WHY CONFIDENCE IS IMPORTANT IN PUBLIC SPEAKING

Public speaking is about conveying a message to your audience.  The focus should therefore be on your audience and NOT on you as the speaker.  On stage everything is amplified and not just your voice. If you are confident, this is amplified, and if you lacking in confidence this is amplified too.

Confidence in public speaking is important because it allows you as the speaker to:

1. Take your focus off yourself and focus on the audience

This is possible by having a healthy mindset towards the the audience. Unlike many speakers that wonder most of their speech whether the audience likes them, with confidence your focus shifts away from whether the audience likes you and moves towards building rapport and relating to your audience from the moment you step on stage.  A confident speaker has the mindset that the audience is backing them from the start.

2. Eliminate distracting thoughts allowing you to concentrate on delivering the message

Many speakers have a mind blank on stage because they have so many competing thoughts about their own insecurities and vulnerabilities which cloud their mind.  Being confidence means you can think straight and managing your thoughts as opposed to your thoughts managing you.

3. Prepare a message which is full of content designed with the audience in mind instead of content designed to make you look, sound and/or feel good

Speakers that lack confidence often go off on unrelated tangents, use jargon and unnecessary complex language and their message can lack relevant personal stories.  A confident speaker has a message which is relevant, simple and honest often drawing on personal stories to build rapport. The message is what the audience needs or wants to hear about and not just simply what you want to speak about.

4. Read the audience’s body language and adapt your speaking style accordingly

Speakers that lack confidence are usually so consumed and concentrating on their own body language and delivery style that they fail to take account of the non verbal feedback from their audience. A confident speaker can adapt delivery style in response to the how the audience is reacting.

5. Come across to your audience as cool calm and in control even if things are not going according to plan

For speakers that lack confidence, unplanned hurdles can really rattle them and the audience can easily pick up on this. A confident speaker is able to deal with the challenges without displaying them on stage.

6. Have the X factor on stage.

There is no doubt about it confidence is attractive in a speaker and the audience in most cases responds positively to it.  A speaker lacking in confidence may attempt to mask it by over compensating resulting in being perceived as arrogant, or at the other extreme, openly displaying such a lack of confidence the audience is left questioning the speaker’s motives for being on stage in the first place. A confident speaker is far more likely to have the X factor.

7.  To give you credibility as a speaker

Many speakers lacking in confidence and crippled by insecurities may be guilty of excessive name dropping, boasting about level of experience and/or over-emphasising their credentials. A confident speaker knows the exact amount of information required to build credibility weaving in examples and stories without being overbearing.