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Do you want to quiet your inner critic and speak in public assertively?

When you want to speak up in meetings do you have a little voice telling you people will judge you or find you stupid or incompetent?
Or maybe you feel like everyone else has something of value to say except you?

The hundreds of women and men I’ve been coaching over the past 10 years have come to me precisely because their inner critic stops them from expressing themselves confidently and impactfully.
Often my clients tell me they suffer from the impostor syndrome and they can’t express their opinion convincingly because they’re afraid of not living up to other people’s (and their own) expectations. In fact, the impostor syndrome is a symptom of the inner critic.
Let’s, therefore, delve a bit deeper to understand what your inner critic really is.

What is the inner critic?

It’s the voice telling you things like: “You’re stupid”, “Other people know how to do it better than you”, “How dare you say that?”, “Who do you think you are to be talking like that?”

It’s important to understand that your inner critic is telling you those things because it’s scared. It has bad memories from the past, probably from childhood, and it’s trying to protect you from experiencing those unpleasant, even traumatic, situations again.
Maybe it’s afraid that when you express your opinion, people will laugh at you. That you have nothing important to say or you might even upset someone you value. Sometimes it might tell you that if your idea is actually carried out, it won’t be as good as you thought it was.

I’ve noticed that clients who have had a bad experience Speaking in Public have a strong inner critic telling them that they’ll just make a fool of themselves if they try to speak in front of an audience again. This then causes them to blush, tremble, forget their words, sweat or stutter.
I’ve also observed that clients who were made fun of as children or told they were stupid by family members or teachers, find it extremely difficult to speak up spontaneously in meetings or even in social gatherings.

The most successful of people are affected by that inner critic. Usually, they manage to cover it up but they become uncomfortable as soon as they’re in the spotlight. Sometimes it gives them the drive to work hard, to try to prove to their boss (and themselves) that they’re not an impostor, but it can also cause them to put too much pressure on themselves, maybe even leading to a burnout.

So how can you quiet your inner critic?

The temptation is to tell it to shut up and go away. This won’t work, though, it just causes it to scream out even louder and make us feel even worse in ourselves. Remember, it’s the part of us that’s scared and wants to protect us from living a bad experience again. So, it needs to be listened to, to be understood. The solution, therefore, is to quieten the voice, not banish it.

Here are 3 useful tips on how to quieten your inner critic:

1. Refer to it as “my inner critic” rather than “I”. For example, rather than saying to yourself: “I’m scared of speaking in front of 80 people in next week’s panel”, say instead: “My inner critic is freaking out about speaking in front of 80 people in next week’s panel!” In this way, you separate yourself from your inner critic and reinforce that it’s just one voice amongst many others that talk to you.
2. Give it a name to personify it. You could choose a name like Cruella, Slave Driver, Darth Vader, or otherwise a first name, maybe one you don’t particularly like. This will help you to remember that your inner critic isn’t the core of you, it’s just one voice with its own personality and pathology. Each time you hear it talking, step back, observe what it’s saying and notice how nonsensical, even ridiculous it is. You might even be able to laugh at the absurdity of what it’s saying!
3. Be compassionate towards your inner critic’s motives. Learn to question and understand what danger it’s trying to protect you from. Once you’ve made your inner critic into a character with a name, you can more easily talk to it in order to understand its intentions and motivations. After you’ve given it listening time, you can then reassure by saying something like: “Thanks for your feedback but I can handle this just fine!”.

My inner critic (Miranda from The Devil Wears Prada) tells me: don’t publish this article, no one will be interested in it!! I listened to Miranda’s arguments, understood that she’s trying to protect me from making a fool of myself, and reassured her that I know my subject well enough to be able to share useful tips with my readers and offer them tools to help them overcome their own self-doubts.

How about your inner critic? What’s it trying to tell you? How do you quiet your inner critic?

Would you like to learn more about how my coaching approach can help you overcome your self-doubts and gain greater fulfillment in your life and career?

Please do get in touch for a free 20-minute phone appointment to discuss your needs. I’ll describe in more detail my specific coaching approach.

