Believe It Until You Become It: How to Build Confidence as a Leader
Here's how to build confidence as a leader: decide who you're becoming, then start making the decisions that person would make before you have the evidence that you belong. Confidence follows the behavior. You don't wait for it to show up first.
That's why I've never liked the phrase "fake it until you make it." Faking it is about convincing everybody around you that you're something you're not. Believing it is about convincing yourself of what you're capable of becoming, and then living like that person before you have all the evidence. So I say it differently: believe it until you become it.
I hold a Guinness World Record as the first Monster Jam driver to top 100 mph, and today I work as a leadership keynote speaker with organizations like Deutsche Bank, Chick-fil-A, and KOA. But for a long stretch of my career, I had very little evidence that I belonged in the rooms I wanted to be in.
The phrase started at an executive recruiting firm, on the day I sat across from the senior vice president running my first search and told him I couldn't make the calls. Here's that story, what it taught me about leadership identity, and what to do when the room feels too big.
Why "Fake It Until You Make It" Is Bad Advice (And What to Do Instead)
"Fake it until you make it" is bad advice because it points your energy at the wrong audience: the people around you. The better approach asks you to believe enough in your future identity that you start earning it today.
I learned the difference before I ever climbed into a monster truck. I had just made a massive career change into executive recruiting, and my very first search wasn't a low-level one where I could get my feet wet. It was a chief financial officer search for a private equity firm's pet food manufacturing company.
I knew zero about what a CFO did, what private equity was, or how pet food was manufactured. The senior vice president running the project, Jim, was known as one of the strictest SVPs at the firm. I was sure I'd be exposed as a fraud within a few weeks.
It was a sink-or-swim situation, and one saying kept running through my head: fake it until you make it. Thinking about it only made things worse.
After my first day of calling CFOs, I sat down with Jim with nothing but a look of failure in my eyes. "I can't call these CFOs," I told him. "I don't even know what they do! How am I supposed to convince them to uproot their lives?"
Jim's answer quickly banished the fake-it mindset:
"Bryce, when you believe you're the one they've been hoping would call with their dream career opportunity, the calls will become easy."
It wasn't a question of skill or knowledge. It was a question of identity. I started telling myself, "Believe it until I become it," and I ended up finding multiple candidates for that search. We placed a talented executive with that company under the 90-day target.
That's the first lesson in how to build confidence as a leader. When you step into a role that feels too big, don't spend your energy managing what other people think of you. Spend it deciding who you're becoming, then act like that person on the very next call.
Believe It Until You Become It: Acting Like the Leader You Want to Become
Acting like the leader you want to become doesn't mean claiming a result you haven't earned. It means you start practicing the behaviors of the person who is capable of earning it.
I had to do it long before Monster Jam. I was the kid with the V6 Mustang who desperately wanted to be part of the car world, even though I didn't have the money, the experience, or even the car to really belong in it yet.
When I started pursuing Monster Jam, there was a period where I had so little evidence that I belonged at that level. Nobody was looking at my resume and saying, of course, this guy is going to be a professional monster truck driver. But I could see a version of myself that didn't exist yet, so I started making the decisions that version of me would make.
Then I had to do it again as a speaker. Nobody walks up and hands you a card that says congratulations, you're officially a keynote speaker now. You look around at people with decades of experience, huge client lists, polished demo reels, and hundreds of keynotes behind them, and you think: who am I to say I belong in this world?
My answer couldn't just be repeating "I'm a speaker" in the mirror. I had to start behaving like one:
I studied great communicators.
I worked on stories when nobody had hired me to tell them.
I watched the footage back and rewrote my material.
I learned the business side.
I treated small opportunities with the same seriousness I wanted to bring to a room of thousands someday.
Eventually, the evidence started catching up. Bigger organizations called. Bigger stages opened up. Audiences responded.
The same pattern played out in Monster Jam. I believed I was the best choice to take over the driver's seat of the Great Clips Mohawk Warrior, and I became the driver who helped build the relationship between Great Clips and Monster Jam. I believed I was a national television-caliber communicator until I became a national television host for a Discovery Channel special event.
The identity had to come first, because the behaviors that created the evidence came from that identity.
Imposter Syndrome in Leadership: What to Do When You Feel in Over Your Head
Imposter syndrome in leadership rarely looks like a lack of ability. More often, it looks like a capable person who is incredibly good at explaining away their own success.
