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Are you a leader grappling with the challenge of delivering more and more impact but without additional people or resources?
If so, you’ll be all too familiar with this critical leadership question: how to convert an ambitious agenda into reality without risking burnout for you or your team?
The solution is to unleash a confidence contagion.
Organizations run on confidence. When people’s self-belief matches their capability, they feel able to stretch themselves, taking on new challenges and extending their impact. Collective confidence enables teams to stride forward towards their goals, holding each other to high standards of collaboration and effectiveness.
Packed with insights, relatable stories and 50 practical tools, Contagious Confidence helps you to build the kind of individual and collective confidence that fuels results.
Julie Smith is a sought-after executive coach who works with leaders to grow their impact and supports teams to grow their effectiveness. Find out more at www.talentsprout.co.uk.
Julie Smith is an experienced executive coach and the founder of boutique leadership consultancy Talent Sprout. Julie’s mission is to encourage and enable leaders to stretch themselves, to deepen their awareness and to grow their impact.
Julie has coached hundreds of executives and leadership teams both in the UK and internationally, working with well-known organizations across sectors ranging from packaged consumer goods to technology, insurance to luxury goods and banking to hospitality. Her corporate clients choose to work with her again and again – testament to her skill as a coach and her commitment to partnership.
Described by her clients as insightful, collaborative and ‘one of the best in her field’, Julie has designed development programmes that participants find ‘life changing’ and delivered keynote talks praised as ‘perspective-shifting, thought-provoking and action-inspiring.’
Julie’s first book, Coach Yourself Confident: Ditch the Self-doubt Tax, Unlock Humble Confidence is a multiple award winner, including Best Business Self Development Book of 2025 at the Business Book Awards.
Introduction: The case for contagious confidence
The impact of confidence
Why ‘contagious’?
A confidence super spreader
Getting the best from this book
What we’ll explore together
PART I: IT STARTS WITH YOU
1: Look inside
Knowing what you are transmitting
Being your authentic self
Leaning into not knowing
Grasping mistakes
2: Trust yourself
Confidence breeds confidence
The ebb and flow of confidence
Tackling your saboteurs
PART II: DEEPENING INDIVIDUAL CONFIDENCE
3: Lean into empowerment
Leader as expert
Leader as coach
Don’t take the monkey
Monkey grabbers
4: Offer support and stretch
Favour asking over telling
Listen up
Allow silence
Coach the real issue
Build confidence momentum
5: Fix faulty calibration
The impact of faulty calibration
The signs to look out for
Transmit your belief
Support individuals to see themselves clearly
PART III: STRENGTHENING COLLECTIVE CONFIDENCE
6: Build safety
How safety feels
A breeding ground for confidence
Creating safety
7: Set out the path
An audacious ambition
Meaning that motivates
A co-created plan
Healthy scepticism
When the path is unclear
8: Cultivate collaboration
A leader at the centre
A step back
Enable confident and constructive conflict
9: Develop a team feedback habit
Celebrate strengths
Strengthen trust and connection
Embrace the tricky stuff
The team’s feedback to you
The team’s feedback to the team
10: Keep the faith when things are tough
Fragile performance, fragile confidence
Manage yourself
Support the team to keep the faith
The most important reason for confidence
A few final words
Acknowledgements
About the author
End Notes