How to communicate with confidence

and get your ideas heard

My current fascination is with confidence and fear and how these things impact our lives. This fascination has led me to take part in Lauren Currie’s incredible Upfront course. One big takeaway from the course was how important our words are for communicating confidence. Unhelpful words and speech patterns can stop our ideas from being heard, undermine our capabilities, and generally hold us back. Here are some common things to avoid when you want to communicate confidently.

1. Adding caveats to your ideas

“I’m no expert but….”

“You’ve all been thinking about this for much longer than I have…”

“Just thinking out loud here”

“You’ve probably already thought about this...”

“Maybe this is stupid but….”

Leading with statements like these discredits your idea before you’ve even shared it. Share your thoughts and ideas unapologetically, don’t worry about sounding stupid, or if people have thought about it before.

2. Sprinkling in lots of minimising buffer words

probably, might, just, maybe, kind of, almost

“maybe we could just almost…”

“it kind of might probably…”

Words like these seem harmless, and often they are, but when you’re trying to make a point or get your voice heard they make everything seem smaller and much less impactful. Remove minimising buffer words. You don’t need them and without them, your ideas will be much clearer and will have a lot more impact on people.

3. Adding options for people to reject your idea or request

“no worries if not!”

“understand if you aren’t interested,”

“don’t worry if you can’t make it”

“feel free to ignore me”

I do this one ALL the time! It’s a reflex I add to almost every social invite or request of someone. When you dig into the why it’s often due to a fear of rejection. You try to make yourself sound less bothered if someone says no, and since you gave them the option to reject you, you hope it shouldn’t burn so much when they do. But the funny thing is that adding these actually leads to more rejection! Take these two party invites for example

• “Hey, want to come to my party. No worries if not”

• “Hey, want to come to my party. I’d love to have you there”.

Which is most likely to lead to rejection? Probably the first since the person invited doesn’t feel valued. When you’re trying to sell your skills or ideas avoid adding options for people to reject you. It’s unnecessary and is not protecting you from rejection it’s likely encouraging it! (This is not to be confused with not gaining consent or being coercive. Sometimes, offering someone an easy way to say no is vital.)

Imagine you feel strongly that your team needs to make something simpler. Read these two statements, which one is most likely to get your idea heard:

“I’m no expert but, maybe we could just almost make it simpler, feel free to ignore me though”

Vs

“Let’s make it simpler.”

To communicate with confidence, avoid adding caveats to your ideas, remove minimising buffer words and don’t include unnecessary options for people to reject your ideas. It’s not about applying everyone one of these as blanket rules to all of your communication, or shaming yourself when you notice you slip into them. It’s about noticing when you’re using these things as a way to make yourself smaller, to hide from something and ultimately where they might be holding you back. What tips do you have for communicating with confidence?

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