All the eyes in the room turn to look at you just like they are turning to look at me right now.And maybe that's just a few eyes or maybe it's a big audience. The room goes quiet. They're waiting your words. How do you feel? Well, I'm gonna tell you today about how I have felt in the past in terms of that situation. But what I usually hear from women is that they feel anxious and nervous and sometimes panicked. And so if that's you, this presentation is perfect for you. And this presentation is also a perfect next step from the presentation that we just had with Mora, because this is gonna be more of the inner work around speaking and specifically about speaking, right, versus other forms of communication. If you're an introverted woman I am an introverted woman, by the way. And so I will speak directly to the experiences of introverted women.

This would be perfect for you. You know, speaking has really changed, especially in the last, like, five years. Speaking is more authentic versus about being that perfect, like, polished. I'm a professional kind of thing, and social media is a big part of that or being able to be on camera anytime from your home in your pajamas, you know, is a big part of that. So we have to adjust to that, and public speaking coaching has to adjust to that. Are you used to being in the background? Are you overwhelmed by constant self consciousness, perfectionism, and imposter syndrome? And is that affecting your speaking? Do you feel stressed out about how much time it takes to prepare each presentation or prepare for a meeting? Maybe it's hours and hours. It's not sustainable. Right? Well, I hope that that can change for you today. I'm Julia Craft, Julia Craft, and I'm a speaker. I'm a public speaking trainer, and I'm an introvert.

I'm a trained actress. Back in the day, I went to Emerson College. I'm a whole speak certified public speaking coach. I am the founder of Speak to Inspire Coaching over ten years ago. I've taught thousands of live workshops and trainings in person, virtual, all these different companies. And I've coached 500 actually, way more than that at this point, one on one clients. Also, I have a a podcast. Check it out. She speaks to inspire podcast. We are on our seventy second episode. I love the podcast. And I remember about ten years ago when I was just getting started with my business, I did this speaking gig where I walked up on stage in front of about a 100 people that were ideal clients. You know, it was perfect professionals for me. I paid money for this speaking gig, and the person introduced me sort of like this lovely woman introduced me today.

I walk up there. The room goes quiet. I look out, and I'm holding the microphone. I completely freeze. My eyes go like deer in headlights. The sweat starts popping out of every pore. I mean, I thought people must be able to hear my heart beating. It was beating so hard. It was traumatizing. I barely got any words out in that presentation, and it was a wake up call. Even with all my training, I was still experiencing performance anxiety. And what we're gonna work on today is the direct effect of what I learned from that experience. We're gonna work on how to increase confidence and reduce nerves when the spotlight's on you. We're gonna work on how to think on your feet when the pressure is on. So you don't need those scripts as much, and you can still sound credible.

And then we'll work on how to inspire others to take action through your executive presence. What is your spotlight moment? Write to the me in the the chat box. What is your kind of spotlight moment? It could be a one on one interview. Job interviews are intense. Right? It could be meetings. It could be conferences you speak at. It doesn't have to be big audiences. It doesn't have to be what somebody else would think was a high stakes situation. What is your spotlight moment? Have that in mind. Whatever your spotlight moment is, there's two parts of confidence that are playing out and affecting your ability to show up in the confident calm way that I'm sure that you want to. There's external confidence, you know, how you look from the outside, the nonverbal communication that people perceive, and people will have an opinion of you based on what they see.

However, there's also the internal confidence, which is how you think about yourself. You know? Like, do you believe that you're good at what you do, that you have something to share, that you're worth listening to? The internal side of confidence in terms of public speaking training is often not emphasized. You might learn a lot about what to do with your hands and how to write a script. But then do you look at the self doubt, the self consciousness that might be blocking you from applying the techniques that you learned. We're gonna do both today. There's also two parts of communication. There's verbal and nonverbal. We're gonna work on those today. So verbal, all the words, and nonverbal, everything other than the words.

