Culture, Confidence and Commercial Impact: The Winning Formula For Leaders
- Richard Nugent
- May 12
- 2 min read
Confidence is the WD-40 of leadership. Without it, your strategy, culture and performance start to grind.
When a leadership programme truly changes the game, it doesn’t just build better managers. It shapes culture. It sharpens strategic thinking.
And it unlocks confidence at every level.
At TwentyOne Leadership, we’ve spent more than twenty years designing programmes for world-class organisations.
And we’ve learned that if a programme isn’t hitting all three of these outcomes – culture, confidence and commercial impact – it’s falling short.
Which of these do you experience in your organisation?
Strategic Thinking Without Culture? You Get Resistance
You can’t build a future-focused business if your leaders are clinging to the way things have always been.
Strategy without culture is just theory.
That’s why world-class programmes do more than teach strategic models. They help leaders connect those models to how people actually behave.
When culture and strategy align, execution becomes inevitable.
Culture Without Confidence? You Get Stagnation
I strongly believe that confidence is the WD-40 of organisations.
WD-40 famously lists more than 2,000 uses for its product – from silencing squeaky hinges to fixing zips and engines. Confidence works the same way. It makes everything run better.
Confident leaders are quicker to act, clearer in their communication and more effective at engaging others.
They don’t just absorb pressure. They raise the performance of the people around them.
A meta-analysis of research into confidence found that:
Leaders perceived as confident are 60% more likely to be rated as highly effective.
Self-efficacy (which is strongly connected to self-confidence) is positively correlated with job performance
Employees who feel confident and empowered are 67% more likely to put in discretionary effort.
That’s why confidence isn’t a ‘nice-to-have’ in your programme. It’s a performance multiplier.
A confidence-literate culture builds resilience, pace and innovation.
Confidence Without Commercial Impact? You’ve Missed the Point
None of this matters if your leadership programme isn’t delivering a return.
Every programme we run is designed to do just that. We work with our clients to embed strategic projects that create measurable business value – from growth and transformation to cost savings and innovation.
Many of our programmes pay for themselves within one cycle.
That’s not an accident. It’s the result of treating leadership development as a commercial lever, not just a people initiative.
Want a programme that hits all three?
If you’re looking to develop confident, strategic leaders who can shape culture and deliver results, let’s co-create the right programme for your business.