In this episode of the Impostor Syndrome Files, we talk about the fear of public speaking. And by public speaking, we’re not referring to a keynote address in front of hundreds of people. We’re talking about the everyday moments in our work when we have to speak up in meetings or present our work to our teams. These moments can trigger intense anxiety and self-doubt, but they don’t have to. My guest this week, organizational psychologist Amanda Tobe, talks about the fear of public speaking and the stories we tell ourselves that reinforce our fear-based narratives. We also talk about steps we can take to reframe our fears and show up more confidently in public speaking situations.
About My Guest
Amanda Tobe is a Toronto-based organizational psychologist passionate about helping her clients build soul-filled and purposeful careers with less fear. She has spent several years researching job interview anxiety and her work can be found in Harvard Business Review, The Huffington Post, Men's Health Magazine as well as psychology and business journals. Amanda recently designed an 8-week group to help her clients reduce their fears of public speaking to learn to communicate with clarity and confidence. Amanda brings her corporate experience of more than 5 years as a consultant and manager of talent management, talent assessment, and career development for various organizations. She earned her MA and PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from the University of Guelph.
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Connect with Amanda:
Website: www.amandatobe.com
Instagram handle: @dr.amandatobe
Public speaking group: https://www.amandatobe.com/public-speaking-group-coaching
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Connect with Kim and The Impostor Syndrome Files:
Join the free Impostor Syndrome Challenge.
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Join the Slack channel to learn from, connect with and support other professionals.
Schedule time to speak with Kim Meninger directly about your questions/challenges.
Websites: https://kimmeninger.com
Transcript
Kim Meninger
Welcome, Amanda, I am so excited for our conversation. You and I were just talking a little bit before we hit record and I can't wait to continue it in front of the, the audience. So I'd love to start by inviting you to introduce yourself.
Amanda Tobe
I'm really excited to be here today, Kim to talk to you about impostor syndrome, and hopefully public speaking as well. So my name is Amanda. I'm an organizational psychologist, I'm Toronto based on a mom of three, I have my own private practice where I am to do to deliver a career-focused psychological services. And I also have a personal mission to help professionals override their fears in pursuit of a career that they love. I really believe that people deserve to love what they do for work, and to feel good while doing it. And so I really think that it's important that we help people kind of get outside of their comfort zones, learn to override those fears and just learn to show up as our best selves at work.
Kim Meninger
So I want to dig in a little bit just to what you mean by career-focused psychological services. Because I think sometimes when we think of psychological services, we think of mental health and life stuff, not necessarily career stuff, I think that we have drawn this, very many of us anyway have drawn this line, even though it's not really realistic between our lives and our careers. So what does that mean, psychological services that are career fair focus?
Amanda Tobe
Yeah, for me, it was an area that I really felt like was, was missing. I'm a licensed organizational psychologist in Ontario. And so there's not many of me who are licensed within my province. But I wanted to be able to, to provide services that were more focused on people's self-competence issues within the workplace. So the types of issues that I would see would be things like people who are struggling to navigate a career search, it would be things like people who are struggling to like with the fear of public speaking, with just feeling self-confident at work, whether they're in team meetings being feeling like they're assertive or not. So it really shows up in a lot of different ways. But I would say that the main focuses within my practice would be things like the fear of public speaking, navigating a career pivot, or career search process. And then just overall general self-confidence.
Kim Meninger
I love that you tie the confidence piece to these very specific things because this is very similar to what I see a lot. And I'd love to zoom into this public speaking piece that you and I started talking about earlier. And just really well, before I go any further, I really want to hear your perspective on what public speaking means, right? Because I think we all define it a little bit differently, and what some of the common challenges are around it.
Amanda Tobe
So when I refer to public speaking and the fear of it, and specifically in the work that I do, it can mean that you are participating or leading a team meeting or presentation, it doesn't have to mean that, again, you're doing a keynote, you're up on stage, you're, you're leading a conference presentation, I also work with people that are also working on those types of goals, like where they're looking to feel more comfortable and confident up on a stage. But it can also just mean that you're wanting to feel more authentic and present at a team meeting. So I really just want to share that this doesn't have to be something that's within a performance-based situation or like a traditional public speaking situation, I should say.
