VISION & STRATEGY www.ceotodaymagazine.com 52 Professional Speech Coach Susie Ashfield’s 6 Steps to Talk Yourself Out of Feeling Like a Fraud: 1. Reframing It takes effort, but you have the power to change your mindset when it comes to performing. If you’re able to catch negative self-talk, try to replace it with something that’s altogether more stoic and realistic. For example: Instead of: “Oh god, I don’t want to let anyone here down and they’re all looking at me to lead them”, replace it with: “Isn’t it great that these guys have come to listen to what I have to say? They want to hear my message because it impacts them”. 2. Acceptance Accept that imposter syndrome, whilst unhelpful, is a normal way to be feeling. Imposter Syndrome is something that’s going to push you hard so that you perform at your best, but when it gets out of control it becomes a real block to your delivery. By starting to tune into that voice that says you’re not good enough often puts you back in control of it. I’ve even had some clients even give it a name. One client called the negative voice in their head ‘Barbara’ (after their mother-in-law). They eventually got to the point where they’d be able to hear Barbara piping up and they’d simply shrug ‘her’ off with a roll of their eyes. (I’d generally recommend choosing a name a bit further away from home though, for obvious reasons!) 3. Examine the evidence Has anyone ever jumped out of the audience, pointed at you, and said “I see you! You’re a fraud!” No? Then what evidence do you have to suggest that that’s ever going to happen? I once worked with a female CEO who was convinced, she’d only been given the position because the board of her company wanted to ‘tick a box’. She completely ignored the fact that she’d been there since day 1, and over the years had worked her way up through the ranks and was extremely good at what she did. Imposter syndrome causes us to think irrationally, focusing on worst-case scenarios that have never actually happened, whilst totally ignoring the huge bank of evidence that we have to support the idea that this is actually going to be completely fine. Just like it was last time and the time before that. Get a paper and pen and ask yourself, ‘what am I worried about?’ And then really explore whether your concern is reasonable or whether you’re giving power to a scenario that’s really farfetched. 4. Fake it to make it to become it Here’s the thing: you don’t actually have to be feeling confident to make people believe that you are. For example, when my clients give speeches, they should be feeling a little bit nervous, because that’s normal. So, I get them to try to visualize them at their most confident and be specific with that image. How does the most confident version of you walk into the room? How do they look? How do they speak? Then, you can feel as nervous as you like, but you need to do a bit of acting. You just need to pretend to be that person, even if that’s not who you are. This confident version of yourself that you’re projecting is exactly how the audience will read you, and they’ll respond accordingly. After a while, you’ll start to feel like this person who you’re pretending to be the same person you were all along. Magic! 5. Be fair to yourself. You are not going to perfectly deliver every time and I can guarantee there’s no such thing as a perfect talk, but if you hold yourself accountable to unachievable levels of brilliance then you’re going to feel like you miss the bar every single time. Giving yourself a hard time is only going to make things feel worse, and suddenly you‘re adding to your anxiety more than you’re detracting from it. Don’t feel like you have to respond to the trend of artificial positivity either. Telling yourself ‘Failure is not an option! Good vibes only!’ is about as useful as saying ‘I’ve let myself and everyone around me down after that performance’. Instead, I’m asking you to be pragmatic and realistic: ‘this should go down well after all that time I spent practising’.
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