Over half our speaker coaching clients admit to a fear that they have IMPOSTER SYNDROME. Many people are worried that they are in some way a fraud when it comes to making online or face-to-face presentations. People can react by becoming very wooden, or they shrink away, become monotonous, or write copious notes that confuse them rather than offer support. Even worse, some try too hard to impress people and just turn them off in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. The hard thing to accept, is this is all comes from our EGO. And, of course, as many of us are learning, YOUR EGO IS NOT YOUR AMIGO when it comes to speaking online and face-to-face.
We’ve recently created a short online programme to help people tackle this potentially disabling condition when it affects our self image and shapes our responses to others. At the heart of it lies this principle:
The antidote to IMPOSTER SYNDROME is so simple. It is to be YOU! This may sound trite, but there is a deeper insight at play here. On our Speaker Coaching sessions, we use a range of methods including some simple Qigong exercises. This is a system of coordinated body-posture and movement, breathing, and meditation used for the purposes of health, spirituality, and also martial-arts training. With roots in Chinese medicine, philosophy, and martial arts, qigong is traditionally viewed by the Chinese and throughout Asia as a practice to cultivate and balance qi, translated as “life energy”. At the heart of this is the image of a tree. In Qigong, one of the exercises is to literally, “stand like a tree.” There are other methods too around developing a deeper sense of purpose for oneself and others when designing a presentation, or even a play.
We’ve used these very successfully with performers in our Edinburgh theatre productions over the past 15 years. Applying these practices can make a profound difference to the presence and truthfulness of how an actor portrays a character. I’ve seen sell-out audiences in our annual Bite-Size Breakfast Shows sometime sit on the edge of their seats totally immersed in what they are hearing and seeing. We’re finding that encouraging business people to work this way can help achieve some remarkable results.
There are a couple of exercises for you to try at the bottom of this post.
We’d love to come and offer you a FREE SPEAKER COACHING TASTER SESSION to give you an opportunity to identify your strengths and one or two new approaches to how you speak online and face-to-face. Of course, we’d love to help everyone in your organisation get to a new level too! Please get in touch and we’ll arrange an initial session with you and perhaps a colleague or two, three…up to six people total. Sessions will take about 50 minutes.
In the meantime, here are a couple of exercises to help you start to create a deeper connection with yourself and others when you speak:
Identify the 3-4 most important beliefs and values you hold about how you should act and behave in your professional life. These are the principles, rules, norms I truly believe in, place real value in, and would even defend my right to uphold in the face of challenge.
Your core purpose is the reason you do your best when you do your best. When we are living in harmony with this purpose, we’re often almost unaware of time passing. Without effort, we’re fully absorbed in what we’re doing, and naturally full of energy and commitment…
How would you define your core purpose and your values in your work life today?
I believe I am here to:
I truly value people who:
Having clarity about these things can help anchor you in your roots and find strength in being your true self rather than trying to be someone you think will win the approval of others. It’s when we’re too focused on what others are going to think that the undermining self-talk comes in and we become vulnerable to tough questions, or lack of engagement from some of the audience. It is important to be able to quickly and simply summarise for any presentation you are making…
Why am I making this presentation today?
In a nutshell, I am here to create true value for this audience, in their terms, by: