Penny Haslam, Author at Bit Famous

Why does my team go quiet when I walk into the room?

It’s one of those questions that rarely gets asked out loud, but it sits there quietly in the background for a lot of leaders. You might not phrase it exactly like that, of course. It often shows up as a feeling instead. A slight shift in the room that you can’t quite explain, or a sense that something isn’t landing in the way you expected.

You walk into a meeting and, just before you arrive, there’s a bit of chatter, a few laughs, people settling into their seats. Then you join, and the atmosphere changes. It’s subtle, but noticeable. People sit up straighter, the conversation tails off, and suddenly the room feels more serious than it did a moment ago.

Or perhaps you’ve just delivered your update in a town hall. You’ve been clear, concise, maybe even engaging. You finish, open it up, and… nothing. No questions, no comments, no challenge. People are listening, but they’re not interacting, and that lack of response can feel a bit baffling.

Why silence is rarely a good sign

It’s tempting to interpret that silence as agreement, or even as a sign that everything is running smoothly. But in reality, silence rarely means everything is fine. More often, it’s a response to you. Not just to what you’ve said, but to how you show up.

That’s the part that can feel uncomfortable, because most leaders don’t set out to create this kind of reaction. In fact, many are working hard to be authentic, consistent and “themselves” at work. The challenge is that your team doesn’t experience your intention, they experience your behaviour. And when that behaviour shifts, even slightly, depending on the situation, the pressure you’re under, or the people in front of you, others start trying to interpret what that means.

How to host a meeting that will set you apart and progress your career

We delve into the art of hosting a meeting, a crucial skill that can significantly impact your career progression. We discuss the difference between just holding a meeting and truly hosting one, and explore various strategies to engage attendees, manage time effectively, and drive productive discussions. This guide will arm you with the tools you need to turn any meeting into a platform for meaningful communication and collaboration.

How low confidence shows up as underperformance at work

How low confidence shows up as underperformance at work.

Why do capable employees underperform despite having the right skills?

When leaders talk about “low performance”, the conversation often drifts quickly towards capability, motivation or even discipline.

But there’s an alternative explanation that rarely gets named.

Sometimes performance dips not because someone lacks skill, nor because they don’t care, but because their confidence has slipped. It creeps in slowly. It hides behind busyness. It disguises itself as personality. And because it isn’t openly discussed, it’s easy to miss.

A lack of self-belief is a hidden and quiet problem affecting performance. Leaders feel frustrated. They can see that someone is not delivering as well as they could. They know the potential is there. But they’re at a loss as to how to remedy it.

This is where confidence becomes relevant.

Low confidence does not always look fragile. In fact, it often looks the opposite.

It can look like:

* Independence.
* Self-sufficiency.
* Quietness.
* Intensity.
* Reluctance to collaborate.
* Even arrogance.

Take the example of the senior leader who arrived every morning, went straight to their office, shut the door and barely interacted with anyone. The team interpreted that behaviour as aloofness and disinterest. Stories filled the gaps.

In reality, this person was shy. Informal interactions triggered anxiety. Their well-being was low. They dreaded the small talk and unscripted conversations. So they withdrew.

That withdrawal had consequences.

Low visibility meant low influence.
Low influence meant lower engagement.
Lower engagement meant weaker organisational performance.

Confidence and performance are closely linked because confidence affects how visible, collaborative and decisive someone feels able to be.

And when someone’s self-belief drops, you often see a cluster of behaviours emerge. They avoid exposure. They hesitate. They second-guess. They isolate. Decisions slow down. Work requires more redoing. Deadlines start to wobble.

None of this necessarily means someone is incapable.

It may simply mean their self-belief has taken a knock.

Before jumping to conclusions about attitude or ability, it’s worth asking a more curious question:

Could this be confidence showing up as underperformance?

Belonging, burnout and building culture from scratch – Sisa Sibanda

In this episode, I talk to Sisa Sibanda, Head of People, Culture and Wellbeing at Climate Asset Management (CAM). We explore how HR leaders can create belonging, support wellbeing, and shape culture in fast-moving, purpose-driven businesses.

