Confidence comes from awareness. That’s the claim Biran makes in this clip, and it’s worth sitting with because it cuts against how most people try to build confidence, which is by acting the part before they feel it.
Her version is different. Without knowing why you do what you do, without knowing yourself, without knowing the market or the situation you’re in, it’s genuinely difficult to be the person an employer wants, or to perform at what she calls the highest level.
What “highest level” actually means
This is the part that matters most. Biran is clear that she’s not expecting anyone to be switched on and performing brilliantly every single day. What she means by highest level is an average, and it’s the highest level of your own expectation of yourself, not someone else’s benchmark, not a comparison to a colleague, not an external standard you’ve absorbed without noticing.
That distinction changes what self-awareness is for. It’s not a route to some universal idea of excellence. It’s a way of finding out what you actually expect of yourself, separate from what everyone around you expects, so you have a standard that’s yours to work towards rather than one you inherited.
Whose expectations are you working to?
Biran’s advice here is direct: stop living with other people’s expectations, or working to them. Understand what others expect of you, that’s still useful information, but also hear your own inner voice. The confidence she’s describing shows up when your inner world, your own expectations of yourself and of others, is aligned with what others expect of you. That alignment is what lets you perform. Without it, you’re either chasing a standard that isn’t yours or ignoring one that matters.
We see this a lot in the people we work with, particularly those moving into new roles or trying to establish themselves in a new field. The instinct is to work out what the room expects and deliver that, without ever checking whether it matches what they expect of themselves. We wrote a while back about stepping into a new leadership role, and the same tension shows up there: confidence in a new position comes less from getting everything right immediately and more from understanding yourself well enough to know what right actually looks like for you.
Take a moment this week to notice whose expectations you’re actually working to when you’re trying to perform well, and whether your own inner voice has had a say in it at all.
Be sure to check out more from Biran at Biran’s website and Biran’s LinkedIn.
Want to work through a real leadership challenge? Book a complimentary coaching session.
