As a presentations trainer, I can appreciate the difference between class participants when they cross that bridge and begin to display confidence when they are presenting. Nerves and fear drive most people when it comes to giving presentations and just telling them to “be confident” is actually ridiculous. If they could do it, they would, but basically they have no idea how to project confidence, when they are imploding through stress and fear. The focus is all on them and not on the audience and that is a big mistake.
Here are four building blocks to improve our confidence when speaking in public.
The survival of the human species has in no small part been due to fear and hence taking necessary precautions. When our brain comprehends a dangerous or stressful situation about to occur, we don’t wait around for that to unfold. Instead, we start pumping chemicals into our body, particularly adrenaline, to get ready for fighting our way out of trouble or for flight, as we take off and distance ourselves from the danger. We need to accept that this is entirely normal and that the flow of chemicals into the body is not controllable.
We also face mindset issues around whether I can do this successfully or not. Again, this is natural. If you said, “I am going to go out there and be a total train wreck”, then there would be no fear, because we have set such a low marker for ourselves. Rather, we set a very high bar and sometimes that bar is set way too high. We need to be calibrating what we are doing here. If we say to ourselves that this is a journey as a presenter and today I am going to work on three things in my talk and not worry about trying to be perfect, then the pressure is rapidly reduced.
When we see people highly skilled in a profession or activity, we respect them for their abilities and accomplishments. It is the same when we see a great speaker. What we can’t see is their first presentation or their early days as a speaker, when they weren’t so skilful. Our mindset shift has to be from lack to capability.
We have skills in many areas, but we conveniently forget that we built those skills up over time and we weren’t complete at the start. We can go into our memory banks and draw on our history of achievement in various areas in our lives and assure ourselves that we can become skilled in this presenting arena too, just as we have done in other areas of our lives to date.
If we keep doing the same things, in the same way, we will keep getting the same old results. If we want to see some growth, some advance, then we need to make some changes. Einstein is credited with saying that doing the same things over and over again in the same way and expecting a different result is basically crazy. There will be one of two changes required. Either we tweak something that we have already been doing or we bring in something new. These both have risks attached to them.
To progress, we need to add new skills and abilities to our repertoire and this is what we have been doing our whole lives, so the idea is not strange. We don’t have to start with something massively risky though. We can start small and build from there, as we become more comfortable with our presentations. Pick something which is a small risk and try it. Next analyse how that went and adjust for the next speaking chance. If we keep doing this, we grow our range of possibilities rapidly and dramatically.
We have mentioned mindset and a great function of how we think is what we think about. In the early 20thCentury, psychologists discovered that we could change our situations in life by changing how we thought about them. Until then it was fate, luck, God’s will, etc,. and we had no control over any of that. The idea that changing your thinking could change your life is a well accepted concept today and so we spend a lot of attention on our mindset.
What are we shovelling into our mind though? The media is a full of bad news, fake news, conspiracy theories, etc. We need to apply some strong filters to what we allow into our mind, if we want to become more confident and successful. Our own media – our self-talk - also must be harnessed and controlled.
“I can’t” language needs to be switched to “I can”. Just swapping the words though won’t get us very far. We need to add some evidence. For example, “Because I have done the preparation I can do it", or “ because I have done this before at a smaller scale, I can use that base to go bigger this time”, are better approaches.
Confidence is a project for all of us. We can be super confident in some things and terrified in others. The focus on building our confidence in new areas like presenting are key and these four tools will definitely assist in that effort.