Kim Meninger
Yeah, and I'm really glad that you expand the definition that way because there are certainly people who want to be on stage, right? And certainly people whose by virtue of their job have to lead those types of presentations. But for the most part, it's the everyday experience of sharing ideas or presenting information or, you know, just communicating with others in a group setting that can be really challenging if you struggle with confidence issues if you're not necessarily feeling safe in the room. And so I'd love to hear more about what you see getting in the way of that more natural, more confident communication.
Amanda Tobe
So fear is a big part of what I talk about in my practice. And so whether that's again, people navigating the career search process or public speaking, but the most common fears that I would see would be things like a fear of having power, a fear of losing control, a fear of failure, a fear of negative evaluation. So as you can see, there's like four fears potentially wrapped up into one person's experience of public speaking. For a lot of people, what I find is that, you know, that there are concerned about what other people are thinking of them, how they're evaluating them, whether they can see that they're nervous or anxious or not, and So it really it affects people's ability to be present because we only have a finite, basically number of like cognitive resources that are available to us. And so we can't be basically be in our heads and thinking, oh my gosh, I'm so nervous. Everyone can see how nervous I am or I'm sounding so stupid. And then also feeling like you're really present and connecting with other people in the room. [Hmm] We’ll know the difference. Most people know the difference when I'm just being completely present versus if you're feeling like you're occupied. We call it self-preoccupation. And it's psychology literature, like feeling like I'm, there's something else that's kind of there's another I guess, soundtrack my head, there's another there's some other there's a lot of negative thoughts and things like that, that are also happening, that are preventing people from feeling like they can be present with people in the room. Yeah.
Kim Meninger
Which, you know, sadly, it sounds in many ways, like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Amanda Tobe
It is, it is. And, and the other thing Kim, I just wanted to highlight here, which I think is a really important part of the conversation, is just that a lot of people that I work with will often tell me, I used to love public speaking, I used to really like I don't know what changed one day, all of a sudden, out of the blue, I got spooked. And all it takes is one this is not to scare anyone who's listening to the podcast. But the point is that it just sometimes a lot of people that I work with are people that would describe themselves as feeling confident in previously speaking up at work. And then they had an experience one day where they just kind of like for whatever reason, it could be things like lack of sleep, maybe not even feeling 100%, they had a morning with their kids, whatever it is, maybe they just didn't prepare as much as they normally do. Or they just got caught off guard, whatever it was. And then for a lot of people, they have that, that feeling. And they're just like, what was that? It's almost like sometimes they have a bit of panic in the moment. And then it's like a new feeling or new sensation for them and sometimes scares people.
Kim Meninger
Mm-hmm. And it's amazing how powerful that one incident or one event can be given that that comfort level before was probably a product of a lot of different moments, right? So you can see how fragile that foundation is if, if all it takes is one moment for things to come crashing down.
Amanda Tobe
Yeah. And I sometimes even talked to my clients about how I watched my dog one time become spooked over fly. And I think that if my husband and I both hadn't witnessed him becoming spooked over this one strange incident, we wouldn't have believed the other that that's what, what it took to kind of scare him. But the point is, after that one day, this one incident is just like he became so afraid of flies and all it took was one time. [Hmm.] Wind us sharing that story is because I have seen and experienced it myself. And I'm happy to go into that to hear today, Kim, with my own experience with public speaking and the fear around it and helping other people navigate it and hearing their stories, that it often only takes sometimes one time for some people though, I also see people that I would, I guess would say that they are more introverted, have kind of avoided the limelight for the majority of their lives. So I do see obviously both has I'm not saying that it's only people that used to love it. But it's definitely not just people that I guess their whole lives were like, we're, we're kind of afraid of it. It's often it could be both.
Kim Meninger
I'd love to hear more of your story.