Number one, the first section, calm your nervous system. This is where we have to start, especially for introvert, by the way. If the anxiety is flooding your brain, you won't be able to apply any techniques that you learn. So what are your challenges when it comes to communication confidence? Write that into the chat for me. Think about what are your unique challenges. Some common ones that your nervous system expresses through physical symptoms is heart racing, sweating tight muscles, blanking out, rambling, stumbling over your words, flushed cheeks, shaking knees, wobbly voice, maybe you relate to these. I wanna emphasize that nerves are really normal, so common. Look at this data. Speaking before a group is the number one fear. Right? And look at number I think it's seven is death. So I love that Jerry Seinfeld quote.

He says, if this is true, we've all been at a funeral and we prefer to be in the casket than up giving the eulogy. Let me put it like that. The reality is when it feels like a tiger is chasing you, your nervous system just responds. And you might feel like this little boy, you know, deer in headlights kind of feeling. You're going through three levels of your autonomic nervous system in response to stress. The first level is stay and play mode. This is where we all wanna be. Right? This is where we they're still happening, but we don't feel a threat and so we can stay engaged. Then as soon as you feel a threat, you're gonna go into fight and then flight mode. Flight is the most common for the women that I work with.

They don't feel that it's appropriate to, like, fight back. So they go into flight mode, and they're trying to get away from it or avoid it or go really fast to get it over with. But most of us actually end up in freeze mode in terms of performance anxiety. This is where, again, the deer in headlights thing, you can't really breathe. Your body's stuck in in tightness. Whoo. And it's like you're surviving this experience of speaking. So which is your which is your level of the nervous system that you go into? Whichever one of these, we wanna start to move you back towards the stay in play mode, and it's a process. The woman before me mentioned breathing.

Breathing is a really big part of the nervous system regulation practices that I teach my client. It's a little beyond this this, class that I can get into actual practices. But just know that when you have symptoms of fight, flight, or freeze, you're looking to bring yourself back to safety. Safety within yourself. Yep. Easier said than done. Number two, mastering improvisation. This is about getting you away from scripts, which is perfectionism and leaning into the art of flow. The art of improvisation, which works best if you have a little bit of structure. So it's not just a free for all. You actually have structures. And then you can get into that flow state and you build a trust with yourself. That's the art that we're talking about.

Here's a great simple structure that you could use today, tomorrow, soon, in your next meeting. Simple. Power of threes. There are three things I wanna talk about today. One, two, and three. Or I have three thoughts about that. This and that and this. What's the impact of simply saying the word three? What's the impact on you? It helps you to organize your thought. Just the impact on the audience. It'll help the audience to track where you're going, and they won't be lost in the middle, like, where is this going? So that's a simple example of improv structures. There's many more. The mindset of improv is, yes, I am. Yes. I say yes to what happens instead of like, oh my god. What's happening? I wasn't I didn't plan for this. No. This is this isn't what I thought it should be like. No. We just say yes to whatever happens.

I had a fire drill go off in the middle of a training I was teaching once, and everybody got under the table. This big conference table was at Twitter, actually. And you just gotta say, okay. Here we go. Let's make it part of the training, And then add to it. You know, move forward. Don't stop the momentum. Yes. But I think we should do this. No. Yes. And it it it frees you up. It frees up everybody else. However, you're still gonna have blank out moments. Might as well expect them. They're totally human and normal. So here's how to manage blank out moments. It's simple. You're just gonna pause instead of filling that moment with filler words or rambling or whatever, you're just gonna pause, take a deep breath, fill your nervous system with oxygen, and hold eye contact, stay connected with your audience. Nobody will even know that you blanked out and you'll help yourself get back on track. I hope that's helpful.

