19.6: Masterclass on How to Be Confident

This is How To Own The Room with me Viv Roskop, the podcast where inspirational women reveal the secrets of brilliant speaking. Hello and welcome back to series 19 and episode 6, the last in this pop-up compilation series. I'm Viv Roskop, writer, comedian, author of the bestselling book How To Own The Room and this week we're tackling how to be confident as part of our latest crop of masterclasses. We'll be back soon with a new series with more interviews. They're already being recorded as we speak, but for today stand by for some challenging ideas from our back catalog about something everybody wants a bit of, but nobody wants too much of confidence. This is really at the heart of everything that we talk about on this podcast, but I hope in all the conversations that we host here, one thing always shines through. Confidence is very much not a one-size-fits-all thing. It looks different on different people. It can be quiet, it can be subtle, it can be about leading from the back, it can be about persuading through influence rather than by shouting and showing off. In short, confidence is more flexible than we think, and it's really something that is open to everyone and very much not dependent on having a personality transplant. Before we get into all that though, let's hear from some of the women we've interviewed on this podcast before about what advice they have for owning the room. So I'm Stacy Dooney, a documentary maker. My micro tip would be make sure you do your teeth. Well actually I'm not very good at this because I don't take my own advice, but don't eat too much garlic. Poor old Aliage on the tour, I've started to be them the whole time and I stank the entire tour. Actually I breathed out stank my spouse. Hi, I'm Siri Hustvedt, I'm a writer. My micro tip is about what you wear to a lecture. Make sure that nothing is squeezing, pinching or scraping. Thanks so much for those words. The first guest I want to showcase in redefining how we think of confidence is Petra Massey. Petra is someone I thought of the second I first had the idea for this podcast. She is a brilliant performer and actor known for her clowning and for her physicality. She's performed with Spine Monkey and Cirque du Soleil and on TV you would have seen her in shows like Hyperdrive and Miranda. She describes herself as literally the clown that ran away with the circus. She has an incredible fierce presence even without speaking and she carries herself with this really profound inner confidence that just radiates from her body. I asked her what is the secret of physical fearlessness? How do you access that physical confidence of an acrobat or an athlete so people can really see that they can trust you even before you open your mouth or even without speaking at all? I guess I would say I described myself as a bit of a jack-of-all-trace master of nothing. I could do a little bit of everything. I ended up training a bit of circus space and you know and I could do some of the acrobatics and I could do a bit of trapeze but I never had the discipline to really see something all the way through and I guess because I've got quite good physical strength anyway I was just able through sheer bloody mind-itness actually more than fearlessness I suppose just very very determined that if there was something that I wanted to do that would be where my discipline is I would nail that particular move and yes I suppose fearlessness was I always liked sort of my heart beating really fast I enjoyed it I enjoyed feeling scared I loved being in a position where I could die that really excites me is that wrong? Well you've made a great career out of it so well I think maybe it's a bit excessive not now that I've got a child not to the point where I would die but testing those boundaries testing like I mean I see swim now and when I first was cold water swimming I would go out on my own and not realise that those waves that I were going out you know it could do a bit of until I got smashed up against a groin on my own and I came out with these bloody knees and I thought yeah no that's pushing it a bit far so you know with that fearlessness I am a bit of an idiot as well and I kind of sort of do things that perhaps I shouldn't I tried to do a bit of that I'd let less now because I have a child and I have to be a bit more responsible but I really really really enjoy being irresponsible I get I like that I really wanted to include this clip because we don't often hear women talking like this do we that's exactly why I wanted to interview Petra Massey in the first place but also because I think we don't think enough about physical discipline and physical fearlessness when we think about confidence we think instead about intellectual confidence and being in charge of our material or having a loud voice or whatever but as you can hear from Petra's infectious energy there like she says I like my heart beating really fast there's something really powerful and inspiring about channeling fear through your body in a productive way so I'm including that clip in case this idea is something you might want to try for yourself how can you challenge yourself slightly physically next time you want more confidence can you challenge yourself to stand in a different way to hold your energy in a different way to pull yourself up to your full height to engage with an audience physically