A successful communicator is one who is able to express themselves in an assertive and self-assured manner. In order to influence an audience with your message you need to create an environment of trust and sincerity. However, there is a fine line between confidence and arrogance and you need to know your boundaries.
A fine balance between confidence and humility
As a speaker, you want to ensure that you have planned, practised, and rehearsed for your talk. The fact that you are the subject matter expert on your topic and have been asked to speak contributes to your confidence. Your audience, on the other hand, will connect to you more if you are able to show to them that you are humble and modest. Confidence and humility are opposing character traits, but these two combined will endear you to an audience.
When you are confident as a speaker, you are able to assert your message with purpose and communicate your intent. You are also able to make decisions quickly and lead the conversation with conviction. Humility will keep you open to feedback and ensure that when answering any question from the audience you will be open and sincere enough to admit that you don’t know all the answers.
Excessive confidence shows itself up in your mannerisms: the way you talk, how you walk, your body gestures, your facial expression, and especially the tone of your voice. These are usually your blind spots. You might be innocently speaking in a particular way and not realise that you are disconnecting yourself from your audience. Watching replays of video recordings of yourself is a quick way to identify these blind spots. Your objective as a speaker is to be aware of what are your strengths and areas of development are. Let your strength be your power as a speaker and in the area you are not so strong in and be humble enough to seek help in these areas. When you find yourself feeling overconfident, stop and ask yourself, what can go wrong?’ or ‘what did I not consider in this situation?’ When you ask these questions, you introduce doubt in your mind that helps to lower the levels of over-confidence and you find insight to matters you perhaps took for granted.
You can incorporate into your talk a story about yourself that explains the pain and struggles you had to overcome in relation to the topic you are speaking about. Your audience will relate better to you if they can find something that they can connect to. Shared experience, struggle and pain is a quick way to generate this feeling of connectedness and show your humility in the process. Learn to soften your voice and slow down the pace of speaking when delivering any critical lines. This allows your audience to have the time to digest the content and stay connected with your message. Incorporate eye contact and look at someone until the end of a pause or the end of a sentence. Where relevant, share with the audience the source of your facts, figures and data. You will have more credibility and gain the audience trust if they can understand the depth of your research and skill. Finally, match your facial expression to the words and pay attention to your speaking position. Avoid speaking with your hands and remember that speaking standing still has more power and connection with your audience than with distracting and unnecessary movement.
More tips
- Speaking confidence will grow with every speech. The more you speak, the more your confidence will grow.
- Be open. Be sincere. Be yourself. These are the keys to staying humble.
- Let your curiosity propel your personal growth. Become curious to know more about how to express your confidence as well as ways to express your humility.
Author
DINESHRIE PILLAY CA(SA)
Business owner and public speaking trainer