Let’s work together to release your inner voice!

Part 3 – Case study: A client who overcame her self-doubts and found her rightful place on the Executive Committee

 In my previous 2 articles dealing with the issue of women assertively Speaking in Public, we saw how our limiting beliefs get in our own way of success. I’m, today, sharing with you a case study of a client who, thanks to the coaching process, was able to go beyond her mental blocks in order to gain greater fulfilment in her career.

My client, let’s call her Sophie, first contacted me because she needed help with her Public Speaking skills in English. Questioning her, we both quickly realised that the problem wasn’t so much her level of English (which was perfectly good enough) but rather her overall reluctance to be in the limelight.

Sophie wasn’t particularly shy and she’d proven herself to be an excellent manager with her team, showing strong leadership skills and dedication to her work. Yet, she felt like she’d reached her own glass ceiling. She was feeling stuck in her current position where she’d already been for three years, with few promotion perspectives. Her HR manager had told her she needed to make herself more visible as her talents were going unnoticed. However, Sophie was uncomfortable about speaking up in meetings, especially if her opinion was controversial. Moreover, she avoided giving presentations whenever possible, even if they were in her native language, French.

Through the coaching questioning process, we discovered that the following injunctions were very present: “Don’t be important” and “Don’t think”.

Sophie came from a traditional family, where her mother stayed at home to look after the children and her father was the breadwinner. Sophie was bright and hard-working at school, achieving excellent results. Yet her mother would tell her not to brag about her achievements, saying it wasn’t nice for a girl to show off. Sophie’s two brothers, on the other hand, were encouraged to proudly tell everyone that they’d done well at school or during a sporting activity!

Moreover, Sophie’s father had a strong personality and would voice his controversial opinions loudly, getting into heated arguments with his sons. However, when Sophie (who was the youngest child and the only girl) tried to voice her opinion, she was told by her family to shut up, saying she was too young and stupid to know what she was talking about.

In order to try to be appreciated by her family, Sophie avoided upsetting anyone and did everything she could to be liked. As a result, the driver “Please Me” was also very present in her personality.

These limiting self-beliefs were hindering Sophie from being visible enough in the workplace. She was reproducing the same scenario from her childhood of staying quiet so as not to upset anyone and to avoid being the centre of attention because “nice girls” don’t show off.

Understanding what was holding her back from speaking assertively was, in itself, a revelation to Sophie. We were then able to use my set of coaching tools (transactional analysis, hypnosis, family constellations etc.) to help Sophie to free herself from the voices and constraints of her childhood. We also worked on her oral presentations, particularly body language and the use of storytelling techniques, to give her enough confidence to deliver impactful presentations.

The hardest part for Sophie was to speak up in meetings when she knew her opinion was debatable. At first, she had to force herself to speak. The breathing techniques I taught her helped to calm down her heart rate which was beating too fast. She’d also repeat over and over again to herself: “I have the right to express my opinion and it’s ok if others agree with me or not”. Little by little, Sophie gained more self-confidence when she realised that she wouldn’t be forced to be quiet because she had a differing opinion. On the contrary, her management started to listen to her more and realised that she could bring new innovative ideas to the firm.

The final stage of the coaching process was Sophie’s acceptance of her promotion, becoming a member of the Executive Committee. On the one hand she was thrilled, yet a part of her was anxious about her new role. Again, through the coaching questions, she realised that she was afraid that her husband would be upset because she’d be earning more than him. This turned out to be a totally unfounded fear, no doubt stemming once again from her traditional upbringing of the father being the breadwinner. In fact, her husband was delighted and proud of her. He even touched on the idea of setting up his own business as they now had more financial security thanks to Sophie’s promotion!

Are there aspects of Sophie’s story you can relate to? Or do you have other limiting self-beliefs that are getting in your way?

We each have our own story. My role as a Public Speaking coach is to help you to understand what’s holding you back, then to determine what your true, free self really wants.

We can then work on using concrete Public Speaking tools, such as portraying confident body language, projecting a powerful voice and having an appealing story to tell. These practical tools will help you to gain even more confidence, impact and charisma.

