executive presence has been measured against an archetype that was never designed to include Black women. The traditional pillars, commanding a room with assertive delivery, projecting unshakeable certainty, demonstrating decisiveness through forcefulness, were constructed around a specific image of leadership. One that most Black women were not only excluded from, but actively penalized for embodying.

The leadership myth that asked you to shrink yourself is built into this archetype. When you speak with conviction, you may be read as aggressive. When you lead with directness, you may be read as difficult. When you occupy space unapologetically, you may be read as “too much.”

The result is that many senior women of color develop a performative layer, a carefully calibrated presentation of confidence that manages the room’s comfort while keeping their actual authority underneath, contained.

This is not a character flaw. It is an adaptive response to a system that penalized authenticity. But it has a very real cost.

The Cost of Constant Self-Monitoring

Research from SIGMA Assessment Systems draws a sharp line between authentic confidence, grounded in actual capability, and performative confidence, which is projected through presence but not necessarily connected to an internal foundation. When confidence is performed rather than embodied, it introduces instability: the leader is perpetually managing how they appear rather than leading from who they are.

This dynamic creates what researchers describe as a hidden leadership tax for women. It requires leaders to constantly self-monitor, over-prepare, and overextend, all in service of appearing ready rather than simply being ready. That is a significant cognitive load that sits on top of the actual demands of senior leadership.

And it is the kind of burnout that comes from leading in performance mode, not the burnout of working too hard, but the burnout of being someone other than yourself for too long.

What Is Grounded Confidence – and Why Does It Lead Differently?

Grounded confidence is what you have when your leadership does not require external validation to function. It is the internal operating system that says: I know what I bring. I know where I stand. And I do not need this room’s approval to lead effectively in it.

What Deepa Purushothaman’s Research on Women of Color Reveals About Authentic Power

Deepa Purushothaman, former senior partner at Deloitte, Harvard Kennedy School Leader in Practice, and author of The First, The Few, The Only: How Women of Color Can Redefine Power in Corporate America, spent years interviewing more than 500 women of color across industries about how they navigated corporate power. What she found was a consistent pattern among the women who led most effectively: they were not trying to perform someone else’s version of authority. They were anchored in their own.

Purushothaman identifies inner wisdom, cultural strengths, and the willingness to carry what makes you different, not in spite of the system, but as your most powerful leadership asset, as the foundation of sustainable, authentic executive authority. Her research frames the exhaustion so many women of color experience as the direct result of being conditioned to hide the very qualities that make their leadership exceptional.

This is the essence of grounded confidence: leading from the fullness of who you are, rather than the edited version that makes others comfortable.

How Grounded Confidence Shows Up in the Executive Suite

Grounded confidence does not announce itself loudly. It does not need to. It shows up as:

Entering a difficult conversation without rehearsing how to make your point land softly enough to avoid backlash
Sharing a strategic recommendation from a place of conviction, not performance
Sitting with disagreement without losing your center or your voice
Choosing authenticity over approval, and doing it consistently, not just when the stakes feel low

According to research published by Women of Influence (2025), the evolving definition of executive presence has shifted significantly away from performance and projection, toward resonance, emotional clarity, and the kind of trust that only comes when a leader shows up as the same person regardless of the audience. That is grounded confidence in action.

How Do You Know Which One You’re Operating From?

This is the diagnostic question, and it deserves an honest answer.

Six Signs You’re Leading From Performance, Not Presence

You rehearse how you’ll deliver your ideas as much as the ideas themselves
You feel relieved after a meeting because you “got through it” rather than energized by what you created
You adjust your tone, delivery, or conclusions based on who is in the room, not based on what is actually true or strategic
You feel most confident when you have received external validation, and most uncertain when you have not
You leave high-stakes interactions feeling drained rather than clear
The inner critic that challenges your right to lead gets loudest in the rooms where you have the most to contribute

Three Signs Your Confidence Is Genuinely Grounded

Your leadership position is consistent, you do not perform differently based on who is watching
You can hold a dissenting view without it destabilizing your sense of authority
You recover quickly from criticism or challenge, not because you are unbothered, but because your foundation does not depend on others’ agreement

Neither list is a judgment. They are a map. And as researchers in executive presence have noted, developing grounded confidence is not about eliminating fear, it is about grounding yourself so deeply in who you are that fear no longer determines how you show up.

