Build Your Speaking Confidence

I once coached a public speaking client who was plagued with self-doubt. As a financial executive, she was accustomed to working with concrete metrics. When it came time for her to present, she didn’t feel she had those same definitive guidelines to determine if she effectively delivered her message. She was desperate for trustworthy indicators, and even my encouraging feedback wouldn’t cut it.

Clients like this aren’t alone in the desire to feel confident that they’re speaking well and engaging their audience. The good news is that reliable indicators exist for all speakers. The bad news is that misleading clues and crutches also exist. Luckily, there are checks, assessments, and cautions you can use before, during, and after a presentation.

Before the Speech

Practice Out Loud

Practicing silently in your head or breezing through slides without fully vocalizing your points trains your brain but not your mouth. This passive practice can misdirect you because speaking involves different cognitive mechanisms than thinking and reading. Scientific studies show that the rate of “inner speech” is significantly faster than the rate of speaking aloud.

To work both muscles adequately, practice out loud with the same speed and emphasis you plan to use during the actual event.

As you commit to this dress rehearsal-like preparation, you’ll discover complicated words to simplify, convoluted sections to condense, and clunky transitions to refine as your mouth and ears join the practice party.

Don’t Rely on Mirrors

No one looks at a mirror and thinks, Am I making my point clearly? That’s because we’re used to relying on mirrors to assess our appearance. Therefore, looking in the mirror prioritizes the wrong things.

Instead of relying on your reflection, have colleagues, friends, or family observe your practice and share their thoughts.

Get Focused Feedback

When you rehearse in front of others, avoid asking vague questions like “How did I do?” (The response will likely be unhelpful, such as “You did great!”)

Ask more focused, practical questions: What point do you think I was trying to convey? What did I say or do that helped make that point clear? Was anything I said confusing, distracting, or hard to follow?

This feedback will help you identify your most essential areas of improvement.

During the Speech

Don’t Trust the Voice in Your Head

That voice is not a reliable guide. In fact, it’s probably the voice of your fight-or-flight instinct, trying to get you to abandon an anxious experience. Don’t give in to it. That anxiety only indicates that the task is important to you, not that it’s inherently dangerous.

Instead of listening to that deceptive voice, rely on your expertise, preparation, notes, and the feedback you’ve received during practice to feel safe and confident. Research also shows that saying, “I’m excited” before you begin can help you transform nervous energy into excitement.

Don’t Misread a Virtual Audience

When you present virtually, what you infer from the visual behavior of your online audience may not be accurate. For example, is Blake’s distraction a sign of disengagement or an incoming email on another screen? Is Kelly yawning because she’s bored by your speech or tired from being up most of the previous night? Is your boss’s blank stare a sign of disapproval or heavy concentration?

Nonverbal reactions you can trust include a smile, which means someone is engaged; applause, which means someone is impressed; a head nod—the most powerful nonverbal reaction you could hope for—which means “What you said has value to me.”

After the Speech

Use Surveys and Formal Feedback Tools

If you’re speaking at a conference or event, ask the organizers if they’ll send a survey to attendees or can otherwise solicit feedback about your presentation. Those responses are extremely valuable because they come directly from the people you were trying to influence.

Ask the Right Questions

Just like during rehearsal, ask your friends or colleagues in the audience if you successfully delivered a clear and valuable point.

Examples of productive questions:

• What did you take away from or remember most about the presentation?
• Was anything confusing? And if so, why?
• On a scale of 1-10, how confident did I seem?
• What did I do that helped me hold or caused me to lose the audience’s attention?

If they’re being honest and you’re being humble, their answers should direct you to the right places for improvement in your next presentation. Speaking of which...

Your Next Speech

Every speech serves as invaluable practice for your next. Equipped with effective practice routines, practical feedback, and reliable self and audience assessment measures, you should be more prepared than ever to deliver your next presentation with one of the most powerful tools of all: confidence.

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