5 Ways to Measure Your Confidence Speaking English at Work
“I feel fine communicating in English when I go on vacations, but I don;t have confidence speaking English in front of my colleagues in work meetings.”
Does this sound familiar to you?
I hear this frequently when I first meet my students and ask them what their main difficulties are regarding speaking English in the workplace.
Many students tend to be confident professionals, but when they have to participate in a meeting or give a presentation in English, their presence can go from self-assured to insecure.
This is not an ideal place to be when you have to win over the confidence of superiors, prospects and subordinates.
It is obviously a concern for those who need to have a confident level of English communication in order to progress up the company hierarchy.
After seeing this problem so much, I made it my mission to find a solution for those who were suffering from a lack of confidence speaking English in the workplace.
I had two fundamental questions to answer to reach a solution…
1. What is a confident English speaker?
2. How can a non-confident English speaker become a confident one?
To answer the first question, I have selected 5 ways which you can use to measure how confident you are speaking English at work.
1. Confident English Speakers Demand Attention
One effective way to measure your confidence peaking English is by observing how people react when you speak.
Do they ignore you? Do they normally interrupt you? Do they dominate the conversation?
If the answer is yes to any of these questions, it likely means that you lack confidence speaking in English.
On the other hand, if people pay attention to you, they rarely interrupt, you can hold eye contact, and you tend to dominate the conversation in English, you are probably a confident English speaker.
2. Confident English Speakers Have Confident Body Language
When somebody isn’t confident at speaking English, people around them notice. They don’t necessarily know that it is the English you are uncomfortable with, but they perceive that you are insecure about something.
It is obvious to onlookers when somebody lacks confidence because of the body language. Your shoulders slouch forward, you lose your posture, and you have difficulty maintaining eye contact because you feel vulnerable. The energy in your voice goes away and a more timid tone replaces it.
Even if you choose to keep quiet and not say anything in a meeting, this will not hide the fact that you lack confidence. Your posture and body language will give it away, and your colleagues will pick it up consciously or subconsciously.
Confident English speakers have an upright posture and maintain eye contact. This transmits confidence to others.
3. Confident English Speakers Are NOT Perfectionists
What confidence doesn’t create is perfectionism. Nor does perfectionism create confidence.
Some people believe that perfectionism is a strength, a positive characteristic. But in most cases, perfectionism highlights your weaknesses, mistakes, and imperfections.
You place unrealistic expectations on yourself. You hold back and prefer not to say anything, which limits opportunities. You constantly demand more vocabulary and better pronunciation. Until you have it, you believe you won’t be satisfied with yourself.
The problem with perfectionism? You will never feel completely satisfied with yourself, even when you achieve goals. That’s because ‘perfect’ doesn’t exist.
Being a perfectionist isn’t normally good for your confidence. If you are a perfectionist, think about changing your mindset and be easier on yourself.
I am not saying that you should lower your standards, but you should accept that you will make some mistakes on the path to reaching your desired level of English. You can have very high standards without being a perfectionist.
Shift your mindset to “How can I get to the next level?”
Simply by changing your focus from being hard on yourself after making a mistake, to focusing on learning from the mistake, will improve your confidence.
Confident people focus on learning from the mistake and use it as an opportunity to improve.
4. Confident English Speakers ‘Act Powerfully before They Begin to Think Powerfully’
A curious insight is that confident English speakers often ‘pretend’ to be confident before they actually ‘feel’ confident.
They do this by perfecting their tone of voice and body language and taking risks by putting themselves into uncomfortable situations. By successfully getting through these uncomfortable situations, they become more courageous, and as a result, take more risks.
Sooner or later they start to feel and become confident English speakers.
This is an example of the concept, “Fake it before you become it“, talked about here by Amy Cuddy, the Harvard Business School, Social Psychologist.
If you act powerfully, you will begin to think powerfully.
5. Confident English Speakers Sound Confident
Who do you think the audience will trust and buy into the idea more… The person with the great idea speaking like a wimp, or the one with the mediocre idea speaking with confidence? The one speaking with confidence, of course.
Why?
Because what you say isn’t as important as how you say it.
This idea ties in with number 4, because you can sound confident even without feeling it. And often confident English speakers sound self-assured prior to feeling and becoming secure about their English.
Fortunately, it is quite easy to train your voice to sound confident. Here are some tips to do exactly that:
- Speak from your chest, not your throat. This way your voice will be deeper.
- Speak slower than your natural pace. When we are nervous we tend to speak faster, which transmits our nervousness.
- Never articulate a sentence with the same intonation as a question. This shows that you are looking for approval, and therefore you will have less authority.
- Eliminate verbal ticks like “Erm, “Uhh”, “you know”, when you are thinking about what to say next.
- Include pauses in your speech. This makes you look more thoughtful as well as giving you a couple of seconds to think about what you will say next.
Conclusion
If you get anxious or stressed about speaking English in front of work colleagues, it probably means you are lacking confidence. The good news is that confidence is a skill which can be learned.
Just like learning how to cook, ride a bike or drive a car. It just takes dedication and practice, and you can definitely get there.
If you are interested in improving your confidence at speaking English for work situations, such as meetings, presentations, and interviews, take advantage of the limited discount rate for my ebook, “How to Become a Confident English Speaker at Work – For Non-native intermediate to advanced English speaking professionals”.
*This post is an edited extract from “How to Become a Confident English Speaker at Work – For Non-native Intermediate to advanced English speaking professionals.” By Steven Hobson.