In this way I’ve transformed my own life and I feel passionate about transforming the lives of the women I coach.

I’ve created a coaching programme Release Your Powerful Female Voice to help you to understand what’s holding you back, then to determine what your free, true self really wants.

Would you like to learn more about how my coaching offer can help YOU to bring fulfilment into your life by Releasing your own Powerful Female Voice?

Please do get in touch for an introductory call.

Part 2 – Is it really possible for a woman to transform herself from being unconfident and self-doubting to becoming a charismatic, impactful Public Speaker?

This is the sort of question many of my female clients ask when they first contact me. The answer is definitely: YES!

So, how can this transformation take place?

As we saw in my previous article, women are less likely than men to speak up assertively in meetings and to shine during Public Speaking. This, unfortunately, starts from an early age and is blatant during university studies when female students are less likely to ask questions in seminars than their male counterparts.

So, what are the solutions?

Firstly, understanding the root causes of what’s hindering us, as women, from being visible and assertively Speaking in Public (see my previous article on this subject) is the essential first step to taking concrete action towards positive change. Most of the time, women aren’t even aware that their education and upbringing have such an influential role on their behaviour in the workplace.

Next, from my experience, the coaching questioning process is key to helping my clients determine what sort of career they really want to have, without the interference of limiting beliefs and critical self-talk. When you can openly talk to a coach who offers neutral support, you’re able to delve deeper into yourself and understand what you really want to achieve, becoming aware of your true potential.

I’ll take my own case as an example:

I grew up with a traditional education of believing the husband should be the breadwinner and the wife should be at home looking after the children. Even though my parents were proud when I graduated from university, the subliminal message I received was: “You can work but you mustn’t have an important, time-consuming career as your primary role is to look after your family.”

Working independently as a Public Speaking coach has meant I’ve had to make myself visible both online and offline. I’m aware that doing so will lead to even more success in my career. Yet, it also means I’m leaving behind the traditional female role I grew up with and this can feel like a “betrayal” towards my family values.

What really helps me overcome my limiting beliefs is to listen to my true inner being and free myself from the nagging voices of my education. The question I ask myself is: “What is it I truly want to achieve?” When I do this, the message is loud and clear: I know that I want to thrive professionally and help other people to thrive in their career. This awareness gives me the courage to make myself visible in networking events and on social media.

So, basically, it’s by giving voice to my inner self and my true desires, freed from the limitations of my education, that I’m able to surmount my fear of speaking in front of a group of people and being the centre of attention.

This is my personal story of transformation. What’s yours? How would you like your life to be transformed?

In the 3rd of this series of articles, I provide a case study of a female client who was able to overcome her self-doubts, to accept her rightful place in the limelight and who received the promotion she deserved.

We each have our own story. My role as a Public Speaking coach is to help you to understand what’s holding you back, then to determine what your pure, true self really wants.

We can then work on using concrete Public Speaking tools, such as portraying confident body language, projecting a powerful voice and having an appealing story to tell. These practical tools will help you to gain even more confidence, impact and charisma.

In this way I’ve transformed my own life and I feel passionate about transforming the lives of the women I coach.

I’ve created a coaching programme Release Your Powerful Female Voice to help you to understand what’s holding you back, then to determine what your free, true self really wants.

Would you like to learn more about how my coaching offer can help YOU to bring fulfillment into your life by Releasing your own Powerful Female Voice?

Please do get in touch for an introductory call.

Part 1 – The Root Causes

According to a study by the University of Cambridge, women are two and a half times less likely to ask questions in academic seminars than men^[1]. Some of the reasons given by the students questioned are:

“not feeling clever enough”, “couldn’t work up the nerve”, “worried that I had misunderstood the content” and “the speaker was too eminent/intimidating”.

These are the same explanations my female clients share with me when they say they’re uncomfortable about speaking up in meetings. Fundamentally, it boils down to a lack of self-confidence that causes women to shy away from being in the limelight in the workplace.