by being more present or even by getting closer to them these are really great ways not only of projecting confidence to others but also of feeling that confidence in yourself and the more you feel confident in your body the more you'll come across as confident to others sometimes confidence is just about getting out of your head and into your body another counterintuitive trick for confidence sometimes it's not about you at all it's about other people and how you make them feel to explain that let's turn to Vanessa Sanjalke entrepreneur activist and lecturer with a background in financial services Vanessa is CEO of a company called Girls Talk Global which connects women with business and employment opportunities she's also really experienced public speaker and workshop leader here she's explaining the idea of using advocacy to increase your own confidence so that's where you act as an advocate where you're speaking up for other people where you're challenging a situation where others aren't being listened to or where you're using your voice on someone else's behalf how exactly does that work you have to take every opportunity so you imagine every second every minute of your day and think about how you can use your voice to empower someone else so this could be as simple as you're in a supermarket for example or you're in a shop and maybe you see another customer speaking really rudely to someone that works in the shop maybe use their pin and say actually come on they're doing the best that they can maybe this is not the best way to approach it have some compassion simple things like that thinking about developing that muscle where you are an advocate is really important don't you do it safely I don't you know don't put yourself in danger but just thinking about different moments and when you can advocate for others it doesn't have to be this grand gesture so some people think or do I have to go in protest or go to marches or spumps up you know people financially it doesn't have to be there I think is that every day behavior I think about every day how can you give a voice and empower people and I think that's a good starting point and calling out bad behaviour especially in the workplace as well some people can get scared to call out bad behaviour but I think the more people do this the more change we're going to see and really being confident and actually thinking about the best way to approach maybe a colleague or even a lie manager if you feel that a comment that they've made or a certain type of behavior is inappropriate because that's the only way that we're going to create change if more people start calling out inappropriate behaviors rather than you know having that awkward laugh that's not really going to do anything but you actually and sharing your concerns and educating others won't really make a difference yeah when you see bullshit call it out yeah is that is that simple giving a voice to others and empowering them is just one way to grow our own confidence we don't think about it a lot but it's a great way of being altruistic but selfish at the same time it's altruistic because you're doing something in service of someone else and hopefully it helps them out or at least it shows them that someone else has paid attention to what's going on but it's also selfish in a good way because it benefits you it takes you out of your comforts without making it about yourself. It gives you a chance to use your voice and it's a great reminder to all of us that true, unshakable confidence, that thing I call happy-high status, is something that puts others at the heart of what we're doing instead of just being confident so that we're the best or we're the most impressive. That's a kind of selfish confidence and it's really just a form of control, making everything perfect so nothing goes wrong and so that everyone is impressed with how great you are. It's actually incredibly boring and arrogant form of confidence. Much better to develop the kind of confidence that means you can do things for others. Speak up on their behalf, say what needs to be said, say what they need to hear. There's not really much point in any of us being here to do anything unless we're doing it for others and not just for ourselves. Next up in this conversation on confidence, Yerser Daily Ward, performance poet, storyteller, best-selling author, best-known for her books, Bone, The Terrible and The Howe, and as a co-writer on Beyoncé's visual album Black is King. Yerser Daily Ward does a lot of performing of her own words on stage and for film so I wanted to get into how she accesses a very free version of confidence. Performance poetry is often very intimate and exposing and it can be kind of embarrassing if as a performer you're not properly lost in it or you're not really selling it. The risk factor there is very high I would say. Yerser Daily Ward is brilliant at making it seem like a natural conversation and just an expression of how she's feeling. So how do you access that kind of confidence? You don't get nervous before you perform. You know I get more nervous about other things. I get more nervous not about the performance itself. It might be smaller things like technical things or you know I'm aware of the pair of shoes that I can walk and you know that kind of thing. Not the thing itself I don't think because again that's where I feel the most honest then I can only