268. The Confidence Cycle: Breaking Through Public Speaking Anxiety with Mick Spiers

Have you ever felt that knot in your stomach before speaking to a group? That flutter of fear that makes you question whether you should just stay quiet? What if that sensation isn't weakness but potential trying to break through?

Following my powerful conversation with Israel Duran—who transformed from a boy who would get in trouble to avoid public speaking into a globally sought-after speaker—I'm sharing my own framework for turning speaking anxiety into impact. At the heart of this transformation is what I call the Competence-Confidence Cycle. Unlike what many believe, you don't need to feel confident before taking action. When you take even imperfect steps, you build competence, which naturally grows confidence, creating a virtuous cycle of growth.

Great speaking isn't about charisma but clarity. I outline how focusing on just 1-3 memorable points creates more impact than overwhelming your audience with information. Learn why the strategic use of silence—the power of the pause—might be the most transformative speaking tool you're not using. Discover how storytelling and metaphor can move your message from intellectual understanding to emotional connection, making your ideas stick long after your words fade.

The next time fear rises before you speak, recognize it not as an obstacle but as a signal that you're about to do something meaningful. This awareness itself is transformative. Remember that effective speaking isn't about perfection but presence. Speak with purpose, with clarity, and with a desire to serve rather than impress. Each time you step forward despite your fear, you strengthen this muscle until one day, speaking becomes not just something you can do, but something you love to do.

Chapters

• 0:00 Reframing Fear in Public Speaking
• 2:15 The Competence-Confidence Cycle
• 5:16 Clarity Over Charisma
• 8:57 The Power of the Pause
• 11:51 Storytelling and Metaphor
• 13:03 Final Challenge and Next Episode

