5 Things You Can do to Communicate with CONFIDENCE

Whether you’re onstage, in a meeting, on a date, or at a cocktail party, if you’re CONFIDENT, your communication will be more effective. Those who come across as confident are trusted, admired, listened to, promoted, and more likely to become leaders.

The good news is that confidence can be learned! In this article, you will learn 5 specific things you can do right now to communicate with confidence.

First, let’s narrow our focus. We are not talking general self-esteem. We are talking communicating with confidence. Confidence comes from the Latin fidere, meaning "to trust," as in trusting oneself. 

Do you trust yourself?

Many of us are highly confident –we trust ourselves-- in some areas (like cooking or making small talk), while we are much less confident in others (like painting or making a speech).

“Communicating with Confidence” means overcoming our nerves to converse more effectively, whether it’s a casual dialog or a formal presentation. People want to communicate with confident people. 

So how can we learn to communicate with confidence? Despite the common adage, “imagining the audience in their underwear” is not an effective strategy. Rather, it is… distracting! What else can we do?

Here’s a summary of 5 things that are guaranteed to help you communicate with confidence:

1. Prepare & Practice

2. Adopt a mantra

3. Borrow some confidence

4. Get a pep talk

5. Act confident

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1. PREPARE & PRACTICE

If you’re going to a cocktail party, remind yourself in advance of the names and other relevant details of the other people in attendance. If you’re going into a project update meeting, make sure you’ve done the pre-work and you bring all of the relevant materials. Being prepared will make you more confident and enables you to focus on the meeting objectives.

If you’re giving a speech or making a sales pitch, one word: PRACTICE.

Practice = Creating Muscle Memory

Athletes who excel practice their sport until muscle memory kicks in. Presenters who excel practice their speeches over and over again until they nail it. Sometimes they practice in front of people, but more often it's behind closed doors in an otherwise empty room.

When I interviewed Stephanie Rudnick (former University of Toronto varsity basketball player, founder of Elite Camps, and author of “Life is a Sport”) for a Talk About Talk podcast episode focused on coaching, she shared that her magic number (the number of times she needs to practice a speech to nail it) is 9. My magic number is 4-5. What’s your magic number?

2. ADOPT A MANTRA

Find a mantra that is relevant and inspiring to you. A few prompts to get you thinking:

“I’ll either rock this or I’ll have a great story – either way I WIN!”

“I am smart, I am prepared, I got this!”

“Lock & Load”

“?Done is better than perfect. Go-go-go-go!”

“I own this room.”

Once you have your mantra, you need to memorize it, make it accessible, and say it! To internalize your mantra, it helps to go “multi-media:”

• say it in your mind
• say it out loud
• print it and read it

You can make the mantra your screen-saver, you can type the mantra at the top of your TO DO list, you can post the mantra on your bulletin board, and/or you can print the mantra & put it in your wallet...

3. BORROW SOME CONFIDENCE

Do you remember that time you rocked it? When you gave that presentation that felt so great and then you received so many compliments? Do you remember that feeling? Well, channel that feeling!

I learned about this concept of borrowing some confidence from the past from my podcasting friend David Nebinski and Darrah Brustein. This “borrowing confidence” idea makes so much sense to me because of another adage that I learned long ago:

“The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.”

If I’m channeling what I did and how I felt the last time I “rocked it,” then it's likely that I’ll be able to replicate that experience.

So go ahead – think hard about your past successes, achievements, and the compliments you received. Borrow that confidence from the past and make it a reality again - today.

4. GET A PEP TALK

If your communication opportunity is a big deal, you might want to proactively set up a pep-talk. There are two main reasons to get a pep talk:

1. It will increase your confidence
2. You will likely learn something to make your communication even more effective.

It's great to have someone in your corner!

Several weeks ago I was invited to go on-stage with some improv actors. While I am comfortable in front of a microphone, this notion of being onstage in an improv performance was completely foreign to me. Yes, I was nervous! The day of the event, I scheduled a “pep talk” with a friend who also happens to be an executive coach. She successfully calmed my nerves and gave me some great advice! She also made me think about the experience in a way that I hadn’t considered.

If you have a life coach or an executive coach that you work with regularly, then you probably benefit from pep talks like this all the time. If you’re like the rest of us though, you will have to seek someone out. It could be your partner, a friend, or perhaps a trusted co-worker.

Just say, “do you mind giving me a pep talk before my big presentation next week?” In my experience, people are usually honored to be asked.

5. ACT CONFIDENT

So you’ve practiced, you’ve adopted a mantra, you’ve borrowed some confidence from your past successes, and you’ve had your pep talk. Now it’s time to walk into that big presentation and act confident.

Yes, ACT.

I’m not advocating being inauthentic here. I am advocating using your physical body to act confident. Research shows that when you ACT confident, you will BECOME confident.

Focus on three elements of your body language:

1.   Your posture

• Start by taking up lots of space. Be open. Sit or stand up straight.
• Uncross your legs and unfold your arms. 
• Breathe (more importantly – do not hold your breath!)

2.   Your hands

• Don’t hide your hands. Keep them in plain view on the table, or if you’re standing, outside of your pockets. 
• Don’t fidget.

3.   Your eyes -

• Face the person who’s talking. Look them directly in the eye. 
• Nod in agreement and mirror the person with whom you are conversing.
• Smile - not just with your lips. Make direct eye contact and smile with your eyes. 

So whether you are with family or friends, seated at a board room table, or making an important presentation, you should know that just by focusing on your posture, your hands and your eyes, your body and your brain will start to internalize and exude confidence. 

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5 Things You Can Do to Communicate with Confidence

Here's the list again:

1. Prepare & practice
2. Adopt a mantra
3. Borrow some confidence
4. Get a pep talk
5. Act confident

Please try it and let me know how it goes. I would love to hear your stories of communicating with confidence! Let's talk!

Dr. Andrea Wojnicki is a marketer, communication coach, and podcast host at Talk About Talk. She earned her doctorate in business (marketing) at Harvard Business School, where her dissertation focused on consumer behavior and word-of-mouth. She is obsessed with understanding why you said whatever you just said. You can reach Andrea at [email protected].

Talk About Talk is a learning platform (podcast and email newsletter) focused on teaching the communication skills that will catapult your career and enhance your relationships. When we communicate effectively, we can be a better manager, colleague, parent, partner, and friend.

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REFERENCES

BOOKS:

• “The Self Confidence Workbook” (B. Markway & C. Ampel)
• ·“Confidence Gap Guide” (R. Harris)

FASTCOMPANY:

• https://www.fastcompany.com/90370098/these-instant-confidence-boosters-can-help-you-overcome-your-nerves

PSYCHOLOGY TODAY:

• https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/changepower/201808/11-ways-project-confidence-and-be-taken-seriously
• https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/hide-and-seek/201510/self-confidence-versus-self-esteem

THANK YOU to the following individuals for sharing their experiences, their confidence mantras, and their expertise with me and the Talk About Talk community:

• Angie Alexander
• Lesley Bedard
• Gail Bevilacqua
• Fatima Bhagwani
• Vanessa Bond
• Darrah Brustein
• Hillary Anger Elfenbein
• Nyssa Horton Hattaway
• Morgane Michael
• David Nebinski
• Lorna Purse

IMAGES: Unsplash - Will Kell, mbrunacr,