How to Speak With Confidence - 10 Secrets to Speaking Confidently

And that's why stories are so powerful. If you want to get a message across, you change your audience's state. I am standing next to the Bethesda fountain in Central Park in New York City. Hi, my name is Grace Lee and I'm the host of the Career Revisionist podcast, where I help savvy professionals to build careers of significance and expand that into living a fulfilling life. Today I want to talk to you about speaking confidently and I'm going to give you 10 secrets on how to speak confidently in any endeavor. So come with me for a walk in Central Park and let's get to it. Secret number one is to know that this is a skill that you can learn. There's no such a thing as being born with it. In fact, if you talk to any of the best speakers out there, they weren't born with it. They had struggles with it and they had to overcome their challenges. They had to earn, they had to develop their confidence and they had to develop the skill. So it is a skill like any other skill that can be developed. Let me give you an example. Have you ever seen the movie King's Speech by Colin Firth? Colin Firth played England's Prince Albert. He was, in history, Prince Albert was to be on the throne to become the next King George VI and he needed to speak in front of the nations. He needed to speak to England and to all the people, all the citizens that were following him, but he had a speech impediment. This is a true story. So King's Speech is based on the true story of his life. So Prince Albert's wife hired a leader, hired a coach to help him overcome that speech impediment and later on he was able to develop into the leader he is known to be. So you see, speech, being good at speech, being confident public speaker is not an innate trait. You aren't born with it. The great leaders aren't born with it. They work at it and they develop the skill. So what can you do to develop that skill? Well, let me tell you what I did. I'll share with you what I did. English was not my first language. My first language was Cantonese because I'm originally from Hong Kong and so I struggled with learning English. I had to learn vocabulary, I had to learn grammar and I had to learn speech because I used to speak with an accent and so I had to study phonics. I had to study English pronunciation and what I did when I wanted to expand my vocabulary was I read the dictionary. Not just any dictionary, but the Oxford Dictionary of Difficult Words. Now I'm not saying you have to read the dictionary from A to Z in order to become a confident speaker. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that if you want to become a confident speaker and start to develop your skills somewhere, then you need to expand your vocabulary. And the words to focus on are the words that will help you express yourself. In other words, these are words that are emotional of nature. When you express yourself from human to human, whether or not you are speaking one to one or one to many, you need to learn to express yourself. So learn some vocabulary, expand your vocabulary around emotions and get real and get authentic with expressing yourself. And in that way, when you learn a lot more emotional words, you can also learn to express your ideas. Secret number two is to make it about your audience. Have you heard the term that the number one fear that people have is stage fright? I mean, comment below. Do you have stage fright? Have you experienced going on stage and becoming like a deer in the headlights and being nervous before a performance? I mean, comment below if you experienced that. I mean, it is the number one fear, but the reason why you experienced stage fright, the reason why stage fright is so common is because you are making it about you. When you are fearful, when you are nervous on there, it's because you are so concerned about how other people think of you. You're so concerned about what they're thinking, about how you're looking, about how you appear and that is making it about you. So make it about them instead because you are speaking for a reason. You are speaking to be heard, yes, but the main reason, the real reason why you are talking, the real reason why you are engaging in public speaking is because you want to get a message out there. You have a message that other people want to hear and maybe other people, when they're hearing what you have to say, that's something they needed to hear for the longest time. So make it about them, right? So make it about them. And when you make it about them, you are no longer focused on you and that is how you overcome stage fright. Secret number three is to visualize yourself as a confident speaker. If you're not a confident speaker, if you've not experienced it, chances are it's because you can't see it. You can't see yourself as a confident speaker. So practice that. Just imagine, use your imagination and ask yourself, what do I want to look like? Ask yourself, what do I look like? And imagine yourself speaking from stage. You want to be as detailed as possible. What are you wearing? How big is the audience? Where is the stage that you are speaking? What is the event? And more importantly, how are you dressed? What is your posture? How are you showing up? What does your voice sound like? And when you project your voice, when you deliver your message and you look around in the audience, what are they doing? Are they making eye contact with you? Are they nodding their heads? Are they smiling? Are they writing notes? Are they in agreement with you? Are they connecting with you? Visualize that whole experience because if you haven't experienced the confidence that you want to experience on the stage, it's because you haven't been able to see it yet. You aren't seeing yourself as a confident speaker. So instead of waiting for yourself to get there before you see yourself that way, already start seeing yourself that way. And then your actions that you would take will get you there. Secret number four is to know your stuff. Whether you are speaking to one person or to a stage of hundreds or thousands of people, you