How to Build Confidence in a Toxic Work Environment
Ed Darling | 4 min read
Last updated: 22/06/2026
Working in a toxic or unsupportive environment can seriously damage your confidence. Most of us have experienced it at some point:
- The harsh feedback.
- Ideas being dismissed
- Speaking up feeling risky
It’s enough to tarnish even the most outgoing person’s self-confidence.
But you don’t have to wait for the culture to change to your confidence. In this post, I’ll share practical ways to handle challenging workplaces, and – if you manage a team – how public speaking skills can build their confidence, and bring them together.
But first, a quick backstory on this post…
Confidence at work comes from the top.
I’d been working with a corporate leader whose self-esteem had been worn down after just 12 months in a new role. eroded over 12 months in a new role.
Eventually, this has led to them having a panic attack while delivering a presentation for the first time.
But this spontaneous glossophobia didn’t come from nowhere. It was the result of months of stress, fatigue, and a toxic workplace that had worn away their confidence.
“So, what’s caused all of this?”, I asked…
It turns out, their plummeting self-esteem was caused by one person.
Their boss.
The person responsible for supporting and nurturing the team, had in fact been undermining them for months – setting unachievable objectives, ignoring feedback, then blaming everyone else when things went wrong.
In his book Extreme Ownership, leadership expert Jocko Willink says:
“Leaders must own everything in their world. There is no one else to blame.”
But this boss clearly hadn’t got the memo.
Instead, they’d created a toxic environment where the whole team started to second guess their own abilities, and lose their confidence.
So, what can we do about it?
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Recognise the signs of a toxic workplace.
It’s not just your confidence at work that can be affected, it’s also your productivity.
A 2015 study by Harvard found that nearly half of employees experiencing a negative workplace environment reduced their effort and chose to spend less time in the office.
Here’s an interesting summary of toxic workplace red-flags you can look out for:
- There’s little to no enthusiasm
- There’s a pervasive fear of failure
- There’s constant dysfunction and confusion
- There’s never-ending gossip and drama
- There’s high employee turnover
The first step to building back your confidence, is realising the cause of the problem. If you recognise the signs above in your workplace, it might be this that shaking your self-esteem.
Next, let’s explore some positive actions we can take.
Reclaiming your confidence at work.
If you work in a toxic environment for 8-hours a day, it can feel all-consuming. But there are some key steps we can take to win back some control.
1. Speak with someone outside the workplace.
Firstly, get a fresh perspective from someone OUTSIDE the environment. When we’re in the middle of the drama, it’s impossible to see things clearly. Emotions are running high, and our own judgement is clouded.
In that situation, an outside person can be a life-line of sanity, cutting through the confusion and pointing out the obvious truths: you’re not to blame, it’s the toxic work culture & poor leadership you’re working under.
2. Remove yourself when you can.
The second step is to extract yourself from the situation entirely. A toxic work culture doesn’t get better over time. Like that mould on your half-finished lunch in the office fridge, it only gets worse.
So unless there’s an imminent change of management, your best bet is to cut ties and move on. Sometimes you don’t realise how bad things really are – until you move somewhere better, and feel your confidence at work suddenly rejuvenated.
3. Build back your self-esteem.
Finally, find ways to bolster your self-esteem outside the work environment. Getting involved in new activities, meeting new people and learning new skills can all do wonders for balancing out the drain on your confidence.
Fortunately for my client, they’d quickly handed in their resignation letter, so light was already at the end of the tunnel.
In the meantime, we got to work on building their confidence from the ground up: Improving their communication skills, gradually expanding their comfort-zone, and tapping back into their natural outgoing personality.
The key thing: Spending time outside the work environment when your confidence is being damaged, learning new skills, and working with new people.
Finally, what about if you’re the one leading the team?
Using public speaking to build confident teams.
Even in a great workplace, public speaking can be something that many people fear.
Most people are expected to pitch, present, and communicate with confidence – but shockingly few professionals have ever had any real training in this.
It’s often where imposter syndrome grows: in the gap between the confidence people feel they’re expected to have, and the reality of how the feel on the inside.
Fortunately, public speaking team training is the perfect solution to this. We get everyone together for a high-energy training day, where they support, encourage, and develop together.
I see first hand the difference this makes. People finish the day feeling closer to each other, able to be more honest about their problems, and with a sense of enthusiasm for tackling challenges together.
You can find out more about our team training here.
For now, here’s to confident workplaces – and building teams that support each others’ growth.
To your public speaking success,
Ed
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