Amanda Tobe
Yeah, so I would say that. So I've experienced both imposter syndrome and public speaking anxiety. But I'll speak about the latter one here, since we're talking about public speaking. And I would say that, you know, when I had experienced it at its worst, you know, what I really felt was that feeling of losing control, like where my heart was racing, as I described earlier, but the kind of fear of losing control. And what it does, what it did, to me anyways, was it caused me a shortness of breath, just feeling like I couldn't be present with my audience. And it really just made me want to shrink. It made me want to clothes kind of closed down, to kind of hide myself at work. Sometimes I would give my, my work away to other people to present, I would hope that I was, I guess, unavailable for certain meetings where they would ask me to lead them. And it just really undermined my overall self-confidence at work. And that's why I was also excited to speak with you on the podcast here today. Because impostor syndrome, you know, at a really fundamental level, is about self-doubts. It's about a lack of self-trust. And so I really had to work on rebuilding that self-trust and realizing that I wasn't losing control and that it was just a temporary feeling. And a lot of you know what the fear of public speaking as far as like the, the stuff that really helped me and that I help my clients with is around reframing. So for example, versus calling them symptoms, I call them sensations. Rather than calling it public speaking anxiety, it's performance energy. So there was a lot of reframing. There's other things, of course, that I had to do as well. But I just wanted to share with you too, and for any listeners out there who are going through this, that this is against something that I, you know, have been through, I would no longer describe it as a fear anymore today, do I get nervous, of course, I still get nervous. I think some of the most seasoned speakers in the world get nervous. It's just not a fear anymore, that's going to prevent me from showing up.
Kim Meninger
Hmm. And passion, there's so much in what you just said. And I think about the importance of the narrative. Because when you describe that fear, and the fear in lots of different forms, right? If we then if we have the fear, and then we continue to avoid whatever it is that we're afraid of, in this case, public speaking, what we do is we give more and more power to that fear, right? And the longer we avoid it, the scarier it becomes. And so, you know, you're just sort of inflating or expanding this fear. And then, you know, when you actually do have to do it again because you can't not be available for this meeting. It's that much scarier and more anxiety provoking.
Amanda Tobe
Exactly. Because the more that you avoid a fear, or do you know what happens, Kim, the more it grows, it just grows. And so, you know, I really loved when you said the word narrative, because a lot of the fear around this is the narratives, it's around the meaning that we assign to the symptoms, as I said before, or sensations. And you know, the thing that fear says is that Fear says, “Do something, do something. You're in trouble!” So, one of the, I think, the hardest things for people to do is to learn to ride the wave and just to do nothing. It's a really, it takes, it takes a lot of practice, a lot of repetition, a lot of trying to change the way our thinking patterns and our default modes of thinking to adopt more of a growth mindset. And it takes standing in the fear and not doing anything. One of the hardest things to do is just because you want it it's just we want to I feel like I should do something, you're in trouble. You're in danger. So when you're in danger, you don't just stand there. You have to like teach your body like I'm actually safe. You're okay, you're not in danger.
Kim Meninger
Yeah. And can you say more about what we can do? In the absence of just, you know, fighting or fleeing or you know, all those natural reflexive responses that we might have? How do we actually stand in the fear? What does that actually look like?
Amanda Tobe
Yeah, it's a great question. So most people with a fear of public speaking, the one symptom that unites most people have any ideas what it is Kim, which physiological symptom that would be?
Kim Meninger
Oh, I would think it's the sort of heart racing.