Some of the highest performers I meet will tell you they just got lucky, somebody took a chance on them, they had a great team behind them, or they were in the right place at the right time. Then they walk into the next opportunity wondering whether this is finally the room where everybody figures out they're in over their head.
I know that feeling from the inside. Back in 2019, I felt insanely inadequate in my career. I wasn't winning on the track, I wasn't increasing the team's value in our partnership with Great Clips, and I was good at everything but great at nothing. What turned it around was one question: who am I really hoping to become through this chapter of my life?
I address this directly from the stage. My keynote is built on the G.E.A.R. Framework, my four gears of Growth, Engagement, Acceleration, and Risk, and this conversation lives in the Growth gear.
When I delivered it for KOA, I asked how many people had looked in the mirror that morning and thought, "Maybe I'm just not the leader my team needs." Then I told them they had to learn to believe they were the leader their team needs until they became that leader.
My honest response: maybe you are in over your head. That's not always a bad thing. If every opportunity you're given fits perfectly inside the capability you already have, you're probably not growing very much.
So the real question is what you do next, because belief is a discipline before it's a feeling:
Make the decision to prepare.
Ask the question you feel like you should already know the answer to.
Learn the skill you're missing.
Walk into the room anyway.
Then do it again.
Confidence eventually has evidence to stand on, because you've collected proof that you can figure things out. So if you feel in over your head, don't waste all your energy trying to convince yourself you're not. Start becoming the person who can swim there.
If a real setback shook your confidence, that's a dip, and the way out looks different. I walk through the hardest stretch of my driving career, crash after crash, in how to get out of a career dip.
Leadership Identity: Who I'm Still Becoming
Leadership identity isn't something you settle once. It's the version of yourself you keep growing into, and your actions follow it. As I wrote in Geared for Life, when we lead with identity, the right action becomes automatic.
I'm still doing this right now. Monster Jam has given me an unbelievable platform, and I'm grateful for it, but there's going to be a day when I'm no longer climbing into that truck.
So the identity I'm growing into is someone whose impact doesn't depend on whether I'm still a professional driver. I'm a speaker, an author, and a teacher: someone who can take what I've learned about performance, identity, failure, momentum, and growth and make it useful long after the helmet comes off. I don't have all the evidence for that version of my life yet. That's kind of the point.
If you lead people, this works in both directions. How many people on your team simply haven't given themselves permission to win? What if they could see themselves the way you see them? Sometimes the most useful thing a leader can do is what Jim did for me: name the identity before the evidence shows up.
Belief and momentum have that in common, because neither one waits for you to feel ready. I dig into the momentum side in how to build leadership momentum even when you don't feel ready.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you build confidence as a leader?
Decide who you're becoming, then practice that person's behaviors before you have the evidence. Prepare, ask the questions you think you should already know, learn the skills you're missing, and walk into the room anyway. Confidence grows as you collect proof that you can figure things out.
What's the difference between "believe it until you become it" and "fake it until you make it"?
Fake it until you make it is about convincing everyone around you that you're something you're not. Believe it until you become it is about convincing yourself of what you're capable of becoming, then living like that person before the evidence arrives. One manages other people's perception, while the other changes the behavior that builds the evidence.
How do you overcome imposter syndrome as a leader?
Stop arguing with the feeling and start acting on the identity you're growing into. Put your energy into preparation, honest questions, and new skills, because those build real proof. Bryce Kenny addresses this directly in his keynotes, starting with the leaders who looked in the mirror that morning and wondered whether they're the leader their team needs.
Is it bad to feel in over your head at work?
Not necessarily. If every opportunity fits perfectly inside the capability you already have, you're probably not growing much. Treat the feeling as a sign of a growth season, and spend your energy becoming the person who can handle the room.
Self-Belief in Leadership Starts Before the Results Do
Confidence as a leader isn't something you wait to feel. You build it by acting on who you're becoming until the evidence catches up. That's why, when I teach the G.E.A.R. Framework, it sits in the Growth gear right alongside what you put in your tank.
If there's one sentence I'd want you to remember, it's this: don't wait for your results to give you permission to become the person you already know you're capable of becoming.
Believe it until you become it.
Bring the Confidence Conversation to Your Next Conference
Bryce Kenny brings this message to franchise conventions, corporate conferences, and association events as part of his G.E.A.R. Framework keynote. If your people are talented but waiting to feel ready, or quietly explaining away their own wins, this keynote gives them a practical way to act like the leaders they're becoming before anyone hands them the evidence.
See if Bryce Kenny is available as your keynote speaker →