Why presence, not performance, builds trust

Most of us in corporate life are trained actors. We just never got the Oscar.

From the moment you land your first “real” job, the lesson is clear: look confident, sound confident, and for the love of quarterly earnings, never admit you do not know what is going on.

I was great at it. I could walk into a room, smile like I had a master plan, and say phrases like “strategic alignment” without blinking. Inside, of course, I was thinking, “What alignment? I cannot even align my calendar invites.”

It took me years to realize what I was doing was not leadership. It was performance. And while performance wins applause, it does not win trust.

The trap of performance

Performance feels safe. Everyone is doing it. Whole industries are built on it. The PowerPoint industry alone could collapse if we stopped pretending to know everything.

But here is the problem: when you put on the mask, people can tell. They may nod politely, but inside they are thinking, “If you actually knew what was going on, you would not need that 47-slide deck with clip art arrows.”

Performance buys short-term calm. But it creates long-term distance. And sooner or later, the mask slips. Someone notices that your “confident plan” is just yesterday’s plan with the dates moved forward.

The power of presence

Presence, by contrast, is terrifying. It is walking into the same room and saying, “Here is what I know. Here is what I do not. Here is how we can figure it out together.”

At first, you feel naked. You wait for someone to shout, “You are the boss, are you not supposed to know?” But more often than not, people lean in. They stop performing too. Suddenly, the room has oxygen again.

And the bonus? You do not have to spend Sunday evening rehearsing lines in the bathroom mirror.

So what is presence?

Presence is not the “calm leader voice” they teach at corporate training. It is not charisma, or walking around with a latte looking thoughtful. Presence is the radical act of being honest in the moment.

It is noticing what is really happening, in yourself, in the team, in the room, and refusing to cover it with corporate wallpaper. It is not a template. You cannot download it from SharePoint. And you cannot fake it, because the second you try, you are back in performance mode.

Why presence is hard

Presence is hard because it has no metrics. You cannot put it in a KPI dashboard. Imagine:

• “Presence: 78% this quarter, up 3% from last week.”

It does not work like that.

Instead, presence lives in discomfort. It is awkward silences. It is admitting you do not know. It is telling the truth when you would rather roll out another buzzword salad and hope nobody notices.

And yes, it is scary. But it is also the only thing that builds real trust.

Practices that help build presence

A few things that actually work better than performing:

• Say, “Here is what we know so far, here is what is unclear.” Instant trust. Much faster than inventing a shiny “North Star vision” nobody believes anyway.
• Ask questions instead of faking answers. People love it when you admit you do not know everything. It is refreshing compared to the usual game of “let’s all nod while pretending we understood the strategy slide.”
• Notice when you are sliding into performance mode. That urge to smooth things over with a “roadmap update”? Pause. Everyone knows the roadmap will change before lunch.
• Hold silence. Yes, it is painful. Yes, someone will cough. Maybe even shuffle their papers dramatically. But silence is cheaper than consultants, and often more useful.

A personal reflection

I see this most clearly in the team I work with today. Trust did not appear because I had all the answers. It grew because we created space for each other to step forward, to take risks, and to be honest when things were unclear.

There are still moments when I feel the old pull to perform. To polish. To look like I have it all under control. But every time I resist that instinct, something better happens. The team does not stall. They step in. Someone else adds their view. Another person offers an idea I would never have reached on my own.

That has taught me something simple but powerful: leadership is not about performing strength. It is about showing up with presence so that others feel safe enough to bring theirs too.

Reflection for leaders

Ask yourself:

• When do I catch myself performing confidence instead of showing up with presence?
• Do I admit what I do not know, or do I cover it with polished words and slides?
• How do people respond when I show up honestly, compared to when I put on the performance mask?
• Am I helping to create a culture where presence is valued more than appearance?

The payoff

Performance is exhausting. It drains energy, kills trust, and makes you sound like a walking LinkedIn post.

Presence is simpler. It frees you from the mask. It lets people see you as human, which, inconveniently, you are.

I see this with my own team. The less I perform, the more they step in. Presence spreads. And when that happens, the team stops wasting energy acting out a corporate play and starts actually doing the work together.

So yes, presence is hard. But so is pretending to have everything figured out while secretly googling “how to run a strategy offsite.”

At least with presence, you get to breathe. And so does everyone else.