Set Your Self-Confidence Goals Before Presenting

You know that cringey feeling that comes along with the shrinking of your self-confidence when presenting?  It happens when you lose control of your presentation or your audience.  It may not even be major or obvious to others, but if you know, you know.

I had a client who felt uneasy about an upcoming annual day of presentations with the senior executive team.  Her worry wasn’t about the content of her material, however.  Rather, she grappled with how she might handle her audience.  In prior year presentations she had raised the bar and set best practices for these presentations.  This time, however, she wanted success to look like two new outcomes: 1) to handle scrutinous questions like a pro, and 2) to limit the amount of post-presentation work requests.  Basically, she wanted to own the room.

She knew from prior years, that the SVPs liked to “go deep” and ask very specific questions on high-level information in the presentation.  Oftentimes, their questions were more out of curiosity than they were pertinent to the objective of the meeting.  She also knew that the CEO was prone to making requests for additional detail and that she would always agree to do the follow-up work to fulfill the requests.

We talked further about the audience, what they needed, and how the inquiries she anticipated might related to their needs.  Then we centered in on her two goals and determined new practices to help her achieve them.

The Action Plan to Assure Self-Confidence When Presenting

Here’s the action plan she walked away with to maintain a sense of control during the presentations while anticipating the predictable scrutiny from the senior executives.

1 – Set an objective sandwich

In other words, use the opening and closing remarks to frame your presentation.

Up front, state your intention and objective.  This may sound like, “My goal is for you to understand your key takeaways so that you’re crystal clear.”

At the end of the presentation, make a point to check in: “I want to check in on how we are doing with today’s objective. Are you all clear? What other questions are still lingering for you that I haven’t addressed?”

2 – Leave questions unanswered

As best as she could, my client and her teams anticipated as many questions as they could and prepared answers.  However, she knew that that questions would come up that she just would not have answers to.  Rather than trying to answer them impromptu, she resolved to say, “I’m not sure”.   Providing an unconfident answer was off the table.

3 – Ask a clarifying question

After responding, “I’m not sure,” she would clarify, “And I don’t want to assume where you are going with this question.  How might that help you understand this information better?”

Rather than blindly saying yes to requests for additional analysis, she would use the request as a prompt to ask them, “What do you want to solve with that analysis?”  The only follow-ups should be for questions that she wasn’t equipped to answer during the meeting.

Taking Control Helps Your Self-Confidence When Presenting

These three steps dissolved the anxiety she had about the day of presentations and allowed her to focus more intently on the strength of her presentation material.  Best of all, she felt confident that she would own the room.

Try these the next time you’ve got a presentation, and let me know what worked best!