be me. I can only do what I can do and that presentation to an audience I mean it's so deeply important to me and it's coming from the heart. So yeah the nerves are usually more superficial. Yeah I've noticed when you perform you are very connected to the audience. It's very intense. It's very personal and you always speak from memory. You know you don't ever read anything. You recite what you've written and on this podcast before we've interviewed Holly McNeigh she's a brilliant performance panel and she is the opposite. She says she loves to read from a book or from you know a written piece of paper because she doesn't like the pressure of having to remember things and when she gave herself permission to take the book on stage that was when it really showed her up to become a better performer and I find that contrast really really interesting because obviously you look very free and very comfortable when you're just relying on yourself. Was that something that was there from the beginning? Yeah and I think it's from a background in acting as well you remember text but also I will say I don't always fully remember it but what I do do in the moment is add lines, add syllables, change lines, repeat. It's like singing, it's like I guess like a jazz improvisation. Sometimes the energy in the room means that you want to repeat a line I'll go back to the beginning and that's what happens. Well that's really interesting I think for people listening to this that is so liberating to think that you can do that because obviously the audience doesn't know what you're going to say and you're in control so you can do those things. Yeah I heard this on the previous one of your podcasts with when somebody said something about that they think it's part of the show unless you die or are sick you know. Yeah exactly whatever happens on stage or it doesn't even have to be a stage it can be just in a meeting. Whatever you do people think that you're meant to do it that is a saving grace right. Yeah absolutely. Notice how your Sir Daily Ward talks there about how she worries about practical things like can she walk in her shoes is she comfortable she doesn't worry about the performance because as she says she's just being herself she's just being honest to quote her it's like singing it's like a jazz improvisation. I wonder what we could all do in our working lives and in the moments when we feel pressure to feel more like that it's like singing it's like a jazz improvisation. How can you make it seem spontaneous? How can you make it more honest? How can you make it more you? Changing that focus so that those things are your goals rather than negative goals like don't be nervous or be more confident that kind of change in focus can really help make it more like jazz like the guy on the fast show jazz that's the other thing too and I think you can hear it in all the women I featured in this episode don't take yourself too seriously find something funny it's not all such a big deal people just want a bit of you and they want something honest and those things are really not so hard to achieve. I hope this series has made a whole lot of difficult things seem much easier to recap in case you've missed an episode we've covered in these masterclasses in this series how to know what to say how to overcome nerves how to cure imposter syndrome how to prepare parts one and two and you've just been listening to how to be confident for more on that topic in particular there's a full guide in my new book happy high status how to be effortlessly confident now available to pre-order. Before I disappear a quick word for Viv recommends our usual weekly recommendations section which I'll reinstate next series I want to give a shout out for another podcast that I think is really useful while you're waiting for our next series it's the How to Academy podcast a bi-weekly show from London's home of big thinking I'm a big fan of how to academy I've done a lot of successful events with them on how to in the room and coming up soon I've got an event with them on happy high status at the How to Academy podcast they invite the world's most exciting leaders scholars and entrepreneurs to share their ideas for transforming our lives and transforming the world past episodes include Bill Clinton and James Patterson on creative partnerships the late Madeline Albright on diplomacy Melinda Gates on philanthropy leased a set on the future of Afghanistan and loads of other great thinkers and contributors check it out the How to Academy podcast that's it from me for today thanks so much to all our guests in today's episode yet more tips and tricks on owning the room on power presence and authority can be found in my books How to In the Room and Lift as you climb you can sign up to the weekly newsletter on my website vivroscop.com and don't forget to rate and review us on your podcast platform recommendations ideas anything you've got to tell us very welcome on social media anytime we read your comments and suggestions always and we really are grateful for them thank you so much to you for listening from everyone on How to In the Room How to In the Room is a feast collective production this episode and indeed this series was produced by Mia Abbey Wardiner and mixed by Josh Monday will we back soon with a new series of interviews with women who really know how to own the room for now thanks for listening and goodbye