Public Speaking with John Dawson

04/04/2025

Last week I had a conversation with a client who’s in senior management and deeply scared of public speaking. She told me her boss kept encouraging her by saying,
“Just practice, practice, practice—you’ll be fine. It worked for me, so it’ll work for you.”

But for her—and for many of my clients—that’s the wrong advice. So wrong.
And I get it. If exposure has worked for you, this might not make sense. But here’s the thing:
Lots of people just end up practising being scared—and get more fearful.
Another leader told me:
“John, I’ve been bleep… practising for 20 years and I’m still petrified.”
For many people, exposure alone doesn’t work. It’s not enough to keep doing the scary thing and hope it magically gets better.

What actually helps?
Practice only works when it’s combined with new skills and reframing.

We need to learn:
• how to feel comfortable being the centre of attention (that’s a big one for so many),
• how audiences listen very differently from a conversation (blank faces are normal!),
• how to slow down so we can get our thinking brain back—and so our audience can follow. We're building your idea in their heads, and that takes time.
• how to shift public speaking from a “performance” to something more like a chat.
And it’s incredibly hard to learn those things while giving a high-stakes presentation.

Add to that…
About 70% of us experience impostor syndrome—so while we speak, our inner voices whisper (or shout),
“You’re not ______ enough” (good / tall / intelligent / experienced / whatever-it-is enough).

And when we feel anxious, we often see that as a flaw—as something shameful we have to fight.
But fighting that feeling only creates MORE anxiety, not less. Anxiety is a normal standard human emotion, it's hard but it's not shameful. We need to learn skills to handle problematic thoughts and feelings so that we can step out of comfort zone and into life.

So what’s the real solution?
Strangely yes—practice, practice, practice.
But only when it’s grounded in new, new, new skills.

26/03/2025

Your ancestors were both warriors....... and worriers.
If your ancestors didn't fear things, they are not your ancestors. Those carefree ancestors got gobbled up for lunch a long time ago.

For most of the time in our evolution, survival has been the main thing. Our brain is shaped by that.
Your brain remembers negative things far stronger than positive things. And quicker too - .6 of a second for negative things but ten times longer for positive thoughts - a whole six seconds!
We have inherited this stone age brain from our ancestors. And it's made us wonky. We have big feelings because of them. My argument is there is nothing wrong with feeling anxious, there is nothing shameful about anxiety but it's hard and uncomfortable. Anxiety has to be tough as it's meant to get you to run away or fight that predator. And when we struggle not to have anxiety, we are really struggling with ourselves and that's a battle you really can't win. It's a battle that actually makes anxiety worse. We have to change our relationship to anxiety and fear. For a meaningful life we need to re-think anxiety and go towards discomfort. Life is on the other side of discomfort.

25/03/2025

When we go out of our comfort zone, by definition, what are we going to feel?
Uncomfortable!
When something matters to us, we are going to feel uncomfortable. But we think "I shouldn't be feeling this feeling, confident people don't feel anxious".
That's wrong, confident people do have uncomfortable feelings but they learn how to be with anxiety in a different way. That takes them towards life rather than avoiding it. And that's the real cost of not wanting anxiety is that it leads us to leading a smaller life where we won't feel uncomfortable. But that place doesn't exist. We need to change our relationship to anxiety...

11/02/2025

“Honestly, it’s easier to suffer than to try and solve all my problems...”

By Mattito humor

10/11/2024

01/10/2024

What’s your practice? Could you speak up more in a small meeting and be kind to yourself afterwards?
Confidence is about developing more trust in yourself. But you don’t get the feelings of confidence straight away. You need to practice actions of confidence before you build that trust in yourself.
I’ve been teaching public speaking for 24 years and every week I’m practicing confidence. Chatting to people I don’t know , handling difficult conversations, apologising and owning up when things go wrong (a lot of that!). But nowadays I’m a lot kinder to myself when I do make mistakes.

So maybe one action could be being kind to yourself as you practise confidence this week. What might you do?

10/05/2024

One course participant didn’t leave his job for eleven years because he was scared of giving a leaving speech. He never mentioned his fear to his girlfriend, and she left him because he wasn’t “ambitious enough.”

Another guy on a course moved countries nine times so he was never good enough at the language to do presentations. Imagine how much of a hassle that would be JUST to avoid doing presentations.