Amanda Tobe
You got it. Your heart racing is the number one symptom. So where I really try to train people and help them to start with this is starting with reinterpreting the symptoms. So rather than just noticing that your heart is racing, so I pull from mindfulness a lot like mindfulness literature, learning to detach. So for most people, when that heart starts to race, it's like, oh, bleep Oh, shoot, or is racing. And it's like this, like, Oh, no kind of response, where we need to kind of retrain ourselves to be like, Oh, my heart is racing. That's interesting. Just like an objectivity, just like an objective awareness, self-awareness and noticing, without judging that heart for racing. Because you know, what I often also say to people, and my clients is just that if we were exercising, and our hearts were racing, would we be judging our heart for racing? Like, would you be like, Oh, my gosh, my heart is racing. What does this mean? But we do this in public speaking situations. So I think one of the best places to start with it is just by reinterpreting because reinterpreting the symptoms because what's interesting is that I mean, I have a framework for you know, what is what does it look like to fight the wave? And what does it look like to ride the wave? And there's a four-step process that I've outlined. And, you know, the first step is kind of like the physiological symptoms that happen. And what's kind of neat can between frameworks one and two is that I'm not trying to change the fact that your heart is racing as far as part of why riding the wave. So step one is actually the same framework. And to where it starts to change is on step number two, which is reinterpreting the symptoms. So look, let your heart race, light your face, if it wants to turn a bit red. But we don't need to fight those symptoms, because of the more than, like, what we resist tends to persist. And so I really try to come at this from a place of like surrendering from a from a place of acceptance. And I really try to work with people to try to replace the negative thoughts. So part of Step number three, is learning to choose new, powerful mantras and thoughts are ones that are rooted in safety. And so for example, rather than people being like, no, like, for example, my heart's racing, everyone can see how nervous I am. Part of step number three would be like, I'm safe, I'm okay, I'm okay, no matter what happens here, this is only 92nd Wave, I have different examples of other like grounding statements, but you should only pick one or two, you shouldn't have five, you know, like one or two that really resonate with you. And then part of Step number four is just learning to choose courage and kind of rooting yourself in more of like action with, with kind of, like, you know, moving towards the fear rather than away from it.
Kim Meninger
I love it. And one of the things that people often ask me because I I do speaking and do presentations all the time, I mean, multiple times a week, and people will ask me, do you still get nervous? And I pause for a second when I most recently answered that question. Because it's like, I don't get nervous, I get excited. And it's the same thing, right? You and I were trading comments on a LinkedIn post yesterday. And we were talking about how there's such similarity to those physiological experiences in the same way that you were describing your heart racing during exercise. I would be concerned if I didn't get that kind of butterflies in my stomach heart racing before giving a presentation. Because to me, that would mean it was I wasn't I didn't care enough, it is there.
Amanda Tobe
Exactly, exactly. And so I think that there is a lot of power in reinterpreting also, you know, the anxious feelings as energy or as excitement. And you might have seen the research from Alison Wood Brooks from Harvard, where she talked about, you know, basically reinterpreting the anxiety as excitement, that's where that research kind of came from was from her research. And when we can look. So for example, when we're feeling anxiety, or when we're feeling anxious, that's what's considered a high arousal emotion. So when people typically tell us to be relaxed, and be calm, that would be a low arousal motion. Right. So what they find in the research for anyone listening is that when you act, it's actually much easier for us to shift to another high-arousal motion, such as excitement. That's why that's a lot easier for us to make that jump than to make the jump from feeling, let's say nervous or excited to feeling calm. So again, the traditional like, you know, keep calm and carry on kind of thing, is not really built for the public speaking kind of context and that way, but I 100% agree with you, Kim, that I often will have people, you know, root and ground into the reasons why they're excited to come up with a list of reasons why they're excited before, you know, they're brought to share it, usually, we can come up with at least five reasons why they're excited to maybe share in your very first line. I'm excited to be here today and really feeling that word excited as you're saying it. So you're just kind of learning to show yourself that you're acting, you know, you're looking forward to being there. And then also similar to that, too, is just, you know, really thinking about, what are your reasons for being there? Who do you want to serve? Who do you want to connect with? And rather than making some making it less about you is the other important part, the other important piece of this puzzle?
Kim Meninger
I'm glad you said that, because that goes back to the self-occupation piece, right? Because when you are in your own head thinking about yourself, you're not thinking about being of service, you're not thinking about what the audience needs from you and your purpose for being in that setting in the first place. And so, to your point, people notice people can sense when you're not present when you're not connecting with them. And so to really anchor yourself in that purpose piece of it can be really helpful.
