- Be present.
It’s when we are not being present that we appear to lack confidence.
As Lewis Carroll said, ‘I can’t go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.’ Fear only exists in the future or in the past. In the present there just ‘is’. Senior leaders often say when they have to give the same speech many times, like at Town Halls, after about the fourth time they are even boring themselves with what they’re saying!
Actors face the same challenge in the theatre. It’s all about being in the moment and being present. If a speech goes well the first time, the temptation is to try to recreate it a second time. But, actually, it’s much better to give the speech as if it’s the very first time you’ve ever given it because each time will be different. Each time should be different, so that you’re appropriately present for that particular audience.
- Be adaptable.
Confident people seem to adapt to the unexpected.
This is particularly true in an interview scenario when you’ve carefully planned your answers but their unusual questions seem designed to throw you off course.
We need to adapt to different types of people and situations. Some people just want the top line, some want the detail. Some audiences will love your light-hearted joke, some won’t. Sometimes you will be prepared to give your full 40 minute presentation but they tell you that they’ve only got time for your elevator pitch.
I once saw a man going up to the stage to give a speech and drop all his notecards. He had two choices. He could have shown us his panic, saying under his breath, ‘Agghhhhh, you idiot, you should have numbered them, now they’re all in the wrong order!’ Instead, he decided to pause for a moment, then confidently and unapologetically say to the audience, ‘Not a great start, Ladies and Gentleman, as you can see, I’ve dropped my cards. Give me two seconds. In the meantime, why don’t you introduce yourself to your neighbour.’
Stuff happens. Things will always go wrong. It’s how we deal with them that makes us look confident. Or not.
- Be humble.
Confident people find their subject matter more interesting than themselves.
The brilliant David Attenborough says he’s genuinely humbled by the Natural World every day. It’s his enthusiasm for this subject that not only makes us want to listen to him, but also makes him look and sound confident.
Confident people don’t seem to have to ‘big themselves up’. They don’t appear to have to prove or to justify.
Sometimes it’s good to say, ‘I don’t know.’ But many people immediately apologise saying, ‘Sorry I don’t know’. Saying that you don’t know doesn’t mean that you don’t know anything, it just means you don’t know that particular thing. If we try to look like we know everything, the mask of confidence will eventually drop and we’ll look foolish.
A touch of humility goes a long way.
- Be comfortable.
When I was 18, my brother and sister had silver tennis cups all over the house from competitions they’d won. I’d never won one! So I decided to go out with my pocket money and buy myself a silver cup. It’s still one of my prize possessions and sits on my mantelpiece today. It stands about 3 inches high. I had it in engraved at the age of 18: ‘THE ROBIN CUP’. Then I realised that I hadn’t said what the cup was for. So now it reads, ‘THE ROBIN CUP for being Robin’.
We want to get to the point in our lives where we feel that we are enough. We should always do our best, of course, but the bottom line is, we are enough.
And once we truly believe that, then we’ll have the confidence to be ourselves.
Robin Kermode is one of Europe’s leading communication coaches working globally with senior business leaders, politicians and corporate teams. He is a popular keynote speaker and author of the best-selling book SPEAK SO YOUR AUDIENCE WILL LISTEN. His podcast, THE ART OF COMMUNICATION, has over 30,000 listeners. Robin has been an actor for over 30 years and is a recognisable voice over artist (he is the MC of the ATP World Tour Finals each November at The 02 in London). He is a respected media commentator and a leading body language expert for the Daily Mail, The Telegraph and The Guardian.
