Creative confidence is the belief that what you bring to the table is creative, worth hearing and entitled to the floor. In my research with twelve senior women leaders in sports media marketing, it was the leadership edge that set them apart, a quieter and more durable kind of confidence than the one usually described as something you project. I call it the quiet advantage.
This article covers where that confidence comes from, the four mindsets that support it, the hidden work women do to lead in rooms not built for them, and five practices for building it yourself.
Key takeaways
- The women I interviewed drew confidence from their body of work and character, not from bravado.
- Four mindsets came up again and again: empathy, curiosity, adaptability and creative confidence, which holds the other three together.
- Many described constantly shifting leadership styles to suit the room, invisible labor one leader called “the Barbie Monologue.”
- All twelve identified as athletes, and connected sport directly to how they lead.
- Their mentors were women; their allies were mostly men. Both relationships mattered, for different reasons.
What is creative confidence?
Laura is a senior marketing and production executive at a sports network. For much of her twenty-plus years in the industry, she was the only woman in the meeting. When I asked how she had built her presence in those rooms, she told me first about a former boss who walked into meetings with what Laura called “a captivating confidence.” She wanted that badly, and she had to learn it.
Early in her career she would walk into a room and ask herself whether she belonged there. Over years of doing the work and seeing it land, something shifted:
When I walk in there something comes over me and I feel the confidence — because of my body of work, my creativity, and the character that I have. I belong there.
That confidence is not bravado or the borrowed swagger of a leadership podcast. It is quieter and more durable: the inner conviction that you are a creative person doing creative work, whether or not the room around you is willing to use that word for you.
The four mindsets behind the quiet advantage
The same four mindsets came up across my interviews. They are not the ones you might expect, like bold, decisive, ambitious or tough. They are quieter, and in my view more powerful.
1. Empathy
Nine of the twelve women named empathy as foundational, not as a soft skill but as the main way their work succeeds. Hannah, who leads creative at a global sports network, said empathy is often overlooked but powerful, because the best creative content connects with people emotionally, and understanding the audience makes the work stand out.
For women in industries coded as male, empathy carries extra weight: it can be read as “soft” and dismissed. The leaders in my research refused to let it be dismissed. They named it as their advantage.
2. Curiosity
Curiosity keeps the creative engine running on days when the brief is dull and the deadline was yesterday. Jessica, a senior executive at a sports agency, told me she pushes herself to find unfamiliar resources just to learn something new, because creativity comes from lifelong learning. Curiosity keeps you generative when the obvious answer has already failed.
3. Adaptability
In a fast-moving industry, adjusting on the fly is not a nice-to-have. It is the work. Sarah, a senior executive at a regional sports organization, said you have to stay ahead of trends and platforms, because outdated tactics won’t reach the current generation. Adaptive performance, working effectively through change, ambiguity and stress, is one of the most underrated leadership competencies, and one of the most consistent traits of women who have risen in difficult industries.
4. Creative confidence: the keystone
Without creative confidence, the other three stay private virtues. It is the difference between a leader who says “here is what I think we should do” and one who starts the same thought with “I might be wrong, but…”
Jessica told me, almost matter-of-factly, that she feels confident sharing her ideas in most rooms, and that there aren’t many rooms where she doesn’t feel empowered to have a voice. Coming from a woman in sports media, that is a real accomplishment, the product of years of work done by her, and not always done well by the rooms.
The Barbie Monologue: the invisible labor of leading in difficult rooms
One of the most useful insights in my research came from an offhand phrase. Rebecca, a senior leader at a professional sports team, was describing how she adjusts her leadership style through a typical day. She laughed and said it was like a Barbie Monologue.
In the morning, she has to be more directive than feels natural, because the room respects directness. In the afternoon, she has to soften, because the team needs warmth to do its best work. By the end of the day, she has performed more leadership styles than most people do in a week.
You can be too aggressive or by the book, or you can be too soft. So, you are always trying to find that right mix and read the situation and the people.
Academically, this is situational leadership. But Rebecca’s phrase captures what the textbook misses: for a woman in a male-dominated environment, situational leadership is not just a style. It is a survival strategy and a creative act. When you watch a woman lead well in a difficult room, you are watching invisible labor.
The women in my research didn’t protest this. They became skilled at it, and several described switching modes as one of the most demanding and least acknowledged parts of their leadership. The Barbie Monologue is real, and it is expensive. The least colleagues and sponsors can do is see it.
