Stand and deliver: Communicating with confidence

  • March 17, 2016

Adele gets stage fright? Hello?

That’s right, and she’s in good company. She and former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr both admit to experiencing the same unpleasant physical reaction before performances. Barbra Streisand stopped singing in public for 27 years for fear of forgetting lyrics. Carly Simon has had band members spank her before a performance to snap her out of her stage fright – and she’s still fainted once on stage.

Lawyers from small firms and sole practitioners aren’t likely to ever have to face arenas full of adoring fans, but their need to always be on the lookout for, and make their firms attractive to, new clients means there’s no time to be a shrinking violet.

Whether your public performance is a pitch to a prospective client or a speech to your local Rotary Club, if you prepare properly you’ll be more likely to keep your cool, say Bob Mann and Katrina Dunn, who together will be presenting a session on communicating with confidence as part of the CBA’s new Solutions Series.

Dunn, the artistic director at Touchstone Theatre and Touchstone Training in Vancouver, draws on her theatre training for “physical touchstones that keep you grounded during a presentation (and) help you build confidence when you are experiencing significant stage fright.”

Dunn’s top five “confidence behaviours” are:

  1. Breathe fully
  2. Stand equally on two legs
  3. Speak in a loud, forward voice
  4. Slow down and pace your delivery
  5. Make authentic eye contact with your audience

Pacing and eye contact are also among the top four tips for the shy speaker offered up by Mann, a lawyer and standup comedian whose current role is manager, discipline and appeals at Dalhousie University:

  • Don’t wing it – “Many infrequent speakers short-change preparation thinking it will help keep things natural and spontaneous. It often has the opposite effect. Plan, draft, edit and rehearse. There is no substitute.”
  • Small silences – “Nothing punctuates the really important points better than a pause afterwards to let the impact register with your audience. The nervous speaker – particularly the nervous litigator – will often race through material for fear that a silent moment, regardless of how brief, might swallow them up. On the contrary, use small pauses to really sell your most important thoughts.”
  • Speak to people – “This is a really hard one for a lot of people,” says Mann. “Practice speaking directly to members of your audience, even holding eye contact for more than a few words, or even for a full sentence. Resist the urge to ‘dance’ over the heads of your audience with your eyes. Getting comfortable with making direct connections with individuals will improve your confidence and endear you to your audience.”
  • Embrace the unexpected – “Even the most experienced speaker will have to deal with unplanned moments. The unexpected question, the technical difficulty, the list is endless. An improvised moment has the highest potential for a fresh, unrehearsed approach or perspective that will only enrich your presentation (this is typically only possible if you’ve heeded tip #1). Find joy in this moment and welcome it, whenever it occurs.”