Confidence is a tricky word. It has a number of meanings for people and they may not all be that useful for people who are scared of public speaking. People often write to me and say that they want to “appear” confident. They mean they don’t want to show any weakness or fear. They think that going red will make them seem vulnerable. They also think “confidence” means not feeling any fear when they “perform”. We need to have a better more helpful definition of confidence

Public Speaking Avoidance doesn’t help. Actually avoidance is really the problem

As a public speaker, what do you need to do for the audience to trust you more? Eye connection plays a very strong role and that surprises some people.  If you don’t get your eyes right you get comments like this when you ask an audience; “You look arrogant”, “You look like you don’t care”, “ You look bored” , “You look rude” and “You look really odd and shifty!”
I then ask: “Do I look less or more confident than I did just a minute ago before I stopped looking at you?”
The answer is always “less confident”
Your relationship to the audience is key. This blog looks at how you can help your audience build trust in you

If reading public speaking tips on blogs worked, we should all be fixed now. Just reading “how to” tips doesn’t change us. So what does? Here is one public speaking tip that is really important.

There are lots of wrong beliefs around public speaking. I’d like to challenge six of them. There are many other myths that get in the way but these six are all about anxiety. So many people are stopping themselves living a full life because of this fear.