Exude Confidence

When you’re speaking in a meeting you are speaking to a crowd.

Now the crowd may be only two people but to you if it’s not one person it’s a crowd of sorts and it might make you uncomfortable.

Well when you have a crowd there is a crowd mentality.

So part of what’s going on is people are looking around to see how other people feel about you whether they’re aware of it or not.

And they’re making judgments with a lot of different data.

One of the things they’re judging is how you appear to feel about yourself if you’re kind of awkward and timid and you end sentences with question marks even though you’re making a statement that’s going to send a message that you’re scared you’re timid you’re uncertain of your ideas since you doubt the value of your ideas maybe they’re not very good.

Therefore why should the audience give your ideas credibility.

So I’m not suggesting you have to somehow be phony and do all this and put forth bluster but you do need to exude confidence when you speak confidence in your style.

Don’t try to be me.

Don’t try to be Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton or Oprah Winfrey although those three spoke with great confidence and still do those who are alive.

It’s kind of your own style.

But when I say confidence all I really mean is your volume is loud enough to be heard because nervous people kind of whisper because they’re afraid if they say something stupid now and I’ll hear it and it won’t hurt as much.

They won’t look stupid.

So part of it is you have to speak loud enough for people to hear you.

And if you’re in a room with 20 people you’re not going to have to yell.

But you are going to have to project a little louder than if you’re talking to one person right here.

Another did a dead giveaway of lacking confidence is rushing me too quickly.

You speak too quickly.

People feel like oh I want to have and set out.

Don’t speak too quickly.

Don’t rush at all.

Now if you make a mistake everybody makes mistakes.

Don’t beat yourself up over it don’t go oh.

Thirty seconds ago I made a mistake.

I mispronounced dead.

I didn’t tell anyone.

I didn’t stop and say oh my gosh.

I made a mistake.

I just kept going.

I corrected myself.

The correct word kept going.

Didn’t wins.

Didn’t looked embarrassed didn’t do anything awkward and it becomes less noticeable.

People won’t remember your mistakes.

By and large unless it’s just a colossal error you say million and it’s really billion and everyone knows the numbers a billion for the most part.

People don’t notice your mistakes in what you say.

They notice your reactions to yourself.

So if you seem embarrassed or flustered or uncomfortable if you seem like you think oh gosh I’m really sounding stupid up here.

The audience plays off on that they figure well if he thinks he’s sounding stupid and awkward it seems like a smart guy.

If he thinks he’s stupid and awkward he must be stupid and awkward.

I therefore have a negative impression of this person.

Now I’m not suggesting that every single person in your meeting is consciously thinking like that.

I’m suggesting a lot of it is unconscious.

A lot of it is in the gut.

So you have to be aware of that.

Now once you start this whole process as you go from not speaking out at meetings to SPEAKING Yeah it’s only natural not to be incredibly confident.

So I’m going to teach you in a moment or so in the next lecture how to appear to be confident so that we can at least trick he’s hot audience members now we’re not trying to calm them out of their money or anything.

We just want them to focus on what you’re saying in the meeting and not on the fact that you seem nervous or scared and you know doing things like this holding a pen fiddling with it is a sure sign of nervousness.

Keep your hands free.

We want to appear to be calm relaxed and having a good time when we’re speaking out at this meeting.

So I need you to really give it as much thought to that and that more thought to that than what you’re actually saying.

No I’m not saying that all that matters is how you look.

That’s not it.

But they’re both supremely important.

So you’ve got to learn how to look comfortable confident relaxed anytime you’re speaking at a meeting whether you’re sitting down at a table with five or standing up in front of 500 people.

You need to look and sound relaxed.

Otherwise people are going to be worried about you focused on you.

Oh my gosh.

Is T.J.

his voice cracking.

He seems so nervous.

You don’t want people focused on your confidence level you want people focused on your ideas.

Now here’s the good news.

The more you do this the easier it gets the more confident you get.

A lot of things in life are not like that.

I can go out and play golf every week for years.

I’m still awful.

I’m still shooting 180 and that’s cheating.

I still can’t hit wood.

There are plenty of things in life.

We’re simply doing it more doesn’t make you any better.

Speaking out at meetings it’s different.

It is one of those things where the more you do it the easier it gets the harder it is to be nervous.

The easier it is to be comfortable and therefore to do well.

So confidence is key.

Again me saying that doesn’t help yet but I’m going to give you exercises in a moment that will help.