Sisa joined CAM when the organisation was just three years old, with 30 employees scattered across the world. At the time of recording, the team had grown to 50 and while that’s still small, it’s global, diverse and ambitious.

From day one, she saw the opportunity to shape the culture from the ground up. “I wanted to find a home where I could really make an impact,” she explains. “This is a people business, and culture has to be intentional from the start.”

Communicating upwards: why won’t my message land?

If you’ve ever walked out of a senior meeting thinking “Well… that went nowhere”, you’re not alone. This is the frustration that sits underneath many executive and board conversations.

On paper, these meetings should be decisive. The people in the room are experienced, intelligent and trusted to steer the organisation. Yet in practice, the opposite often happens. Meetings run long. Decisions drift. Conversations get bogged down in updates rather than outcomes.

What should be a focused, decision-shaping discussion quietly turns into a reporting session.

You can almost feel the energy leak out of the room.

Senior teams are rarely short of information. If anything, they’re overwhelmed by it. What they’re short of is clarity. They want to know: What’s the issue? Why does it matter? What do you need from us?

When those questions aren’t answered early and explicitly, meetings stall. Slides multiply. Explanations lengthen. And this is the crucial point. Conversations don’t unravel because the person presenting lacks ability. They unravel because the conversation hasn’t been framed for decision-making.

This is often the moment when confidence wobbles. Someone gets challenged, becomes defensive or retreats into detail. The room loses focus. Clarity disappears.

When information is moved around the room but thinking doesn’t move forward, the cost is real.

Slow decisions sap momentum. Unclear decisions increase risk. Repeated conversations waste time and quietly erode trust. Over time, senior teams lose confidence not in the data but in the communication.

The good news is this doesn’t require you to become slicker, louder or more polished. It requires you to communicate differently.

And that starts with understanding what senior conversations are actually for.

Why doesn’t my team remember what I say?

Why doesn’t my team remember what I say? The familiar leadership frustration

You say the thing.
You explain it clearly.
You answer the questions.
You leave the room thinking, right, that’s done.

And then… a week later… It’s as if none of it ever happened.

Someone asks a question you’re sure you already covered. You find yourself repeating the same message again, slightly louder this time, wondering whether you’re going mad or whether everyone else has collectively forgotten.

This is one of the most frustrating experiences in leadership. Especially when the message matters. A change in direction. A new way of working. The start of something important you genuinely care about. You’ve been thinking about it for weeks, maybe months. You’re invested. You’re clear. You’re ready to go.

And yet the energy you felt when you shared it doesn’t seem to last. Engagement fades. Momentum stalls. You start to question whether people were ever really listening in the first place.

At this point, many leaders tend to turn their frustration inward. Am I not clear enough? Am I boring? Am I expecting too much? Or they turn it outward. Why can’t people just remember? Why do I have to keep repeating myself?

Measuring Workplace Confidence – What happens when you teach self-belief?

Does workplace confidence training genuinely change how people feel and work, or does the impact fade the moment the session ends? That’s the question Northumbria University set out to answer when it evaluated the Workplace Confidence Training delivered by Bit Famous to the College of Policing.

To understand what really happens after a session like this, the researchers followed participants over time. They gathered data before the workshop, immediately afterwards and again three months later. This gave them something rare in workplace training: a clear view of both the immediate uplift and the longer-term effects.

The survey results showed measurable shifts in confidence, job satisfaction, peer support and people’s understanding of the tools they’d learned.

The study blended two types of evidence. Alongside the numbers were written comments from participants. These qualitative reflections revealed the human side of the experience: what people remembered, how they used the ideas and what difference it made in day-to-day policing roles.