Building on that, let's go from verbal communication to nonverbal communication. The reality is most of what we're responding to in others is actually nonverbal. You might be really worried about what you're gonna say and that you're spending all your time on the script, But studies have shown that 93% of communication, that 55 plus 38, is nonverbal. You know, the the body language and the vocal tonality. And just like 7% is the words. Is that surprising to you? I mean, are you spending 93% of your time preparing for a presentation in terms of preparing your nonverbal communication? No. We usually spend 93 of our time or more preparing our verbal communication. So this might be a wake up call. Some examples of nonverbal communication, you know, what you do with your hands, your eyes, your voice, the tone and volume, posture, facial expressions, the rhythm and speed of your movement, as well as your voice, your pitch, and I mentioned volume.

Now here's one of the keys about executive presence. Maybe you've been told, oh, well, I want you to have more executive presence, so you need to have more leadership presence. Leadership presence is perceived by others when there's a congruence between your message, the verbal communication, and how it's delivered, the nonverbal communication. So when those are congruent, there's a feeling of I can trust her. I I really get the sense that she knows what she's talking about and that she's certain, and that is leadership presence. Whether you have the answer or not, you might be saying, I actually I I'm not sure about that, but I'm gonna look it up and I'm gonna get back to you.

There's congruence there. Let's do a quick gesture exercise to show you this. So gesture for me the past. This is my version of the past. Gesture for me the future. The future. Gesture the present moment. Right here, this present moment. And now gesture a timeline from the past through the present to the future. Past through the present to the future, or you could do it like this. And what about size? Something's really big. Okay. There's it's a lot. Something's really small. Maybe it's just a little. Something's getting bigger. It's growing. It's growing. Something's getting smaller. And then time and size. Something's getting bigger over time. The next six months, we expect an increase of 25%. In the next six months, we expect a decrease. You'd see how this I mean, I use numbers because it's very concrete, but you can see how your gestures and the message are congruent. We went really quick.

We went really quick, but I hope this was super helpful. How to reduce nerves through your nervous system regulation. We touched on that. How to get out of your head around content and improvise. And we talked about how to express confidence through nonverbal communication and congruence. What are your biggest takeaways from today? Put it in the chat box for me. You know, bring it to mind now. What is the thing that you're gonna apply in your next meeting, your next high stakes communication moment? And as you're doing that, I wanna remind you that there's really four reasons why most women never ever get rid of speaking nerves. Like, I'll talk to women later in their career. Like, I've been experiencing this for twenty years. I just thought it was me. But these are the reasons.

So now you're gonna know them, and you can take action. You know? Number one, you don't know how to get over speaking nerves, and I hope you've got a little bit around not knowing how or or knowing how to get over it today. So it's just some knowledge is helpful. Number two, you don't believe you can do it. That's the inner confidence stuff. So, that belief work is important. And then not having accountability, maybe you're lone wolfing it. It actually with this kind of it's about communication. You know? You gotta have somebody to work with and get feedback. And then they're not prioritizing it. Maybe you're putting it off until you have that big event, and then you're too stressed and it never happens.

This is the kind of work to do ahead of times when things are calm so that when you get to that big event or that big meeting, you have it in your back pocket. Does that make sense? Would it be okay if I invite you to a next step before our q and a? You know, this is Melina who was promoted to leadership after working with me. She was told that she came across Yum, and we worked together for her to come across more as a leader. I'm so proud of her work as well as Esi. She said public speaking fear was her number one fear. And then after we worked together, she got off the scripts, spoke to 400 people, and said she had fun. She was just loose about it. It's awesome.

So if you want that for yourself, I'd like to invite you to a complimentary consult with me where we'll clarify your goals, get personalized expert recommendations, and we can talk about speak to inspire program, see if it's a good fit for you. So you can just go to speaktoinspire.com. Go to the coaching tab up top, and there'll be a button there to schedule a consultation. I'd be happy to talk to you. Shannon was amazing at, sort of softening her waves of anxiety. She used to have tsunamis, and now she brought it down to small waves. So that could be you too. Schedule a speak to inspire session. Go to speaktoinspire.com, coaching, and then click on schedule a consultation. The world needs your voice. And if you're here, if you found me, I always say it's time for you to speak to inspire.