When Your Skills Are Ahead of Your Confidence

Stephen Ellis-Menton
11 minutes ago
12 min read

Reflecting on Nene Ekufu’s session about identity, self-trust and the confidence gap

You have prepared for the assignment. You have the qualification, the experience and the language skills. You know the subject, understand the setting and have done this kind of work before.

Then the assignment begins and you freeze.

A moment of uncertainty appears. Someone looks confused, asks you to repeat something or responds in a way you did not expect. Suddenly, all the knowledge you brought with you feels much harder to access.

Why can someone be capable, prepared and experienced, yet still feel as though they do not belong in the room?

This was the starting point for Nene Ekufu’s presentation at The Together Conference 2026, From Skills to Self: Picking Up Confidence and Passing It On in Interpreting Practice.

Nene asked participants to consider whether confidence difficulties always point to a lack of skill. Her central message was that there can be a gap between the skills a professional has and the confidence they feel able to show.

That gap can affect the assignments we accept, how we prepare, the decisions we make under pressure and the way we respond to feedback afterwards.

“Why do I freeze when I know what I am doing?”

Nene opened by asking whether participants had ever arrived at an assignment fully prepared and qualified, but still frozen.

The response from the conference was immediate. Many people recognised the experience. Some had questioned their abilities after a difficult assignment. Others had avoided particular types of work, compared themselves with colleagues or waited to feel more confident before taking the next professional step.

Nene described this as something that interpreters may search for answers about late at night:

Why do I freeze even when I know what I am doing?

Her answer was that this may not always be a training or experience problem. Sometimes the person’s professional identity has not caught up with the skills they already possess.

This is not the same as saying skills do not matter. Interpreters and translators still need to work within their competence, prepare properly, maintain their language skills and recognise when an assignment is beyond their current experience.

Confidence cannot replace knowledge.

However, continuing to collect qualifications or complete more training will not necessarily resolve every form of self-doubt. A person may become increasingly skilled while still feeling that they are not ready, not good enough or somehow less legitimate than the people around them.

The gap between skill and confidence

During the session, Nene asked participants to rate their professional skill and their confidence separately. The purpose was to notice whether the two ratings matched.

Someone may assess their practical skills at seven or eight out of ten, but their confidence at four or five. The space between those two ratings is what Nene described as the identity gap.

The professional may already be doing the work, receiving bookings and meeting expected standards. Yet internally, they still feel like someone who is waiting to become a “real” interpreter.

This can be particularly noticeable around qualification. Reaching registered status may be expected to bring a sudden sense of certainty. In reality, the change in title may bring greater responsibility and increased awareness of what could go wrong.

A trainee may have worked under supervision and clearly described themselves as still learning. Once qualified, they may feel pressure to appear fully formed, confident and certain in every setting. The qualification has changed, but their internal sense of professional identity may take longer to adjust.

Experienced professionals are not immune either. A new domain, unfamiliar colleague, difficult piece of feedback or period away from practice can bring old doubts back quickly.

Confidence is therefore not simply something we gain at the beginning of a career and keep permanently. It may change according to the setting, the people involved and what else is happening in our lives.

The “Toxic 10”

Nene grouped a number of common confidence blockers together under the name the Toxic 10.

During the presentation, she identified:

fear of failure
fear of success
fear of rejection
self-doubt
constant comparison
imposter syndrome
hesitation
procrastination
stress before the assignment
overwhelm

These experiences may appear differently from one person to another. Fear of failure might lead someone to avoid a new area of work, even when they have prepared carefully and have appropriate support. Fear of rejection may cause an interpreter to read too much into someone’s expression or response.

Comparison may lead a translator to dismiss their own decisions because another professional would have approached the text differently. Procrastination may look like waiting to complete one more course before applying for registration, accepting a presentation invitation or sharing a professional idea.

Stress before an assignment can begin hours or days before the work itself. By the time the professional arrives, they may already be mentally and physically tired. Overwhelm can make several manageable demands feel like one impossible problem.

Nene encouraged participants to identify which blocker appeared most often in their own work. She was clear that naming it was not a label or a judgement. It was a way of becoming aware of the pattern so that something could be done about it.

When we give other people’s reactions a meaning

One of the strongest parts of the conference discussion came after Nene’s presentation, when the poll results showed that self-doubt and fear of failure were particularly common.

Nene discussed how quickly professionals can give meaning to another person’s reaction. Someone frowns during an interpretation. A participant asks for clarification. A colleague looks away. A client does not immediately respond.

The interpreter may instantly think:

“They did not understand me.”

“I have made a mistake.”

“They think I am not good enough.”

“My colleague would have done that better.”

Sometimes one of those interpretations may be accurate. Often, however, we do not know what the other person is thinking. They may be concentrating, processing difficult information, distracted by something else or responding to the content rather than the interpretation.