The simple goal setting tool that sets your team up for success

The simple goal setting tool that sets your team up for success. When I talk to leaders about confidence, I’m always drawn back to something simple: people feel better about themselves when they achieve things. It sounds almost too obvious, doesn’t it? But in the day-to-day rush of work – the meetings, the emails, the urgent stuff piling up in corners – it’s astonishing how often this basic truth gets overlooked. We forget that momentum builds confidence, and confidence fuels performance.

What I’ve noticed, over and over again, is that achievement doesn’t have to be spectacular to be powerful. In fact, the big, dramatic wins tend to arrive only after a long stretch of small, steady steps. But in workplaces, we rarely pause long enough to notice those steps, never mind celebrate them.

And that’s a problem, because when people stop recognising their own progress, their confidence starts to dip. You see it in the colleague who used to be full of ideas but has grown quiet. You see it in the bright new hire who arrived bursting with energy, only to lose their shine a few months in. You see it in people who’ve always been capable but have started doubting themselves, often without anyone realising. As I say in the podcast, life happens – people go through things, confidence gets knocked, and achievement starts to feel harder than it should.

Inside the study: what we’ve learned from mastermind groups in police leadership

Inside the study: what we’ve learned from mastermind groups in police leadership.

Study into the success of mastermind groups and peer-led learning. At Bit Famous, we’ve seen first-hand how powerful peer learning can be. When colleagues come together to talk openly about their challenges, swap ideas and hold each other accountable, something clicks. Confidence grows. Problems get solved. People stop waiting for permission and start making things happen.

In May 2025, our award-nominated training with the College of Policing (Finalists: Personnel Today Learning and Development Supplier of the Year 2025) became the focus of an independent evaluation by Northumbria University. The study explored the impact of our Workplace Mastermind Groups programme, which introduces leaders to a practical, peer-led approach to problem-solving and professional development.

The research ran for six months, tracking more than 80 senior police leaders across England and Wales before their training, immediately after, and again three months later.

The findings are fascinating. Participants showed big jumps in understanding how to set up and run mastermind groups, and most felt better supported by colleagues and managers. Job satisfaction and collaboration improved too. Confidence stayed consistently high, suggesting these sessions help people put their self-belief to work rather than simply talk about it.

In short, the research confirms what we’ve always known from experience: when people are given space to learn from each other, they don’t just gain knowledge — they build stronger, more confident workplaces.

Let’s take a look at what the data tells us.

The power of colleague-led learning

Colleague-led learning. What if I told you some of the best learning and development in your workplace doesn’t need a big budget, a slick platform or an outside trainer on speed dial?
Sounds unlikely, right? But it’s happening. I’ve just been working with a group at Beazley, a global insurance firm. They didn’t wait around for the “perfect” training course on presentations. Instead, they built their own. A colleague-led club, now 100 members strong, where people practise speaking, swap feedback and support each other to go from “just about okay” to truly compelling.

A beginner’s guide to difficult conversations at work

A beginner’s guide to difficult conversations at work. Difficult conversations are a leadership challenge; this guide is here to make them easier.

You’ll find out why people avoid them, what happens when we stay silent and practical ways to deal with the most common situations. From giving quick feedback in the moment to tackling repeated performance issues and even speaking up to senior colleagues, you’ll get straightforward advice you can start using right away.

To bring this to life, we’ve drawn on the expertise of Bit Famous associate and leadership coach Heather Wright. Heather has years of experience working with organisations on culture, performance and leadership. She knows first-hand how much confidence grows when people learn to handle these conversations well. Her insights and practical tools run through this beginner’s guide.

An introduction to difficult conversations at work

An introduction to difficult conversations at work. I’m joined by leadership coach Heather Wright to explore why we so often avoid difficult conversations at work. Heather tells me that fear is usually at the root – fear of saying the wrong thing, fear of being seen as a bully, or fear of conflict itself. Yet conflict, when it’s handled well, is not destructive at all. In fact, it’s essential for building trust and creating high-performing teams.