have to know what you're talking about. Knowing what you're talking about does two things. First and foremost, it gives you confidence because when you know your stuff, you know that whether or not there's going to be an interruption from the audience, if people ask you questions or if they object to what you're saying, you're not going to get sidetracked because you know your stuff. You know it inside out and backwards and competence, the competency in which you know your stuff is going to give you confidence. The second thing that it's going to do is it's going to give the audience confidence because they want to know that the time they're investing listening to you is worthwhile. They want to know that it's time well spent. So if you know your stuff, you're going to come across confident. You're going to be able to deliver your materials well and you're not going to be sidetracked by objections or questions. And so that gives the audience confidence and when they're confident in you and they feel that, Oh, this is very, very worth my time, then they will connect with you more. They will resonate with you more and they will also learn your material. They'll take in what you have to say a lot better. So know your stuff, practice in and out, know your stuff and it doesn't matter what your goal is. It doesn't matter if you're there to entertain or just to inform or if you're there to express your ideas or to tell your story, you still have to know your stuff. Secret number five is to learn how to tell stories. Stories are what connect people and it's also what allows you to build rapport with your audience. So when you're on stage, when you're in front of a group of people or when you are speaking with one other person, learn to tell stories because when they hear a story around it and you wrap your message around a story, your audience will remember it better. And it gives you confidence because when they are engaged in your story, you can see it because you can feel that connection that they have with you. And when you're building rapport with them through story, it also helps to build your confidence when you are about to tell the message. So learn to tell stories. And remember when you are telling stories to incorporate emotions into it. So it goes back to the first secret is expanding your vocabulary, learning how to express yourself so that you can tell better stories. I'm standing next to the conservatory water in Central Park and look what I came across, Hans Christian Andersen. Now who is Hans Christian Andersen? If you haven't heard of him, you might've heard of his stories. Hans was a Danish author and he's best known for his fairy tales. So you might've heard of his stories, Little Mermaid, Frozen, which is super popular right now. A lot of his fairy tales have since been turned into stories, have since been turned into movies. So why do we remember them so much? It's because movies connect. Movies get us to feel an emotion. Movies get us to remember something that happened to us in our lives, in our childhood. And that's why stories are so powerful. If you want to get a message across, you change your audience's state. So what do I mean by that? You change their state. You get them to experience what you experienced when you were telling your story. Now, when I was a little girl, my mom didn't speak English and I didn't speak English very well, but she gave me an education and she wanted me to learn English. So she couldn't read me bedtime stories. So instead, she had me read them to her. And so when I was young, what I did was every night before bed, I would read her a bedtime story. And the first bedtime story that I read was a book called The Book of Nonsense. There were many stories all gathered into one. It was written by Edward Lear. He was an author back in the day as well. And he wrote phenomenal stories. And every time I read each story, it was one story a night, I would read these stories to her and she would listen. She would listen and she would learn English in the process as well. And I would improve my pronunciation. And those were my earliest, earliest childhood memories was when bedtime stories with my mother, I was reading to her. These days, most parents read to their kids, but my experience was the opposite. I read to my mom. And that was the earliest childhood memories that I had. And I remember those so well because they were wrapped in story. So the same is true with you. If you want more confidence, you want to connect with your audience. If you want to communicate effectively and make sure that your audience understands and hears what you have to say, give them an experience. And you give them an experience by telling them a story. Secret number six is to dress confidently. You want to give yourself the best chances of feeling confident. And when you feel that you look good, when you're confident in the way that you look, then you will come across confident. So design for yourself how you want to appear on stage. Design that outcome. And it starts with the way you dress. It starts with the way you present yourself. So dressing, yes, it is clothing. It is accessories. It is the way that your outer appearance looks. But dressing also affects your posture. So how do you want to present yourself? How do you want to show up when you go on stage? What is the posture that you want to have? And all of these things when taken together, it elevates your confidence. Secret number seven is that practice makes permanent. Practice makes permanent. So what do I mean by that? When you do the same thing over and over again, that action, that thing that you're doing becomes ingrained in you. And over time as you keep repeatedly doing it, in other words, as you keep practicing it, it becomes a habit. So that's how habits are formed because you do them so often and every day and over and over again, the same way that you develop unconscious competence in doing it. You don't even have to think about it. You just know how to do it. So that's also how bad habits are formed. Good habits and bad habits are formed the exact same way, but repeatedly