Why former athletes make strong creative leaders
I didn’t expect this finding: every one of the twelve women identified as an athlete, whether in high school, college, club or recreational sport. When I asked about it, they made the connection immediately.
- Amanda compared her marketing campaigns to her years on a team, where everybody plays a role.
- Sarah said leading her competitive soccer team through hard games is where she first learned to lead under pressure.
- Laura linked her ability to pivot and adapt in live media to a lifetime of reading plays as they unfolded.
Sport builds a cluster of skills that transfer almost directly to creative leadership: comfort with practice and repetition, comfort with losing in public, an instinct for team dynamics, the ability to perform under stress and a calibrated relationship with risk.
You don’t need an athletic background for this to matter. But if you are developing women for senior leadership, sport is a remarkable signal. And if you were an athlete, those skills aren’t in your past. They are leadership skills wearing a different uniform.
Mentors vs. allies: two relationships, two jobs
The women I interviewed agreed that mentors and allies were game changers. Then a pattern emerged. The mentors they described, the people who counseled them through decisions and helped them think through hard challenges, were other women, without exception. The allies, the people who advocated for them in rooms they weren’t in, said their names when promotions came up and pushed back on bias as it happened, were almost all men.
Mentors give you a mirror. Allies give you a megaphone.
- For women: build both, deliberately, and don’t confuse them. A mentor who never advocates for you is not enough. An ally who has never helped you think is not enough.
- For men in leadership: allyship is not a personality trait. It is something you do in rooms you are in and others are not. It starts with noticing who isn’t there and what is being said about them.
- For organizations: a mentorship program is not an allyship program. They need different designs, sponsors and measures.
What gets in the way
It would be dishonest to write this without naming what these women were up against. Almost every one had a story.
- Hannah described ideas not being taken seriously until a male colleague echoed them.
- Rebecca named the assumption that men know more about sports than women, “even when we are just as qualified.”
- Melissa voiced a frustration I have heard in every industry I’ve worked with: the wish that the old guard would simply step aside so women could do what needs doing.
I include these not to discourage anyone, but because creative confidence is built in the presence of these realities, not in their absence. The women in my research were not naive about bias. They had chosen, with discipline, not to let it decide what they thought of themselves. Rooms are sometimes wrong. Your work is real. Build your foundation on the work. (For the systems behind these barriers, see Bridges & Barriers to Creativity.)
How to build creative confidence: five practices
These are five things the women in my research did. None is quick. All of them compound.
- Keep a working record of what you have made. Not a résumé: projects, wins, hard challenges solved. When the room makes you doubt yourself, the record is the truth.
- Call yourself creative, deliberately and out loud. Not as branding. As accuracy.
- Build both a mentor and an ally. If you only have one, you are not yet fully sponsored.
- Treat the Barbie Monologue as a skill. It is a burden, and it is also your skill. Name it, notice yourself doing it, and respect that work.
- When doubt shows up, do the next small thing. Pat Summitt, the legendary Tennessee basketball coach, gave her players a simple mantra: left foot, right foot, breathe. Keep moving forward.
The quiet advantage is a discipline
The most effective women I interviewed did not lead by abandoning their natural styles. They treated empathy, curiosity, adaptability and creative confidence as strengths, then did the extra, mostly invisible work of making those strengths visible in rooms designed for a different kind of leader. They are not asking to be admired for that work. They are asking to be seen.
The quiet advantage is not a secret. It is built one room, one piece of work and one act of self-naming at a time. Left foot, right foot, breathe.
Frequently asked questions
What is creative confidence in leadership?
The belief that your ideas are creative, worth sharing and deserve a hearing, grounded in your body of work rather than in how a particular room responds. In this research, it was the keystone that turned empathy, curiosity and adaptability into visible leadership.
What is the “Barbie Monologue”?
A phrase from one research participant for the constant shifting of leadership styles women in male-dominated settings perform through a single day, more directive in one room and warmer in the next, to be heard and effective.
What is the difference between a mentor and an ally?
A mentor advises you and helps you think. An ally advocates for you in rooms you are not in. Women in this research needed both, and usually found them in different people.
Why do athletes make good leaders?
Sport builds comfort with practice, public losses, team roles, pressure and risk. All twelve women in this study were athletes and tied those experiences directly to how they lead.
If you’ve felt the cost of the Barbie Monologue, or the moment your creative confidence finally settled in, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
This piece is drawn from my dissertation, Playing the Creative Advantage: Creative Role Identity of Female Leaders in Sports Media Marketing (University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2025). Names are pseudonyms.