I’ve been reflecting on a number of coaching conversations I’ve had recently where one theme comes up again and again: the beliefs women hold about their ability to speak in public. Not their actual ability. Their beliefs. Because when you listen closely, the pattern is often very clear.
“I can speak confidently to a small group, but put me in front of a large audience and I panic.”
I hear versions of this regularly in coaching conversations. And it’s not always about the size of the audience. The same thing can happen when someone is speaking to senior leaders rather than their team, presenting face-to-face rather than online, or speaking to people they don’t know.
The interesting question is: if you can speak confidently in some situations, why does that confidence disappear in others?
At first glance, it might seem that the answer is simply more practice in these different situations. And sometimes, there are genuine differences in what a situation demands. Speaking to 200 people is different from speaking to 10. Speaking to senior leaders can involve different dynamics. A virtual meeting creates different conditions from being in a room with an audience.
But sometimes there is something else going on.
The Ability Is Already There
Let’s take group size because I hear this a lot. I’m not talking about going from presenting to 10 people to presenting to 150 overnight. But what happens when we impose a limit on ourselves? “If there are more than 10 people, I get nervous.”
If you can speak confidently to 10 people, then becoming nervous when there are 15 or 20 doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve reached the limit of your ability. The skill hasn’t suddenly disappeared. Instead, you may have started telling yourself a different story about what happens when the group gets bigger.
When I reflect this back to clients, I usually say something quite simple: the good news is, you’ve just shown me that you can communicate well.
And I believe that’s true. If you can speak confidently with your team, your peers, in smaller groups or in familiar settings, then the ability is there. What changes isn’t necessarily your underlying skill. Often, it’s your perception of the situation and your belief in your ability to handle it.
In some situations, you believe you can communicate clearly and so you do. Your thoughts are calmer, your body feels more settled and you get your point across. In other situations, the belief shifts. You believe you can’t communicate well in that particular scenario and that can change how you think, how you feel and ultimately how you show up.
Why does my confidence change in different scenarios?
How we decide which situations we feel comfortable in and which we don’t doesn’t just happen overnight. Our beliefs and confidence can be shaped by small moments over time. These might include being interrupted or spoken over, having an idea dismissed, being questioned in a way that felt exposing, receiving feedback that stuck more than it should have or observing this behaviour directed towards other women.
Sometimes it’s a single moment you can still remember clearly. Sometimes it’s a build-up of experiences that have quietly shaped how safe it feels to speak up. Over time, these experiences can become reference points for how we approach similar situations, making us think, Be careful here.
That response makes sense. But it isn’t always helpful. For women, experiences like these can be particularly significant when they happen repeatedly, especially in environments where speaking up already feels like a higher-risk activity.
These experiences can shape the way we see ourselves in particular situations, but a belief can feel like a fact without actually being one. Just because you’ve come to believe that you’re not good at speaking to a larger audience, for example, doesn’t mean that this is a fixed truth about your ability. It’s worth looking more closely at what you believe and what the evidence actually tells you.
Is it a belief or a fact?
You can start by noticing the belief and asking yourself whether you’re treating it as a fact. For example:
Belief: I can’t speak confidently in large groups.
What is actually happening: I experience nerves when speaking to large groups.
Those aren’t the same thing. Feeling nervous doesn’t mean you can’t communicate effectively. You might feel nervous and still give a good presentation, make your point clearly or answer questions well.
Once you’ve separated the belief from what is actually happening, you can look at the evidence. Have there been times when you thought you couldn’t do something but managed it anyway? Have you spoken confidently in a situation you once found difficult? Have you received positive feedback that doesn’t fit with the way you see yourself?
This doesn’t mean looking for evidence that proves your belief is wrong. It’s about getting a fuller picture. When we only pay attention to the experiences that confirm what we already believe, it’s easy for that belief to become stronger.
So, if you notice a belief coming up around your speaking, take a moment to question it rather than automatically accepting it as true.
You could ask yourself:
- Is this actually true?
- What is actually happening when I speak in this situation?
- What evidence supports this belief?
- What evidence challenges it?
- Am I confusing feeling nervous with being unable to do something?
- Is there a more helpful way to think about this?
You don’t need to convince yourself that you suddenly feel confident. The starting point is simply being willing to question the story you’ve been telling yourself.
A thought to leave you with
The next time your confidence changes depending on the situation, it might be worth paying attention to what is different about the way you see yourself in that situation. Because sometimes the thing that needs to change isn’t your ability. It’s the belief you have about your ability.
Ready to take this further?
If you’ve recognised yourself in some of these patterns and you want some structure and support to feel calmer and more confident when speaking, I’ve created a course specifically for women who want to develop their confidence and communication skills.
You can find out more here.