The problem is not noticing a possible misunderstanding. Interpreters need to monitor communication and respond when repair is required. The problem arises when we treat our first anxious interpretation as a fact.

That thought can affect how we feel. The feeling then affects what we do. An interpreter who believes they are failing may become tense, speed up, hesitate or stop making decisions confidently. Those changes may then affect the work itself, creating the very difficulty they feared.

Nene described this as a cycle: how we think affects how we feel, how we feel affects what we do, and what we do affects the result.

A useful professional response may be to pause and ask:

What do I actually know?

Perhaps the person did not understand. If so, the next step may simply be clarification or repair. A moment of misunderstanding does not need to become evidence that someone is fundamentally incapable of doing their job.

Confidence is not pretending everything is fine

There is an important distinction between grounded confidence and false confidence.

Grounded confidence does not mean assuming we are always right. It does not mean ignoring feedback, accepting work outside our competence or refusing to ask for support. It means being able to recognise our skills and make decisions without continually undermining ourselves.

A confident professional can say:

“I need that repeated.”
“I have not understood the point yet.”
“Could you explain that term?”
“I am not the right person for this assignment.”
“I made a different choice, and this was my reasoning.”
“I need support with this area of practice.”
“Something went wrong, and I can learn from it.”

Insecurity may sometimes make these statements harder rather than easier. Someone who feels they must prove that they belong may be more reluctant to interrupt, clarify or acknowledge a limit.

They may accept work they are not ready for because saying no feels like confirming their fears. They may also respond defensively to feedback because criticism feels like a threat to their entire professional identity.

Self-trust does not remove professional accountability. It can give us a steadier basis from which to practise it.

Waiting to feel ready

Nene challenged the idea that confidence must come before action.

Many people wait to feel confident before taking the next step. They may tell themselves they will apply when they feel ready, offer training once they have more experience, submit a conference proposal when the idea is further developed or accept a particular type of assignment when they stop feeling nervous.

The difficulty is that confidence often develops through doing the work, reflecting on it and doing it again.

This does not mean taking reckless steps. There is a difference between moving slightly beyond our comfort zone with suitable preparation and support, and working beyond our competence.

A trainee interpreter accepting a complex legal assignment without the required knowledge is not building confidence responsibly. A qualified interpreter agreeing to co-work in a less familiar but appropriate setting, after preparing and discussing support with an experienced colleague, may be taking a reasonable developmental step.

A translator sharing an early professional idea as a poster is not claiming to have completed a large research project. They are allowing the idea to enter a wider discussion.

Nene’s message was that action helps professional identity begin to align with professional skill. She summarised the process as: See it. Shift it. Step into it.

First, notice the blocker. Then question the story attached to it. Finally, take an appropriate action rather than waiting for all discomfort to disappear.

Repeated action rather than one confident moment

Nene used the image of an elastic band to describe repeated change. Stretch it once and it returns to its original shape. Stretch it repeatedly and, over time, it changes.

The point was not that one positive statement or one successful assignment permanently removes self-doubt. Professional identity develops through repeated experiences.

An interpreter asks for clarification and discovers that the interaction continues normally. A translator shares a draft with a colleague and receives thoughtful rather than harsh feedback. A trainee accepts an appropriate assignment with support and manages a difficult moment. A presenter submits a proposal despite worrying that their idea is not academic enough.

Each experience provides new evidence. The old thought may still appear, but it is no longer the only story available. There is also evidence that the professional can manage uncertainty, respond to feedback and continue.

Nene emphasised action rather than inspiration alone. A conference session may leave someone feeling encouraged, but that feeling will fade unless it is followed by a practical next step.

Choosing how we want to show up

During the presentation, Nene invited participants to imagine the interpreter they were becoming. How did that person enter the room? How did they carry themselves? How did they respond to others? What did they know about themselves?

She asked participants to describe that version of themselves in one word. Suggestions included grounded, present, confident and free.

This was not about creating a completely different personality or performing confidence for other people. It was about identifying how someone wants to behave when fear is not making the decision for them.

After the presentation, Nene described using a doorway as a mental marker before entering an assignment. She would consciously connect with the version of herself she wanted to bring into the room.

Others may use a phrase, a breathing exercise, a short note or a reminder of the purpose of the assignment. The method matters less than the intention behind it.

Instead of asking only, “Do I feel confident?”, we could ask:

How do I want to show up in this situation?

Perhaps we want to be calm, curious, prepared, honest, attentive, assertive, open to support, willing to repair and comfortable with not knowing everything. These are behaviours we can practise even when confidence is not fully present.

What about translators?

Nene’s session focused specifically on interpreters, but many of the confidence blockers she described are also relevant to translators.