Heather explains that many of us simply don’t have good role models for how to do this. We see conflict on TV or in arguments that escalate, but rarely do we see a tricky conversation that goes well. That’s why she encourages leaders to set the tone early, having “conversations about conversations” before issues arise. When teams know that disagreement isn’t personal, they feel safe to speak up and work better together.

The cost of avoidance, Heather warns, is huge. It damages culture, drives up staff turnover and crushes creativity. But when leaders embrace difficult conversations, they unlock motivation, innovation and collaboration. As Heather puts it: “There are two things people want at work – to be seen and to be understood.” If we can give our teams that, the results speak for themselves.

How to build confidence when you don’t have the answers

How to build confidence when you don’t have the answers.

Have you ever been dropped into a situation where everyone’s looking to you… And you’ve got no idea what to do?

Not because you’re unprepared or not up to it, but because the answer just isn’t clear. There’s no obvious right move. Just pressure, people and the uncomfortable weight of not knowing.

That feeling? It’s common. Especially if you lead others.

And it’s exactly why building confidence without certainty is a skill worth practising.

Bit Famous – Finalist, Learning and Development Supplier of the Year 2025

Bit Famous named as finalist in Personnel Today Awards 2025 for L&D Supplier of the Year.
We’re delighted to share that Bit Famous, in partnership with the College of Policing, has been shortlisted as a Finalist in the Personnel Today Awards 2025 in the Learning & Development Supplier of the Year category – for the second consecutive year.
This recognition highlights our impactful work supporting senior police leaders from underrepresented backgrounds to develop confidence, communication skills and career momentum. Here’s a closer look at what made the programme stand out.
Supporting diverse police leadership through workplace confidence training
The College of Policing asked Bit Famous to help develop the next generation of executive police leaders. The aim? To better reflect society by encouraging Superintendents and Chief Superintendents from underrepresented groups to see executive leadership as a positive and achievable career path.

“I’m no good at that” – challenging limiting beliefs and negative self-labelling at work

There’s a phrase you’ll often hear in the workplace: “I’m just not good at that sort of thing.”
Sometimes it’s more specific, “I don’t do small talk” or “I hate speaking in meetings.”
And it’s frustrating to hear, especially when you’ve seen the same person light up when talking about their area of expertise.
Ask them about a problem in the supply chain or a piece of technical kit and they’ll speak with clarity, detail and passion. No hesitation. No second-guessing.
But ask them to contribute to a team discussion or start a casual chat at an event, and suddenly they shrink back.
They’ll tell you it’s not their thing.
They’ll tell you they’re not that kind of person.
So what’s going on?
In my experience, it usually comes down to two things:
Limiting beliefs: quiet, unchallenged thoughts people carry around about what they can and can’t do. The ones that say, “This isn’t me,” or “I’m not wired for that.”
Negative self-labelling: repeated out loud, often with a shrug. “I’m always late.” “I ramble when I talk.” “I’m no good with people.”
And over time, these stick.
They become part of someone’s professional identity, woven into how they see themselves and how others start to see them too.
But here’s the thing. In most cases, these beliefs aren’t rooted in truth, they’re just coping strategies.
A way of managing nerves. A bit of cover for social discomfort.
And when repeated enough, they start to set the limits of what someone believes they’re capable of.
Which is where the problem begins.
Because in a workplace context, these beliefs don’t just stay inside someone’s head.
They affect how they show up, how they contribute, how others engage with them… and ultimately how far they grow.
And that’s a challenge for any organisation trying to build confident, connected, collaborative teams.

Making space for real confidence at work

In a confidence workshop this week, I was asked a question that comes up again and again:

“Do women struggle more with confidence, or are men just less likely to admit it?”

On the face of it, yes, women are more likely to talk about feelings, while men stereotypically don’t.

But the long answer isn’t quite so simple.

I’d argue that when it comes to confidence, it’s not about chromosomes. It’s about the messages we absorb from a young age, subtle ones that shape how we see ourselves and how others see us.

