Confidence is the most valuable currency in business, but most people trade in counterfeit bills. It’s easy to mistake volume for conviction and swagger for certainty, and later watch that same person crater when the pressure actually arrives. Real confidence isn’t about never showing weakness. It’s about knowing your value so thoroughly that you don’t need to perform it every minute of every meeting or day.

People with confidence show themselves in how someone handles status. I’m talking about people who can laugh when they’re the punchline, who can take a younger co-worker’s criticism of their strategy without getting defensive, and who don’t need to dominate every conversation to prove they belong in the room. These are people who understand that confidence isn’t a rigid posture you hold. Instead, it’s fluid and adaptive. It’s something you can afford to relax because you know it’s still there when you need it. Watch someone’s face when they’re gently ribbed at a dinner meeting. The secure ones smile and volley back. The insecure ones catalog it as a debt to be repaid.

But here’s where it gets tricky, because confidence isn’t the same as that false modesty routine that everyone’s running these days. You know the type. They accomplish something significant and then spend ten minutes explaining how it was really everyone else, how they barely contributed, or how they were just lucky to be in the room. That’s not humility, but another kind of performance. When you’ve actually done the work and delivered results, you don’t need to diminish yourself to make others comfortable. Real confidence means accepting credit without apology, standing in the spotlight when it finds you, and saying “thank you” instead of deflecting with some rehearsed speech about how you’re just a regular person who got lucky.

What I’m describing is actually a balance, something I think of as the space between dignity and humility. It’s about occupying your proper place without either shrinking from it or expanding beyond it. The truly confident people I work with know when to defer and when to direct, when to listen and when to speak with authority, when to acknowledge mistakes and when to defend their decisions. They’re comfortable moving up and down the status ladder because they’re not desperately clinging to any particular rung. Their sense of self isn’t dependent on always being the smartest person in the room or the most liked or the most humble. They just are who they are, and that consistency creates trust.

This matters in business because confidence is contagious and so is its absence. People are reading your signals constantly. They’re asking themselves whether you believe in what you’re doing, whether you can handle adversity, or whether you’re going to fall apart when things don’t go according to plan. The leader who can take a joke, accept being wrong, and still project calm certainty when decisions need to be made—that’s who people want to follow and builds something that lasts. Everything else is just noise from people trying to convince themselves as much as they’re trying to convince you.