As a Public Speaking coach I’ve worked with so many highly competent women who hold themselves back from speaking up in meetings and assertively expressing themselves in public. I, myself, have struggled so much to come out of the shadows and allow myself to be visible in my role as a Public Speaking coach.

In fact, so much of what my clients tell me resonates deeply within me, i.e. “I don’t want to appear big-headed”, “I’m afraid that people will realise I’m not as competent as they think I am”, “I don’t want to appear aggressive”, “I’m afraid people won’t like me if I speak my mind”.

These are the limiting beliefs we’ve grown up with, as women, and they stop us from reaching our true potential today.

We usually think that it’s the outward signs of our nervousness (e.g. sweating, trembling, blushing, dry mouth, forgetting our train of thought, etc.) that stop us from giving impactful speeches. In reality, though, these are just the symptoms. The cause goes much deeper and to overcome this obstacle, we need to understand what’s really at stake for us, as women, when we speak up in meetings or when we give a talk to an audience.

What are the root causes of our fear of Public Speaking?

Subconsciously, each time we voice our opinions and knowledge in public, we’re affected by the injunctions and drivers^[2] we received during our childhood.

Let’s take some examples of injunctions:

1. “Don’t be important”: maybe you heard things like, “Children are to be seen and not heard” or you were told you weren’t important because you were born a girl. The consequence of this injunction on Public Speaking seems obvious!
2. “Don’t think”: maybe you were discouraged from having a different opinion to your parents or other adults. As a result, how can you assertively express a different opinion to your colleagues in a meeting if you’ve grown up with this injunction?!
3. “Don’t be who you are”: maybe you weren’t encouraged to have your own personality and maybe even your parents wanted you to be a boy instead of a girl. This can make you feel like an impostor when you Speak in Public.
4. “Don’t make it in your life”: maybe your parents didn’t want you to surpass them or maybe it was only boys in your family who had the permission to be successful. It’s hard for you, today, to have an important career, especially if it means being more successful than your father or brother. This may cause you to hold yourself back and not take opportunities to become visible.

From my coaching experience, I’ve also noticed that many women have the drivers “Please Me” and “Be Perfect”.

The first driver, “Please Me”, means that the woman doesn’t want to say or do something that her colleagues or boss won’t like. This stops her from expressing controversial opinions in meetings. Or it can even go further. For example, if she makes herself visible, she might be promoted and this will mean a greater workload. As a result, her family might not be happy with her because she’s not available enough for them.

With the driver “Be Perfect”, the woman might be afraid she won’t be good enough and so she’ll refuse opportunities to talk in conferences or meetings. Or, again, she might be afraid that getting a potential promotion will mean she won’t spend as much time at home and she’ll no longer be the perfect mother she strives to be.

We tend to think that it’s the fear of failure that stops us from performing to our full potential. However, it can also be due to the fear of success.

Let’s take an example: a woman might, subconsciously, be telling herself that becoming more visible in meetings and conferences could lead to her being promoted. The consequences of this promotion might be:

• More time at work and less time for her family
• A higher wage than her husband
• Not being liked so much because she’ll have to make some unpopular decisions

When we bear in mind the injunctions, drivers and limiting beliefs that we’ve grown up with, it’s no wonder so many women want to stay in the shadows, shying away from Public Speaking!

In the 2^nd of this series of articles, I ask the question:

Is it really possible for a woman to transform herself from being unconfident and self-doubting to becoming a charismatic, impactful Public Speaker?

I’ve created a coaching programme Release Your Powerful Female Voice to help you to understand what’s holding you back, then to determine what your free, true self really wants.

Would you like to learn more about how my coaching offer can help YOU to bring fulfillment into your life by Releasing your own Powerful Female Voice?

Please do get in touch for an introductory call.

^[1] Source: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/women-much-less-likely-to-ask-questions-in-academic-seminars-than-men

^[2] Injunctions and Drivers are terms used in Transactional Analysis.

There are 12 Injunctions in TA. They are negative parental commands that we’ve received through modelling, the rewarding of certain behaviours or direct expression. Sometimes, they are not even given by the parent, the child creates them through misinterpretation.