Amanda Tobe
Yeah, I really like to help people come up with like an intention. So the right things to do is to help them formulate a visualization around a certain word, an adjective or an intention for how they want to feel. But I also ask them, How do you want other people to feel? So we kind of we have a moment of like, let's paint let's try to come up with and construct what is your ideal experience of your ideal experience being there, but also what is the ideal experience you want other people to have? Well Being there. And so sometimes we'll pick words like, you know, authentic and President present. But the common word that people most often pick him as confident, which is a key word. But I feel like the word confident for a lot of people is a very loaded word. Meaning that it has a lot of like social construction and social learning behind it, where it's a very performative based word for a lot of people. So actually encourage them to pick other words that they can kind of own that meaning a bit differently and shape that meaning.
Kim Meninger
I love that because you're absolutely right, I think we have a certain connotation of what confidence looks like. And if we don't feel like we are confident, then that does feel performative to show up that way, as opposed to like I. And, you know, maybe this isn't the best alternative. But I'm really try to talk about it in the form of self-trust, as you described it, because one of the things that I think about a lot when it comes to the kind of public speaking that we're talking about is that many of us can point to that moment where things shift, like you said, of like I've been, I was comfortable, and then I wasn't because something bad happened. However, what often happens then is that we magnify that moment, in a way that makes us think in very binary terms, either I have public speaking skills, or I don't have public speaking skills, right? As opposed to recognizing that there are moments in my life, when I'm a really effective communicator, when I'm on fire, when I feel really comfortable with my message, and I'm influencing people and people are feeling connected to me, and times when I'm in my head, and I'm nervous, and I'm not having the effect that I want to have. And so it's not about losing your skills in certain situations, right. And so I think that's really important to keep in mind is, if you can do it in one situation, then you can do it, you have the skills, it's something else that's happening in another situation, that's tripping you up.
Amanda Tobe
Yeah, and so the way you're describing that as being binary just reminded me of like a fixed mindset. And so one of the places where I have to work with people on you know, with this is that, to develop more of a growth mindset, where they can give themselves permission to grow over time to say, over time, I can learn to, to become better at this. Rather than to say, I'm not good at public speaking, I can't do this, I don't want to do this. So when we come at any speaking situation with, with that set of beliefs, it really just lends itself to more of a negative situation, just from the get go. By virtue of saying, I can't do this, I don't want to do this, who would want to do it if you had those kinds of beliefs and add it in an attitude like that towards it, right? So we really have to work on starting to give ourselves permission to make mistakes, to take some risks, which is actually what self-confidence is, is all about, too, is all about, like this belief that I'm going to be okay no matter what. So even if the consequences are this, or the outcome of me not, I guess performing the way that I want to, even with the you know, those consequences, it's like this inner knowing that things are still going to, I'm still going to be okay, no matter what this doesn't take away from my past accomplishments, my credibility, and most importantly, my self-perceptions.
Kim Meninger
Mm-hmm. And so when you talk about some of this reframing and how we essentially talk to ourselves, or reinterpret the experience that we're having, are there certain practices that you recommend? Because I can imagine people thinking, gosh, that sounds like a lot of work, or, you know, how do you structure this so that you can use it in the moment because I think sometimes too, there's the difference between sort of the intellectual understanding of some of these concepts, but then once they get on the, quote, unquote, stage, whatever that means, everything flies out the window.