Boys first, girls second
For me, it started in primary school. Every morning, when taking the register, the teacher read out the boys’ names first. Then the girls’. At the time, it felt normal. But it landed: boys came first. We came second.

That’s how it begins, not with big, dramatic moments but with small, repeated signals. Over time, you start to think maybe your voice matters a bit less.

Even though girls do better at school, that early confidence doesn’t always follow them into work. Cue the gender pay gap. Cue the lack of women in top roles. Cue the need to prove what men are often assumed to have: competence.

The value of val-yous: why reflecting on personal values can boost your colleagues confidence and sharpen decision making

Have you ever dithered over making a final decision on something? Perhaps choosing one candidate over another, or what to do about the kitchen cupboards falling apart!

Maybe you said yes to something, then quickly regretted not saying a firm no. Or you held back when you meant to speak up.

Well, all these moments, internal wobbles, are signs you’ve drifted from your values, the things that really matter to you, that make you you.

Or, more likely, you’ve never had an opportunity to pin down your values..

Now , imagine what happens when a whole team is out of step with their own personal values. It’s not just the odd regret or misstep here and there, it’s multiple people being slower to make decisions, second-guessing why they’re going in a certain direction, not really leaning into being themselves and being brave.

Everyone needs a North Star – and that’s why it’s worth doing a values check-in.

Is your town hall meeting in trouble?

Why your town hall meeting might be turning people off.
You’ve got everyone in the business together. The slides are ready. The execs are lined up. You’re streaming to hundreds of screens. So why does it still feel like a bit of a flop?

Town halls should be a highlight – a chance to bring people together, share progress, spark ideas and build momentum. But too often, they miss the mark.

Instead of being energising, they’re predictable. Instead of creating a connection, they reinforce a divide. Instead of landing messages, they lose the room.

We’ve all been there. Cameras off, minds wandering. A speaker droning through 30 bullet points while you mentally reorganise your weekend. And if you’re the one organising it? It can be disheartening to watch the effort go nowhere.

Why presentation skills training isn’t always the answer

When someone in your team struggles to speak up or seems unsure of themselves, it’s tempting to reach for a quick solution: presentation skills training.

It’s neat. It’s available. And it feels like you’re taking action. But in many cases, it’s a veneer-thin fix.

Yes, presentation skills training can be great for learning how to structure a talk, use slides well or engage an audience.

But if the real problem runs deeper, it won’t help. In fact, it might do more harm than good.

Because more often than not, it’s not a skills issue. It’s about confidence. Or culture. Or the way people are heard – or not – in your organisation.

So let’s rethink what’s really going on.

Leading HR with people, not policy – Maria Hawley

Leading HR with People, Not Policy – Maria Hawley.
Episode 13: Workplace Confidence Podcast.

Where people professionals share the great work they do

Maria Hawley didn’t plan to stay at Fisher German for long. But more than a decade later, she’s still there – now Director of People – having helped lead the business through major growth and cultural change.

In this episode, Maria talks about what it takes to build a people function from scratch and support more than 850 employees across a growing UK-wide property consultancy.

When she joined, there was no HR team in place. She set it up from the ground up, guiding the business as it expanded from 220 employees to over 850, and from a handful of rural offices to major cities including London and Manchester.

Now sitting on the leadership team and operations board, Maria helps shape the business’s five-year strategy and ensures people remain central to decision-making.

Her role spans core HR operations, learning and development, talent acquisition and people experience.

She’s also taken on additional responsibilities in risk and compliance, health and safety and facilities – evidence of her hands-on approach and strategic reach.

Maria’s people-first leadership extends beyond the boardroom. She’s known for her honest and engaging LinkedIn posts, which blend professional insight with personal reflection. Maria uses social media not just to promote her employer brand, but to show who she is beyond the job title.

Connection, she says, is central to how she leads.

This episode is packed with insight for HR leaders ready to grow their influence, shape strategy and show up with authenticity. Maria’s story is a reminder that people’s leadership is more than policies – it’s about purpose, visibility, and building something that lasts.

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