people that are supremely confident when
they enter the room
they feel comfortable in that room
they don't hesitate to look around their
gestures are smooth
but they're very broad and that has to
do with confidence and for a lot of
people this is very difficult
i remember the great actress helen
mirren saying one of the most difficult
things to learn as an actress is how to
walk onto a scene i've thought about
that even in my career how early on the
difficulty of mastering that how do you
walk onto a crime scene how do you walk
into the public and demonstrate that i
am confident and so forth we can all
work a little bit
on our non-verbal so we come across as
more confident
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when we talk about confidence it's so
many things it has to do with our
posture the way we present how we look
where's our chin where are the eyes
looking and gazing our gestures are
loose but they're smoother as we walk
about
we walk as though we are on a mission
i'm walking out to shake your hand or
i'm walking out to a podium or i'm
walking to where i'm going to sit so the
less confident we are the less eye
contact we make the less confident we
are the more reluctant we are to look
about you know when i look at someone i
admire like colin powell when he walks
onto a stage even before he speaks he
has total command of the room and he
does that because he brings two things
into this equation one is a tremendous
amount of knowledge and experience plus
he has shaped and defined himself into a
statesman we've got to think of america
as a family where every member of the
family cares about every other member of
the family i think sometimes people
mistake
machismo or theatrical displays of power
as confidence confidence can be very
quiet jane goodall hears this ethologist
very meek very mild and yet wherever she
goes she commands the room one of the
things you notice is they sort of have
this command of themselves and in doing
so that command
transmits outward
the other thing that confident people
realize is the temporal aspect of
leadership if you're in charge you're in
charge of time i'm going to take my time
to walk out i'm going to take my time to
answer your question i will answer it
in the pace manner and tone that i
choose and in doing that we are
demonstrating that we are confident
and in control
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where do we get that confident voice
where do we get those confident gestures
this is what's called socialization we
notice the principal who acts this way
we like this leader because of this or
that trait so i try to model their
behaviors and say this is a shortcut and
if i have to work on my vocabulary
that's what high status people do if i
have to change my gestures to to fit in
in this society and then
that's what i'm going to have to do that
doesn't mean it changes me
completely it just means that this is
what is required of me and this is what
i want to achieve at this moment in time
i think of cary grant here's an
individual born in the uk grew up very
poor and as he said in his biography i
became cary grant i adopted all the
behaviors that i saw from high status
individuals just think about that but
make up your mind and it is difficult to
prescribe this but one of the easiest
things that we can do you know if you're
a woman maybe you want to model yourself
on the actress kate blanchette or some
other actor and say you know when
they're being interviewed how do they
look they look so confident they look
interesting they have such a command
presence you know we're not born this
way these are things that we have to
develop and say how do i want to be
perceived and what can i do to achieve
that
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are there better behaviors that you can
do here's a simple one how many of you
somebody says where'd they go and you go
like this and as it turns out this is
one of the most hated signs around the
world and yet if we just go like this he
went that way we're already perceived
differently little things i tell the
story often of when i first came into
law enforcement they said well you know
you you've got to get out there and make
some arrests and the first time i went
out there and my voice just
went really high stop you're under
arrest
that sounds horrible and you have to
work at having that command presence
where you say stop right there
don't move
that's almost theatrical yeah but it's
what is needed
so let's do this exercise i want you to
say no
just go ahead say it out loud
all right now let's do it right
say it as i say it
no
do you see the difference between the
way you said it and this way did you
notice that your voice kept getting
deeper
but did you also notice that the finger
became wider and wider
the more confident you became
the wider your fingers were spreading
there's a big difference between saying
no stop and going no stop
this
potentiates the message
but to get to this we actually have to
practice it so let's do it again
no
now go out there and teach your children
how to do that
i love sometimes
selfies in the mirror one of my pet
peeves is what we hear every day with
what's called up talk up talk is where
someone says something and then they end
making it sound like a question mark so
so it sounds like this four score and
seven years ago four score and seven
years ago our fathers
brought forth on this continent our
fathers brought forth upon this
continent
a new nation my company has done