Amanda Tobe
So a couple of things here can the first one is that there is no magic pill. Like everyone wants a magic pill, they want the quick fix, they want the two things. But it's also much like reading a book where like, for example, when some when one person reads a book, they will draw out certain insights. And whereas when someone else reads a book, they'll kind of come up with different things that impact them differently, right? So it is a process, it is a process. First thing, it's a process of figuring out what works the best for that specific individual. And so there is an assessment that I go through with people to kind of figure out, you know, what is most concerning for them where I dig into the cognitive symptoms, the behavioral ones, the emotional ones, and the physiological ones. So I really kind of paint a full picture of it. But I would say to answer, at least in part, your question, it's the pre-work, which I think that people you know, they're looking for what can I do in the moment, give me the quick two things that I can do in the moment but a lot of the starts For the month and the days, and it's like, this is like the way we have to kind of train ourselves and our self-confidence every day, not just kind of saving it for the one or two presentations that you have during the year. So I would say that, for example, starting with identifying, you know what, what I guess one thing that anyone can do, who's listening is starting with identifying what are the five most recurring, most interfering thoughts that I have? And starting with those, those ones, as they pertain to self-confidence and starting to rewrite what are like the, what would a thought or belief that someone's self who's self-confident would have? Or if I were the best version of myself? What would that thought or belief look like? So just starting with your thoughts and beliefs? Because self-awareness is everything with this kind of challenge and this issue? And I often say that self-awareness is the gateway for behavior change. Because it really does start with that. So do you know Viktor Frankl? Is that all cam? Do you know? Oh, yeah, one of my all-time favorite quotes is between stimulus and response, there was a space. And that in that space is our power to choose and might be paraphrasing it slightly. But the whole point is that between stimulus and response, there is a space. So when I said to you earlier, that for some people, their heart racing is like, let's say that's a stimulus in this case. And the response is, oh, no, there it is, again, you have there's a space between that I'm noticing my heart is racing versus, like, am I going to respond to that heart racing with like a negative judgment? Or am I going to respond to it with just a welcoming of it, or just a complete neutrality, like noticing it for being there, just a pure mindfulness perspective? So that's why that's one of my all-time favorite quotes, because I think that it really does highlight the power of self-awareness. And I think that that is such a huge part with this. So I would say that for sure, with the pre-work, I sometimes call it physio with my clients. So think of our work like physio. So for example, you may not have to do this your entire life. But still, for example, there might be certain things, let's say you know that you have a weak glute. And that's just part of the way your body is built, you might always just need to do a little bit of like one minute of strength training for glute every day. For example, if you're someone who gets tense in your jaw, you should probably like as it pertains to public speaking. And that's important, we need to like learn to open up our job or when we speak. And so if you need to do some vocal warm-ups the morning before, or learn to loosen up your job at, that's just gonna be part of your daily physio, where it just takes like 30 seconds or something like that to do. So I think that that has really resonated with people just thinking about this as like a form of daily physio versus this is not, or I don't need to maybe do the full scale, the full spectrum every day of everything. But maybe there's a few things that I have is like my kind of my pre-performance or my pre-speaking routine. And then you have some things as kind of like, you know, this is just part of my daily ritual now does drinking water and exercises.
Kim Meninger
What I really like about what you're saying is that it is not like, before every meeting, I'm going to cram for, like I'm preparing for an exam. I'm going to study all night, and I'm going to work on not only the content of what I'm going to say, but I'm going to work on how I say it, and then it creates this very high-stress situation. And then for the rest of it, I'm not going to think about and we're going to do anything with it until that cycle happens again, right? Yeah, that, that this is something that you're doing. You're nurturing this over time.
Amanda Tobe
I like the word nurturing. I think that's an a really, really good word. Yeah. So it's like just nurturing that inner-child, that self-critic. It's adopting that growth mindset and committing to that across your entire life, especially as it pertains to self-competence at work. Because I do find that a number of people that it's not the same that everyone who has struggled with imposter syndrome with struggle with public speaking, but there certainly would be an overlap.
Kim Meninger
I will, I agree completely. I think sometimes when you struggle with impostor syndrome, and you feel like I don't belong in my role, I doubting my capabilities. The last thing you want is a spotlight. Let's say you want an audience of people who are listening to what you have to say.
