Self confidence at a glance
When you present with self confidence, people will respond as if you are confident. In this way you can more easily win people’s attention, respect and admiration.
How can you look more confident? By making eye contact.
Women with self confidence often look people in the eye. Having made the eye contact initially, they usually maintain it for large sections of an interaction.
Look at people when you are having a conversation with them. Look at people when you are listening to them. Look at an audience when you are speaking to them.
Gain eye contact. When you make sincere eye contact with a person you are forming a connection. You will look confident and thus be considered to be confident.
This applies when you are having a conversation as a pair, facing a panel at a job interview, or addressing a community group.
I tend to use eye contact in front of an audience as a way of crowd control. I look around the people and connect with as many people as possible, through eye contact.
People know I am looking at them. Thus, people often pay more attention, as they know it may be their turn next. Therefore, they are more likely to be on their best behaviour! This is the power of eye contact that you also can tap into.
People always assume I have self confidence because I have eye contact. They would not know whether I have a stomach full of butterflies or not.
Even if you are lacking in confidence, you can still make eye contact and look confident. No-one need know what is going on inside you.
I remember once being very unsure of myself presenting a conference speech at a very formal, very technical, medical conference when I was an inexperienced academic. There was a room of about 300 Oto-Rhino-Laryngologists in the room. (Ear, Nose and Throat surgeons to the rest of us!) They were all dressed in formal suits and looked very serious.
I had been somewhat ambitious in choosing a controversial topic to present that I knew would stir up their natural cynicism. Worse still, I had decided to present it in an unorthodox way and involve them in an exercise where they had to count aloud while moving their pelvis at the same time! Wild!
Rachel can help you create interesting presentations: "Confidence in public speaking".
It's all in the eyes.
My heart was pounding, my stomach unsettled and the sweat building up. “Blow this”, I thought, “I’m not going to let them know I’m not full with self confidence. Eye contact it is, with each one of them!”
As I spoke from the stage I looked at the audience. I did not drop my eye contact. I did not look away. I did not put my head down. I picked out individual members of the audience, one by one. And they did what I wanted.
Afterwards people came up to me and commented on how stimulating it was, and how confident I was!
Oh yes! With eye contact self confidence is possible even when you are shaking inside.
- Make eye contact.
- Look good.
- Look confident.
What can you do to present with more self-confidence?
If you want to develop skills to confidently make an interesting presentation, there is a very practical set of CDs to help you, “Confidence for women in public speaking: How to cure stage fright and develop more confident public speaking skills”.
Written by Rachel Green. Professional Speaker | Trainer | Coach | Author.
Copyright Confident Woman Australia, 2010.
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Reader Comments (2)
Keep on shining
Rachel.