I was talking to a friend this morning. She recently gave a 1 hour seminar on her area of expertise.
And believe me she is an expert in that area! Fully qualified, plenty of practical experience, both as a practitioner and a consultant.
And she's not the sort of person you would expect to have confidence issues of any kind - she looks confident, expresses herself well and knows her stuff inside out.
"It was awful" she told me. "My throat dried up and I felt like I couldn't get the words out of my mouth!"
I shared with her the No.1 secret that people learn on my courses, and I'm going to share it with you!
The fact is that presenting, especially in front of a group, is not a natural place for human beings to be. If we go back to caveman days, if you were stood in the middle and everyone else was looking at you, you were probably about to be tossed over a cliff or fed to the wolves! Now if you're the one in the middle, you're probably a leader or a teacher or some other authority figure.
The social circumstances have reversed, but the psychological reactions in the brain are hard-wired in. And this means something very very important for building your confidence in making presentations:
Everybody gets that instinctive fear reaction when the get up to speak or present - everybody.
It never goes away. It's a fixed feature of being human. Even the most experienced and confident-looking speakers in the world still get that physiological reaction: the tightening in the abdomen, the shallow breathing, the dry constricted throat. Your body tells you you're about to be the human sacrifice and reacts accordingly.
But you know better!
You know you are an expert in your area. You've got your qualifications, plenty of practical experience, you know you can express yourself well and know your stuff inside out.
The secret of the confident-looking speakers is this:
They know that they look better than they feel.
And so do you. If you feel only 4 or 5 out of 10 in terms of your confidence, I can practically guarantee that you'll look about a 7 or 8 to your audience. We see it time and time again in my courses and seminars. You look better than you feel when you're presenting.
And it's how you look to your audience that determines whether you'll get the response you want from them. So if it's a team meeting and you want them to co-operate; if it's a seminar and you want the audience to buy your firm's services; if it's a sales presentation and you want the prospect to sign on the line - it's all the same:
You're not alone, it happens to everyone, it happens every time, it never goes away, yet you can master it, and you ALWAYS look more confident than you feel inside. |