Amanda Tobe
There's also like, I think a number of characteristics of people that sometimes would struggle with impostor syndrome. That's, again, this is not a blanket statement. But like, for example, I work with a number of type A individuals, high achievers, perfectionistic types, who can be so hard on themselves. So I think that part of it makes a lot of sense when we kind of look at their narrative and the core beliefs that they have. A lot of these people too are they tend to think that they need to overcompensate for their I guess their perceptions of not feeling like they are enough for knowing enough Have their self-doubts. So they also tend to overcompensate as they prepare for public speaking. And so when my other favorite areas that I really help people around is what are the other secondary goals that you have, besides just wanting to gain public speaking self-confidence. So what I mean by that is that oftentimes people who have the fear of public speaking will lose a lot of sleep, the night before a presentation, they will feel like it's all-consuming. Like they can't do other enjoyable activities like other leisure activities outside of work, like it's like, this is the only thing I should be doing for like two weeks, they kind of put themselves like in this a bit of like a punishment jail, like, all you're allowed to think of for three weeks leading up to it. Other examples would be that they are not as patient with their kids, not as present with their kids, it really is a challenge, when someone really has a fear of public speaking, I'm not talking about like a little bit of butterflies, like when someone has a fear of it, it really has the potential to impair their well-being on other levels, too. And so the other areas where I love to help people kind of give themselves back, like, kind of reclaim that that time again, because for another common example would be that, because I'm over preparing for this presentation. Now I'm behind in my other work. So as you can see this a lot of secondary examples and other secondary goals that someone could have, other than just wanting to improve their self-confidence other than just wanting to overcome or manage the fear. It's learning to also what, what does this goal mean to me? [Yeah, yeah.] It's kind of like two Atomic Habits. I love James Clear, and his work around habits, because one of the most important things to do when identifying any goal or habit is like knowing why, like, why is this important to me? What I want to gain out of this maybe besides the actual goal itself, like, why else is this important to me?
Kim Meninger
Yeah, and I think that one's really important, too, because of the number of should’s in our lives, right? So there are so many things that we think we should be doing. And that's not as motivating as understanding what we're sort of running towards in terms of the goal. So I think that's a really important piece to reflect on, too. Am I? Am I committing to this? Or is this a goal that I genuinely have? Or is this a goal that I feel like I should have?
Amanda Tobe
Right, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves. But like one place, for example, where to start. So I'm not the message, by the way isn't that we shouldn't be preparing for presentations, like, that's awesome. I just want the message here that people know when they have gone to the nth degree to over-prepare. So I usually will have them start with like handpicking, certain slides, maybe we start by picking three slides out of your presentation depends on obviously how long it is. But like, let's start with picking a certain amount of time that you're speaking and maybe we pick the middle portion. So we start to work towards what are some little can we give yourself some more flexibility, where are the opportunities for building self-trust in this. So I try to work with them to start to pick what are some of those places where you're willing to feel a bit more than more risk within the presentation or the meeting, or whatever it is that you have coming up, I'll also could be a wedding, it could also be a toast. There's many other places too, outside of the outside of the workplace where we're also engaging in public speaking, that are also anxiety-provoking for people too. But the point is, where are the opportunities for you to build a self-trust, because like, that's the difference between someone who's just kind of surface-level hacked this versus someone who's really tried to tackle this at a deep-seated level, is really when again, it's not just the person who's, as you said before Kim, showing up the night before trying to cram for this versus someone who's like committed to this daily nurturing as part of the as part of their life. And the action
Kim Meninger
And the action piece is so important to write because I when I listen to what you're saying, I'm also thinking about how many opportunities there are to practice along the way in lower-stakes settings. You know, there are a lot of people that I work with that are really intimidated by board meetings, or by meetings with people who are more senior than they are. And that's to be expected. But there's a lot of opportunity to play in that self-trust space that you're describing in meetings with your own peers or meetings in that are maybe just a little bit intimidating to you so that by the time you get to the board meeting, you've already integrated a lot of what we're talking about.