The Executive Presence Shift: From “Appearing Ready” to “Being Ready”

The most important evolution in how executive presence is understood today is the move away from performance and toward resonance. The question is no longer do you appear to be in control? It is do people feel led when they are with you?

Reflective Visibility vs. Performative Visibility

Being visible as a leader does not mean being performative. Reflective visibility, the practice of showing up with clarity, intention, and consistency, is far more powerful than projecting a polished surface.

Research from IMD (2024) confirms that the traditional markers of executive presence, assertiveness, forcefulness, commanding a room through dominance, have been replaced by authenticity, a listen-and-learn orientation, and the kind of gravitas that comes from how you make people feel, not from how you manage how you appear.

This is not a trend. It is a fundamental shift in what executive presence actually requires at the senior level. And it is a shift that plays directly to the natural strengths of Black women who have spent years developing emotional intelligence, cultural agility, and the capacity to lead with both precision and humanity.

Why This Distinction Matters More at the Senior Level

The more senior you become, the more your leadership operates through presence, not just task execution. Strategy, influence, and organizational culture are shaped by who you are in the room, not just what you deliver out of it.

Performative confidence has a ceiling. It works, to a point, in environments where you are being evaluated. But it does not scale into transformational leadership, because transformational leadership requires people to follow you, and people follow what they trust. Trust is built through consistency and authenticity. Not through polish.

How to Reclaim Grounded Confidence as an Executive Practice

Reclaiming grounded confidence is not a one-time mindset shift. It is a practice, one built deliberately, over time, through intentional executive work.

Step 1 – Anchor to Your Inner Wisdom, Not External Validation

Deepa Purushothaman’s research points to one consistent finding among the most effective women of color leaders: they learned to listen to their own inner wisdom, their instincts, their body’s signals, their cultural intelligence, rather than outsourcing their confidence to the room’s response.

This means developing the practice of asking, before high-stakes moments: What do I actually know here? What do I trust about my own read of this situation? And then leading from that foundation rather than recalibrating in response to the room.

Step 2 – Separate Emotional Regulation from Emotional Suppression

Grounded confidence is not emotionlessness. It is not the performance of being unaffected. Research on executive presence and emotional intelligence makes clear that leaders with genuine executive presence communicate from a place of emotional regulation, not emotional suppression. The difference is critical.

Suppression says: I cannot let them see what I feel. Regulation says: I know what I feel, I know why I feel it, and I choose how I respond. The first is performative. The second is grounded. One depletes your nervous system. The other draws from it.

Step 3 – Rebuild Self-Trust as a Leadership Discipline

Self-trust is the infrastructure that grounded confidence is built on. And for Black women who have spent years in environments that actively worked to undermine their instincts, through gaslighting, through impossible standards, through the credibility proof loop, rebuilding self-trust is not a small ask. It is a practice that requires both internal work and an external container that affirms your authority rather than constantly testing it.

One senior director in the pharmaceutical industry described the shift this way: “I now show up unapologetically. I’ve stopped second-guessing myself and started embracing my full power as a leader.” That is not a confidence trick. That is the result of deep, deliberate work to rebuild the relationship with her own authority.

And another: “If I had to describe this coaching in one word, it would be empowering. I feel like I’ve stepped back into my power.”

You Were Already Carrying This

Performative confidence is what the system asked you to wear. It is the edited, managed, carefully calibrated version of your leadership that was designed to make others comfortable at your expense.

Grounded confidence is what you were already carrying. It is the emotional intelligence, the cultural agility, the strategic clarity, and the authentic authority that have gotten you this far, even when the system worked against you.

Coaching is not where you acquire grounded confidence. It is where you stop confusing the two.

The V.I.P. Lead With E.A.S.E™ executive coaching program was designed for Black women who are ready to stop leading from the performance layer and start leading from their full authority. This shift isn’t just professional. It’s transformational. Schedule a V.I.P. Roadmap Session today.

Dr. Twanna Carter is an executive coach with over 15 years of experience supporting senior women leaders in tech, finance, healthcare, and nonprofits. She is the founder of Twanna Carter Professional & Personal Coaching, LLC and the creator of the Lead With E.A.S.E.™ executive coaching framework. Learn more at twannacarter.com.