There are 5 Drivers. They’re developed at an early age when we start to understand what’s approved or disapproved of by the adults around us. They’re our way of adapting to our environment so that we feel ok about ourselves.

Do you feel yourself blushing when you get up to speak in public? Or do you tremble, get a dry mouth or sweat? Or maybe you lose your train of thought & forget what you’re saying?

My public speaking clients tell me they suffer from these symptoms. I, myself, used to feel my legs trembling because I was so nervous.
That was until I realised the importance of body language.

Here’s the tool I learned & that I share with my clients too:

• When you get up to speak, take a few seconds to prepare your body & feel your own presence
• This means having a straight back, with shoulders back & your head held high
• Make sure you can feel your feet anchored into the floor – this gives you stability
• Before speaking, take a deep inhale & start speaking on the exhale
• Pay attention to keeping this confident body language while you’re speaking
• Especially, avoid crossing your arms, having hands in pockets or leaning against something

If your shoulders are slouching or you’re looking unsure of yourself in any way, that’s how the audience will see you & that’s how you’ll see yourself too.
On the other hand, if you portray assertive body language, this will make you look confident in front of your audience & it’ll send positive signals to your brain, making you feel more self-assured.

Would you, too, like to learn how to become an assertive and impactful Public Speaker?
Please do reach out to learn more about my specific coaching approach, helping you to feel confident and comfortable each time you need to communicate effectively.

Does your audience have problems understanding you? Do you notice them getting distracted? Are you worried that your foreign accent stops them from understanding you?
If this sounds like you, let me tell you a secret:
Most of the time it’s not your accent or your voice that’s the problem, it’s simply because you’re speaking too fast.

Often my clients tell me their audience doesn’t understand them because of their accent. But usually, the problem is that they don’t pause enough.

So, what happens if you speak too fast?

• You don’t leave time for your audience to digest what you’re saying & they disconnect.
• You don’t have enough time to breathe properly & then you blush, tremble, sweat, forget your train of thought etc.

Whereas if you integrate the pause & silences after 3-5 words, your audience has time to get used to your accent. They follow what you’re saying more easily.
Also, you will be breathing better & you won’t be suffering from all the bad side effects of nervousness.

Mark Twain once said:
“The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.”
This is advice that’s followed by the greatest public speakers. Just listen to Barack Obama, Steve Jobs or Oprah Winfrey speaking & you’ll notice that they have a regular pace with lots of pausing.

Would you, too, like to gain impact when you Speak in Public?
Please do reach out to learn more about my specific coaching approach, helping you to feel confident and comfortable each time you need to communicate effectively.

Do you see your audience getting bored when you’re presenting? Do you lose them halfway through? Do you see looking at their smartphones or yawning?

My coaching clients tell me they encounter these problems.
This is usually because they have so much information they want to share that they digress from their main message. And then they lose their audience’s attention.

My tip to overcome this problem is to have a very clear key message.
So, when preparing the content of your next presentation, do this:

1. Ask yourself:

• What do I want my audience to remember from my presentation?
• What do I want them to do?

2. Condense your answers to those questions into one short sentence. This is your key message that you give in your introduction.
3. Then, all the other ideas & information you share should be directly related to this key message.

If you don’t have a clear key message, you risk digressing too much & you lose your audience. Always remember, your audience’s attention spam is very short. So, if you give too much irrelevant information, they’ll get lost & they won’t listen to you.

If, on the other hand, your information is clearly structured & presented with a logical flow, your audience will find it easy to listen to you. You’ll be able to engage much more with them. And you can feel proud to be sharing important and relevant information.

Lastly, remember that if people in the audience want to talk about other subjects related to your presentation, they can ask you afterwards during Q&A.
Remember, it’s about them, not you!

Would you, too, like to become a credible and charismatic Public Speaker?

Please do reach out to learn more about my specific coaching approach, helping you to feel confident and comfortable each time you need to communicate effectively.