Amanda Tobe
Yeah, a couple of things on that, Kim. One is that it's always a good idea to know your situational triggers. So for example, as you kind of set it for someone, it could be like, Oh, this is a board meeting. So again, it's just it's so interesting to hear the stories we tell ourselves like being a board meeting versus a podcast, whatever it is. The second thing though, is just to construct what we call an exposure hierarchy and psychology. So Basically, if you picture a pyramid, at the base of the pyramid, you'd have the situations that are at least threatening, or at least anxiety-provoking, least intimidating for you. And then he basically construct his hierarchy. So where you rank order them and work your way up to the top of the pyramid, where he would have the situations that and intimidate and with gas, let's say, are the most anxiety-provoking and most challenging for you. And so I think you're just starting to outline that. And so one of the other things too, for anyone listening is just to get really creative with there are so many different places that we can create exposure moments for ourselves. So one being on LinkedIn, even if you were to post an article on LinkedIn. So Kim, I can tell you a lot of people are super nervous about sharing their opinions on LinkedIn. So for a lot of people, by the way, just the fear of public speaking is also just a fear of being seen. So you might be like, what is posting LinkedIn has to do with public speaking for a lot of people, it's just like this fear of being seen. And for a lot of people to the thing we have actually haven't talked about yet today is just that the fear of public speaking often comes from an unwillingness or a fear of feeling certain emotions. So the feeling embarrassment is the number one feeling that also unites a lot of the people with public speaking is that they really struggle with like, there are certain emotions for all of us that are really hard for every single person, right? And so, for people with the fear of public speaking, embarrassment is just one that's really hard for them. So that's why I've just mentioned but LinkedIn, but getting really creative with this is really important. So it could even mean posting Instagram story. I mean, anyone can really do that. It doesn't have to mean that you are necessarily in a workplace situation, you could host like little Eventbrite, where you teach your family, friends how to make a recipe, I don't know, it could be anything like that. And so I think that we just have to get really creative within start to look for opportunities where you can actually populate that hierarchy.
Kim Meninger
I love that. I love not limiting the practice to the workplace, because communication, like we're talking about happens everywhere. It's not just in the boardroom meeting.
Amanda Tobe
And I think a lot of is just from like, pupil, again, people's fear of like, you know, being seen, and what that means to people and that vulnerability.
Kim Meninger
Yeah, I think that's a really powerful way to describe it.
Amanda Tobe
And so that's something we actually talk a lot about. I also have a group Chem where I've designed an eight-week, program and group that is that is designed to help people fear less and speak more. And I say to all of them in week one, I remind them again in week eight, that you know, you wouldn't be here if you weren't ready to be seen. And I always tell them that like you weren't, you wouldn't be here. And you're ready for that. And that's why you're here. Wow.
Kim Meninger
Wow, this is such a powerful conversation. Amanda, I seriously could spend all morning with you. But you mentioned your group, I'd love for you to share how people can find you if they want to connect with you learn more about your work.
Amanda Tobe
Absolutely, yeah. So going to my website, which is Amanda tob.com. There is a Services tab there she has my individual work that I do with people, but also my group work. And so I do have a public speaking self-confidence group that I launched in January. I'm currently on my fourth group already. And it's a skills-based group where I help people learn to speak up more to learn to tackle that fear on a really deep-seated level. And I pull from many different schools of psychology, many different strategies and tools that I integrate over this eight-week period, there are breakout rooms. It's an amazing opportunity. It is it is limited to anterior residents only at this time, but there are a number of webinars that I will be offering in the future. And there's other ways for you to also engage with me and my work. So just feel free to reach out to me on Instagram, which is just at Dr. Dutton Amanda tob, or again, find me over my email on my website. And if you're interested in learning more about the group or even just checking out the blog. So the other thing too cameras, I put a lot of attention and energy into building blog posts, because I also believe that there should be a space, a DIY space for people. And so I want people to be able to have access to anything that I also share within my groups and in my one-to-one work so people can also feel free to check on my resources on my Instagram on my blog, and there's also a free workbook that's also available on my website.
Kim Meninger
That's wonderful. Thank you so much, Amanda. It's been such a pleasure talking with you today.
Amanda Tobe
Thank you so much, Kim for having me and for everyone who's listening.