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

What if fear wasn't the enemy but a signal that you're about to do something important. What if that knot in your stomach before a presentation wasn't weakness but potential trying to break through. In today's episode, I'm going to share some personal reflections sparked by the extraordinary conversation with Israel. Duran Israel's story was powerful, a young boy once so afraid of public speaking that he would deliberately get in trouble just to avoid standing in front of the class. Fast forward to today. Is a globally sought after speaker and coach, helping leaders grow through the power of their voice. And that got me thinking public speaking is still one of the most common and paralyzing fears people face, but I've come to believe that fear is not there to stop you. It's there to wake you up. It's a signal that something meaningful is about to happen. So in today's discussion, I'm going to add my own tips about overcoming fear and the art of public speaking. Welcome back to The Leadership Project. I'm your host, Mick Spiers, and today we're diving deep into public speaking. This still today, is one of the greatest fears that many people face, and if they never approach that fear, they'll never overcome it. So I'm going to give my own tips for about overcoming the fear of public speaking, and some basic tips about how you can become a more impactful speaker. This stems from the great conversation with Israel Duran, and today I'm going to add my own flavor on some of the things that we took from Israel, and also my own tips. So let's start with reframing fear, and I'm going to introduce you to something called the competence confidence cycle. When we talk about fear, that fear could show up in all kinds of ways, a fear of judgment, what will people think of us? A fear that we're not good enough, the dreaded imposter syndrome, the thought of, why would people want to talk to me, or I just, I'm just not a good public speaker. The story that you've told yourself in your head is a very powerful story, but you have the ability to rewrite that story. So let's unpack those one at a time. First of all, the fear of judgment, I have to tell you that people sitting in the audience, they're not sitting there waiting for you to fail. They've actually got your back. They want to be entertained. They want to be informed. They want you to do a good job. They're not sitting there waiting for you to fail. So you need to get over that thought that people are just watching you and judging you and looking at your shoes and how you sound, etc. That's just not true. They want you to do a good job and they want to cheer you on. Why would people listen to you? Well, you've got something interesting to share. Everyone has got a story. Everyone is at different stages of development of their life, and your perspective is unique to you. People want to hear those perspectives. They are interested. And third, around this lack of perceived competence, here's the thing, competence and confidence are not fixed traits. They're cyclical. It's called the competence confidence cycle. When you take action, especially in perfect action, you start to build competence. And as your competence grows, so does your confidence. And then that confidence gives you the courage to take even more action, and the cycle continues, but it doesn't start unless you take the first step. So you need to take the first step. It might start with a very small audience, three people, where you might share a story or give a three minute intro on a topic, or whatever the case may be. Start with something small, but you must start, and it's okay for it to be imperfect, because afterwards, you're going to reflect and you're going to go right. What went well? What didn't go well? What would I do differently next time? What did I learn about myself? What did I learn about others, the people I was speaking to? So that you can learn from it and then go again, so you're building your competence, so that your confidence flows, and the confidence gives you the courage to go again, and before you know it, you start building up. You start going from an audience of three to an audience of seven to an audience of 15 to an audience of 30. And before you know it, you could be standing on a stage in front of 1000 people, but you started small. You started scared, but you started this is the only way to get through it. Now, what about the craft itself? Well, the next thing, and Israel covered this well in his interview, great public speaking is not about charisma. It's about. Clarity. It's about knowing your audience and crafting your message with intention. So before you speak, ask yourself three simple but powerful questions, who is my audience? Where are they today in their thinking, feeling and understanding, and what do I want them to think, feel and do differently by the end of this speech, when you answer these you move from performance to purpose. You stop focusing on how you look or sound, you start focusing on the impact you want to make. And here's a golden rule I want you to remember this one less is more. One of the biggest mistakes that public speakers make is thinking that they've got their opportunity. So they need to tell the world everything they know about topic x, but if you try to say too much, you dilute your message, if you give your audience 10 takeaways, they're going to remember none of them. But if you give them one to three powerful, repeatable ideas, you'll create transformation. The dilutive effect also can have other impacts in your business life. So if you're doing a pitch to your boss, and you've come up with 16 great ideas as to why the company should take a certain action, and you think that you need to tell all 16 you're going to lose your boss, the first one to three might have been enough, where you've got them convinced going, Oh yeah, yeah, this is a great idea. But then you keep talking, and you actually dilute the power of the three biggest reasons why you should be taking this action. You they might have in their head waited the first three things you said, No. Idea number one, 50% idea number two, 30% idea number three, 20% and you've got them, they're ready to act, and then you keep talking, and they've forgotten already what the first three compelling reasons were. And worse still, it only takes one of those 16 things to have a slight inaccuracy for the whole conversation to now focus on that thing that wasn't quite right. Now, let's bring this back to our public speaking. The same rule applies if you try to share 16 things, people can't remember 16 things. Like you can't remember they can't remember. People cannot remember 16 things. And you might have had three powerful things that you wanted to have them take away, and now they can't remember it because you added another 13 and it only takes for one of your 16 points to be slightly inaccurate, for the trust and confidence in your message to start being affected. So in your delivery, think about what are the one to three powerful and repeatable ideas that you can share, that will be memorable, that they can take away the thing that you wanted them to remember. Don't let them choose the thing that you wanted them to remember, and use that as the focus of your speech. And it literally can be just one can be one takeaway. Some of the greatest speeches ever had only one takeaway, but please limit to no more than three. Now, How about the delivery? If there's one tool that every great speaker must master, it's this. It's the power of the pause. A well timed pause is more powerful than any word you could say. It gives your audience a moment to breathe, to reflect, to feel so don't be afraid of silence. Own it. When you pause, you're not losing their attention. You're commanding it. When you pause, people look to the speaker, and you recapture their attention, and you're signaling to them that what you just said was something important, that they should pause and reflect upon. Human beings are terrible multitaskers. So when we speak at a million miles an hour, we're not giving them the chance to actually pause and reflect on what we just said. We're making them choose. We're making them choose between, am I going to process what the speaker just said, or am I going to listen to what they're saying now? And because we're terrible multitaskers, we then actually get confused with everything, and we're now lost. So the power of the pause allows the person to process and to feel what you just said before you say the next. Thing. Now for many of us, we actually speak in multilingual environments. A lot of workplaces now are very multicultural, multilingual. You'll be talking to people that come from backgrounds that their native language is not the same as your native language. So if you're not building in these pauses, you're also now allowing them to do a little bit of subtle translation in their head if they're not fluent in your native tongue. So pause, pause, pause. This is the number one thing that will improve your public speaking. If you want to see this in action, go back and watch some of the most powerful speeches in history, whether it's Martin Luther King, Jr, Barack Obama, Winston, Churchill, the most powerful orators that captured your attention, and I guarantee you there will be very deliberate pauses in those speeches. The next is storytelling. Humans are Wired for Story. It's how we've made sense of the world for 1000s of years. A story turns data into meaning. It moves your message from the head to the heart. And finally, metaphor, a great metaphor makes the unfamiliar familiar. It connects the abstract with the tangible. It gives your idea wings. Now here's an example where I can show you how to use metaphor. So when we talked about the competence and confidence cycle earlier, imagine it like a flywheel. Hard to push it first, but once it gains momentum, it becomes unstoppable. That's an example of a metaphor and how you can build it into your speech. So embrace storytelling, embrace the use of metaphor. This is how people will remember it. They won't remember the facts. They'll remember the story. If it's an emotional story, they'll remember how the story made them feel, and that's what they'll remember forever, not the facts and figures that you thought were compelling. They'll remember the story. Now we've had many guests on the show talk about the power of storytelling. Andrea Sampson, great example, I encourage you, if storytelling and metaphor is one that you want to deliberately practice. Go back and listen to some of the previous guests that were on the art of storytelling. So here's my challenge to you, the next time you feel fear before you speak, don't run from it. Step towards it, because that fear. It's not a stop sign, it's a signal, a signpost saying that you're about to do something that matters. It shows that you care, and if you don't care, maybe that's not a good sign about the speech that you're about to give. So the fear is showing you that this is something that matters to you. Remember that you don't need to be perfect. You just need to be present. Speak with purpose, speak with clarity, speak to serve, not to impress. And most of all, keep practicing, because every time you speak, you build that muscle, and one day you'll look back and smile at how far you've come. So that's it for today. In the next episode, we'll be joined by the amazing Kumar Parikala, the award winning CEO and expert in digital disruption. He's the author of lead to disrupt, and he's going to be talking to us about disruptive leadership in the era of digital change. It's a super interesting conversation. Make sure you join us for that. Thank you for listening to The Leadership Project mickspiers.com a huge call out to Faris Sedek for his video editing of all of our video content and to all of the team at TLP, Joan Gozon, Gerald Calibo and my amazing wife Sei Spiers, I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel where we bring you interesting videos each and every week. And you can follow us on social, particularly on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Now in the meantime, please do, take care, look out for each other and join us on this journey as we learn together and lead together.