How to Cope Under Pressure: The Hidden Behaviours That Make or Break Your Gravitas | #63

In this fourth episode of the confidence in leadership series, Rich and Dave explore a deeper and often misunderstood truth: confidence is not about having all the answers, feeling certain, or performing perfectly. Maintaining presence and gravitas under pressure is a tricky but vital skill to learn, but for many people confidence isn’t what they think it is. In this conversation Dave and Rich unpack how true confidence emerges from a more grounded relationship with yourself, one that integrates healthy self-worth and competence.Drawing on real-world leadership experience, they explore the subtle ways leaders get caught in cycles of over-control, hesitation, or self-doubt, and how these patterns show up under pressure.This episode also introduces a more integrated view of confidence within the Connected Leadership approach, where effective leadership is not just about capability, but about connection to self, others, and to the environment in which you are operating.If you’ve ever felt like confidence comes and goes, or that it depends too much on external validation or performance, this conversation offers a more sustainable and grounded way forward.Key Talking PointsWhy confidence is often misunderstood as certainty or controlThe hidden traps of over-reliance on competenceThe difference between “performing confidence” and being grounded in itHow pressure reveals your default confidence patternsThe relationship between self-worth and competence (The Confidence Compass)Why true confidence is stable, even when performance isn’tHow Connected Leadership reframes confidence as internal alignment, not external display