doing the same actions again and again until it becomes routine. Until you become so good at it, it becomes like a reflex to you and you don't even have to think about it. So practice makes permanent. In case of public speaking, you want to be practicing the right thing, right? Because if you are forming bad habits, it's because you are practicing the wrong thing. So practice the right thing. And how do you know what the right thing is? That's why it's important to get feedback. Get feedback from yourself, get feedback from a trusted mentor, get feedback from someone who has achieved the confidence from stage that you want, the success of public speaking that you desire for yourself. And in order to get feedback for yourself, first of all, what you can do is record yourself talking. If you are starting small, if you are starting in a small group or maybe a meetup group or small stages, make sure that you have someone record that for you. And note for yourself, how do you look from stage, right? When you are watching yourself perform, when you are watching you speak, are you bored by what you're saying? Are you captivated by what you're saying? Is the way that you are delivering it, the words that you are using, the way that you're expressing yourself and your ideas, is it compelling? Is it getting the message across? Is it clear? Is it engaging? So that is one thing you can do to start to get feedback is to look at yourself with an honest eye, without judgment, without criticism and with a beginner's mind. So that is the seventh secret and that practice makes permanent. Secret number eight is to know your audience. This is where you want to do some research. Just a little bit of recon work here. Think about your audience and who are they? What are the challenges that they're facing? What are the problems that they have that they're trying to solve in their life? What are they looking for? What language do they use when they're describing their problems? What language do they use on a day to day basis and where are they currently searching for their results? Where are they searching for answers, solutions to their problem and what kind of results are they looking for, right? When you have that clarity about your audience, you're able to formulate your message better and it gives you more confidence because you are able to design what the outcome that you want to have in your communication. When you deliver your message, what outcome are you trying to have? Are you trying to inform someone of something? Are you trying to show them and to sell them a solution? Are you trying to entertain them? What is that outcome? When you know your audience, you're able to design an outcome that the audience is going to receive when they attend your presentation or when they attend your communication or your keynote address. So know your audience. And when you know your audience, you will be able to build rapport with them better, connect with them better as well and use the right language that will resonate with them. And that will all, when taken together, it will raise your confidence. Secret number nine is don't dwell on your mistakes. When you are giving a talk, when you are presenting, when you are delivering your message, telling your stories, you're going to stumble and you might even use filler words. So filler words are those ums and ahs that people try so hard to avoid, but it might happen because if you've had the habit of using filler words, is that something you always go to? Chances are when you are delivering your message, you're going to use filler words, you're going to stumble, you're going to make mistakes. Don't dwell on them. Simply just move on. Act as if you meant to say that. Act as if it didn't happen because if you don't draw attention to it, your audience will not draw attention to it. It's when you say, Oh, I'm sorry, or excuse me, or I didn't mean to say that. You're drawing attention to that mistake and then that draws the audience's attention to that mistake. Because if you've done everything well up until now and you make a mistake, they're more concerned about what you're saying. They're more concerned about how you made them feel than picking out every little mistake that you made. And the thing is, we are the worst judgment of ourselves. We are the worst of doing that. And so we pick up every single mistake that we make, but chances are your audience is not going to do that. They are there to listen to you. They're not there to see you fail. They don't hope that you're going to fall on your face. They want to see you succeed. They want to see you do a fantastic job. So don't dwell on your own mistakes and your audience won't as well. Secret number 10 is to change your physiology. When you are having stage fright, when you are nervous, when you are stumbling, when that happens, your body is giving a physiological response. I mean, did you know that if you are experiencing stage fright, that experience, you know, a lot of it, a lot of people describe that experience as, Oh, my heart rate's going up. I'm starting to sweat this cold sweat. My palms are getting sweaty. My pupils may be dilated. I am just, and I'm scared, right? That physiological response is not that much different from being held at gun point. It's not that much different from a life or death response. You see your body, your body's reaction, the physiological reaction cannot tell the difference. Fear is fear. So when you change your physiology, it means that you move, you are moving, you are assuming a posture of confidence. Think about a time when you were confident. What was your posture? Chances are your shoulders were rolled back. Your head was held up high. Your eyes were looking forward, you know, not down and look at your posture. Think about your posture when you're not feeling confident. Chances are you are slightly hunched over, your eyes looking down, your head is lowered, right? So your physiology makes a huge difference. You can change your physiology simply by changing your posture. So change your posture, change your physiology, and that will help you to be more confident.