Do you have bad memories from previous presentations? Does this make you feel uncomfortable about future presentations? Maybe it totally blocks you from speaking in public?

This has happened to a lot of my clients. Maybe from bad memories at school where a teacher or classmates made fun of them. Or a work presentation where they totally panicked and performed badly.

Here’s the tool I share with my clients to help them regain confidence in themselves:

• Take a moment to sit calmly, undisturbed by outside distractions
• Close your eyes & imagine yourself in a place where you feel really relaxed
• Think back to a time when you did something really well & you felt confident in yourself
• Think ahead to your future presentation and integrate all those feelings of confidence into the image.
• Visualise yourself looking, sounding and feeling really confident & sure of yourself.
• Then, visualise yourself just after you’ve given your successful presentation

If you don’t do this, you’ll probably continue feel uncomfortable before your presentations & you might not give the best of yourself. You’ll still have the bad memories from the past.

However, if you do this positive visualisation exercise several times before your next public speaking event, your brain will retain a good memory and you’ll be in a positive frame of mind. You’ll be able to perform to your full potential in your next presentation.

As a certified hypnotherapist, I use a lot of hypnosis and guided visualisation exercise with my clients.

Please feel free to reach out to learn more about my specific coaching approach, helping you to feel confident and comfortable each time you need to communicate with impact.

Do you feel like speaking in public in English is a mountain that’s impossible to climb?

Your colleagues are much better than you? You feel like an idiot when you need to present in English?

These self-doubts probably stop you from being as visible as you deserve to be.

The majority of the clients I coach in public speaking in English tell me that their level of English stops them from performing to their full potential.

Yet in reality, they usually have a good enough level to express themselves with conviction. It’s just that their mental blocks make them feel less good than they actually are.

So, this is what I tell them:

The next time you’re feeling worried or even ashamed of your level of English, tell yourself it’s simply a tool of communication. Just like a new software tool, it takes time to learn how to master it. But the more you practice, the better you become. Speaking in public is exactly the same. You need to learn the techniques, put them into practice and use them over and over again until you feel comfortable.

If you continue to see English public speaking as an impossible obstacle, you’ll put too much pressure on yourself. This’ll stop you from performing to your full capacity. You’ll even speak less well and make more mistakes than you usually would.

Whereas telling yourself English is simply a tool of communication takes the spotlight off the language itself. Speaking English doesn’t define who you are or the value you have. It’s a means to exchange and share ideas.

Then you can focus more on other public speaking techniques to be really impactful during your speech.

If you’d like to learn other really useful public speaking techniques, you can watch my previous videos.

Also, please feel free to reach out to learn more about my specific coaching approach, helping you to feel confident and comfortable each time you need to communicate with impact.

Do you start to panic when you get up to speak in public? Do you feel judged by all those eyes staring at you? Do you wish you could be anywhere else except on that stage?

I used to feel like that too. I hated speaking in public. When I worked as an English teacher in business schools I would dread my first class. I’d actually feel my legs trembling as I stood there in front of a group of demanding students!

Here’s a tip that has really helped me to feel more comfortable:

Lock, Talk and Pause

This means creating positive eye contact with your audience by looking at them directly.

Most people think they’re looking at their audience but actually they’re looking all around, spraying them with their vision. Or they’re looking upwards for divine inspiration, or downwards reading their notes!

Not only does this create a disconnect with your audience but it also makes you imagine dozens or even hundreds of hostile eyes, just waiting for you to slip up and make a fool of yourself.

Whereas, in reality, your audience wants you to do well.

Here’s how the Lock, Talk, Pause method works:

• Lock eyes with one member of the audience, anywhere in the room
• Talk directly to that person for a few seconds
• Pause and then move on to another person, not too close but not too far away from the previous person

The advantage of this technique is that your audience feels involved in what you’re saying & you’re actually talking to 1 person at a time, rather than to a big mass of people.

Clients who I coached years ago in public speaking in English, still remember this technique and they tell me it has really helped them too.

Try it out during your next presentation and feel free to pass on this video to anyone else who needs to feel confident about speaking in public.

And please let me know how you get on.