research on this and we've asked ceos
and we've asked executives and some will
say well you know i've gotten used to it
and so forth but when we asked them does
it really matter they also yeah we'd
rather not see it i get pushback from
people that say well you know this is
just the way that i speak
and no doubt
but don't expect the same results
we choose to go to the moon in this
decade and do the other things not
because they are easy but because they
are hard
because that goal
will serve to organize and measure the
best
of our energies and skills
the cadence in our speech is extremely
powerful for a couple of reasons one we
know that when people machine gun a
statement when they talk very fast we
are less likely to listen to them over a
long period of time but when we talk
in cadence we are sort of held still
listening to
what will come next and i'll give you an
example
of from that great speech
martin luther king gave as you notice
with a cadence i have a dream
i have a dream and then he pauses
that one day
and then he goes on
and churchill used the same thing
churchill's notes literally would create
spaces for how long he would pause
from stephen
in the baltic
to trieste in the adriatic
an iron curtain has descended across the
continent these pauses
make people listen and one of the things
that we teach is if you want people to
listen to you
use cadence to get their attention hold
their attention but then look forward to
what that next set of words will be it
lets them know at a subconscious level
this is the person in charge and we know
that they're in charge because they have
temporal control
over this they're not in a hurry
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so you know a lot of times people say to
me well is does confidence look like
you know chest out shoulders back chin
up
yeah that looks pretty good but you know
a lot of times confidence is just
sitting comfortably in a chair
and that may have more to do with how
much space you control it may have to do
with the gestures that you use you
probably notice that i use a lot of
steepling i tend to interlace my fingers
and so forth
these are gestures that contribute to
that communication that i'm trying to
get across that i am confident about
what i'm talking about so it's not just
about puffing your chest out or
certainly not about talking louder or
anything it's about controlling my
environment but making sure that what
i'm transmitting at all times is
confidence and that means i'm prepared
i'm ready to answer i'm going to answer
you now i'm going to answer you
effectively and i'm gonna make sure that
you understand what i said i'm here to
convey i'm not here to convince
a lot of times people who are lacking
confidence are trying to convince you of
something hey if i'm confident i just
say it once it's this way and that's it
i convey the information rather than sit
there and try to beat it into you by
repeating it ten different ways compare
the gestures i'm about to
do it's about temporal movement
controlling time so the person in charge
has the time to look up at their own
pace the gestures are smooth there's no
hesitation there's no quick movements
there's no jitteriness there doesn't
have to be
i'm in charge
when i feel less confident i feel like i
have to be in a hurry that i've got to
look up and i've got to answer right
away and there's a lot of preening
behaviors and these are detracting from
me
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i was really shy a few years ago
probably this is changing a little bit
people are horrified to speak in public
i used to be horrified to speak in
public i still get nervous to speak in
public but here's some tricks i found
that you might find useful
the first one is don't hesitate ever to
to say you know what this is scary be
honest with yourself this is unnatural
number two take refuge and knowing that
if i sit down and study this material i
will know it better than my audience the
third thing i always do is i rehearse
really helps so that the first time you
hear it in a forum it doesn't scare you
when it's time to do the presentation
one of the things i like to do is to
warm up i find a good solid wall and i
will just lean into it like i'm holding
this
wall up pressing against it just as if i
were doing a push-up and one of the
things that that does is it releases a
lot of muscular tension and because i'm
doing it very wide it makes me feel more
powerful and i need to walk on that
stage as though it's mine
with full confidence it is only then
that i look at my audience and then i
just take a second to get myself
together and to begin with practice
obviously you're going to get better and
better and better
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let's face it people are not born
confident they're just not
we can become confident
with the assistance of our parents who
encourage us we can become confident
through our own achievements
we can become confident by
going beyond our boundaries but
confidence is something that we can grow
we can nurture i mean i have seen people
in wheelchairs that are supremely
confident i have seen elderly people in
their 90s who are very confident i've
seen children who are holding a violin
with such confidence if you want to be
confident
know your material
know the information hone that skill
work at it have that mastery of things
and of self and that's how you will come
across as confident no matter what your
station in in life is
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