How to sound confident

From my new book - Raising Confident Kids

So now let’s move on to the content. What you actually say does matter of course even though the aforementioned non-verbal cues are the first to be noticed. There are three areas which need to be avoided when you want to be confident and appear to be confident.

Generalisations

When you declare that ‘everybody’ or ‘no-one’ says or does something this is very unlikely to be the case and it lowers your credibility; not just of what you’re saying at the time but of everything else you say. Similarly words like ‘always’ and ‘never’ aren’t likely to be true. When we generalise, it invites others to question what we are saying which isn’t a very confident place to be.

When attempting to persuade your teenager to revise for example, telling them that ‘everyone knows you have to revise’ or that ‘no-one else will leave it until the day before’ will not hold sway because they will surely tell you of exceptions.

You miss out on important learning when you generalise because it will be the one time when something worked, when you felt confident, when you felt great, that gives you the successful strategy. By focusing on all the other times when things didn’t go so well just reinforces the losing strategy.

Distortions

This is when we pass on our responsibility for our own emotions by saying things like ‘you make me really cross’ or ‘you’ve made me very upset’. Our emotions are our own choice, however tempting it might be to blame someone else. When we do this we lose confidence by showing that we can’t take this responsibility on board and need to offload it onto others.

When your child says that someone made them do something, say something or behave in a certain way, ask “how did they do that exactly, how did they make you do that?” Invite them to consider what other choices they had. Choices give them flexibility and flexibility gives them control. Control of the situation is what we seek in self-esteem.

Mind–reading is another form of distortion. Avoid assuming you know what someone else is thinking e.g. “I know you’ll disagree but…………..”. This is not a confident start to any conversation and puts yourself in a position where rapport will be hard to achieve. You have already mismatched and indicated that this is your preferred way of conversing. Another form of mind-reading is predicting the future e.g. “You’ll end up on benefits if you don’t work hard at school.” Even if you’re sure you’re right, it is not possible to predict this. It does not look confident to say things that you can’t know for sure so it’s better to own up and phrase it simply as your own opinion or fear.

Deletions

We frequently delete information that our listener needs in order to make sense of what we’re saying. When someone doesn’t understand us and we miscommunicate in some way we get a sense of low self-esteem, yet by ensuring all the information is there we can overcome this and communicate in confidence. An example of this would be ‘that was so much better’. We have not explained what ‘that’ was and how it was better, better than what? I’ve heard teenagers say “I wish I was more confident.” I need to know more. I ask “in what way confident?”, “when?” “where”, “with whom?”. There’s lots of essential missing information.

Listen to how confident people talk. They express themselves clearly and you understand what they are saying.