Translation work often happens away from the immediate interaction. That may reduce some types of pressure, but it can create others. A translator may have more time to reconsider every choice, which can lead to repeated checking and difficulty deciding when the work is finished.

They may compare their signed or written translation with another person’s and assume that difference means one of them must be wrong. Feedback can feel particularly personal when a translation has taken hours or days to produce.

Deaf translators may also work in environments where their professional decisions are questioned by people with less knowledge of the target language and community.

The confidence gap might appear through:

delaying the start of a project
overworking a translation beyond what is useful
avoiding specialist subjects
struggling to justify a translation choice
agreeing to unsuitable changes because a client sounds certain
refusing to share work until it feels perfect
believing that another translator’s different approach proves failure

As with interpreting, the answer is not confidence without accountability. It is the ability to make a reasoned choice, explain it, listen to feedback and revise where necessary without treating every change as proof that we should not be doing the work.

Confidence within professional culture

Confidence is often discussed as an individual issue. The person is told to believe in themselves, think positively or become more resilient.

Nene’s session focused strongly on personal identity and repeated action, but it also raised questions about the professional environments in which confidence develops.

What are people learning from the way colleagues speak to one another? How is feedback delivered during training and assessment? Are new professionals supported while they develop, or expected to appear fully confident immediately? What happens when someone admits uncertainty? Are mistakes treated as opportunities for discussion, or as evidence that the person does not belong? Do professional spaces reward certainty more than thoughtful questioning?

Confidence does not grow in isolation.

A supportive mentor can help someone distinguish between a genuine skills gap and an anxious response. A co-worker who discusses their own uncertainty honestly can reduce the pressure to appear perfect. An assessor can give clear feedback without attacking the learner’s professional identity. A team can make clarification normal rather than embarrassing.

This does not mean lowering standards. It means creating conditions in which people can meet those standards without hiding every area they still need to develop.

What are we passing on?

The 2026 conference theme was Pick It Up, Pass It On.

We learn a great deal about confidence from the professionals around us. Sometimes this is passed on deliberately. A tutor tells a student that asking for clarification is part of good practice. A mentor helps a new interpreter prepare for an unfamiliar setting. A colleague explains how they recovered after a difficult assignment.

At other times, the messages are less direct. A trainee hears experienced professionals criticising themselves harshly after every small mistake. A translator watches colleagues present every decision as certain and unquestionable. A newly qualified interpreter sees uncertainty treated as weakness.

A person may then conclude that professional confidence means never hesitating, never asking for help and never getting anything wrong.

We need to consider whether that is what we want to pass on.

Perhaps confidence should be connected less with certainty and more with self-trust. Self-trust means believing that we can prepare carefully, make a decision, notice when something is not working, ask for support, respond to feedback, repair mistakes, recognise our limits and continue learning.

This is a more realistic and sustainable form of confidence than trying to remove every doubt before we act.

New insights can begin before we feel ready

The theme for The Together Conference 2027 is New Insights, Shared Purpose.

Professional spaces can sometimes make people believe that only fully completed research or highly polished ideas are worth sharing. That belief may stop useful contributions before they begin.

Perhaps you have noticed how confidence develops during interpreter or translator training. You may have created a mentoring activity that helps trainees move into professional practice. You might have experience of returning after a career break, moving into a new domain or rebuilding confidence after a difficult assignment.

You may be researching burnout, identity, imposter feelings, feedback or professional belonging. You might have an early idea that is not yet a finished study but could begin an important conversation.

The Call for Papers for The Together Conference 2027 opens on Monday 5 October 2026. You do not need to decide whether your proposal belongs in the live programme or the extended conference. Submit the proposal and the review panel will consider where accepted contributions fit best.

Poster submissions will also be welcomed for developing research, early findings, resources, projects and practice-based reflections.

Submitting a proposal may itself bring up some of the blockers Nene discussed. You might compare your idea with other presenters, question whether you have enough experience or decide to wait another year.

Perhaps the next step is not to wait until the doubt disappears. It may simply be to write the idea down, discuss it with someone and begin.

Using this article for unstructured CPD

You may wish to reflect on one or more of the following questions:

How would you rate your current professional skills and confidence separately?
Is there a noticeable gap between the two?
Which of the Toxic 10 appears most often in your work?
What situations tend to bring that blocker forward?
What meaning do you sometimes give to other people’s reactions without checking whether it is accurate?
Have you ever mistaken a confidence issue for a skills gap?
Is there a genuine area of knowledge or practice that you need to develop?
How do you want to show up during a challenging assignment or translation?
What small, appropriate action could help your professional identity catch up with your skills?
What messages about confidence are you passing on to trainees, colleagues or students?
Is there a professional idea you have delayed sharing because you do not yet feel ready?
Could that idea become a proposal or poster for The Together Conference 2027?