A woman on a course walked out of a senior executive role in a huge organization while she was giving a presentation. She didn’t return to a management role for over two years.

And a retired ex-nuclear submarine captain (think how trained he would be) said, “I had enough missiles on board to destroy half of Russia, but I really hated using the tannoy.”

Lots of confident people really don’t understand how strong the fear is and how much suffering is going on at work. As you’ve seen above, the fear can be life-changing. But by its very nature, public speaking fear is quiet; it’s not obvious.
Even with people you think should be naturally good at public speaking:
“I have always suffered with poor self-confidence despite a seemingly confident exterior. It has held me back at many points in my life.”
— Olly

It’s really not just the speaking either; a lot of the time people hate being the centre of attention. They feel exposed, vulnerable, and under scrutiny.
“When all eyes or even ears (group calls) are focused on me, I seem to freeze.”
— Louise

Over 24 years, I’ve worked with thousands of people saying similar things. But over the last two years, I’ve STOPPED doing in-house work for companies, which at first sight may seem counterintuitive.

I noticed that In-house courses were never as deep-reaching or life-changing as my other courses (based on feedback from participants).
I realized that people were holding back on in-house courses because they didn’t want to talk about shame, anxiety, fear, blushing, and impostor syndrome with their colleagues. They didn't feel safe. Would you?

I'd love to hear your take on this.

30/04/2024

Most advice about Public Speaking is about how to stand, or breathe, or rehearse in the room beforehand, or somehow we are told just "be yourself".
What’s missing is the underlying, foundational skills that every speaker needs. I've been working with people who are anxious about public speaking for over 20 years.

Here are some of my foundational skills of public speaking:
Can I be okay being the centre of attention? Can I see being the centre of attention as just part of what I have to do when I speak and NOT as a threat? If not, it's going to be really difficult to do any public speaking.

Can I get used to blank faces in the audience? Audiences are passive listeners, they are not conversational listeners They don't nod very much or smile. This is normal, but lots of speakers can get freaked by blank faces. Even when they give blank faces themselves when they are in the audience. We just do it naturally...

Can I change my relationship with Anxiety? Most people are struggling with uncomfortable feelings, not wanting them, or hating those feelings. When we step out of our comfort zone, we are going to feel uncomfortable. It's normal. You are not broken. We need to learn how to be with uncomfortable feelings in a different way.

Can I change my relationship with my brain and myself? One of the key things I have learned through working with 8000 people is just how much we get in our own way. It's mostly US stopping US. We believe our own thoughts to be real, we are also very unkind to ourselves. Learning to let go of thoughts and be more supportive to ourselves are key to changing how we feel about public speaking.

Can I have a different definition of "confidence"? The way that confidence is portrayed in society is often unhelpful. Confidence is seen as floating through life with no uncomfortable feelings at all, fearlessly tackling everything in our way. It's an impossible, beyond-reality definition. A far better version is to think of Confidence a a practice, trusting yourself to do what's important to you despite feeling uncomfortable.

These are part of a set of skills we all need, not just for public speaking, but for living and communicating well. And anyone, however shy or anxious can learn them.

22/04/2024

Why did I say yes! Dame Judi Dench and stage fright observed by Hugh Jackman. She had doubts but still did it! Confidence isn’t the absence of fear… it’s trusting that you can move your feet and do what you have to do, even if it’s uncomfortable.

22/04/2024

I hate public speaking advice*
Here is mine!

Public speaking is NOT about …
how you stand,
or gesture,
or perform,
or where to put your hands…
or how many um’s you have in your speech,
or never having uncomfortable feelings,
or being the superhero version of you,
or NOT making mistakes,
or what you THINK other people are thinking about you,
or being perfect,
or imagining that naked audience!

And it’s not just all about breathing better...

Public speaking is really about...

Getting out of your own way,
Letting your authentic self be seen,
Changing what it means to be the centre of attention,

Learning to handle your wonky human-ness (re-thinking uncomfortable feelings and problematic thoughts),

Allowing yourself space to breathe, slow down, pause and be present,

Putting way less pressure on yourself, (stop trying to be impressive)
Getting more skilled with your anxious mind so it doesn’t push you around and catastrophise all down your shirt

Making mistakes, and recovering from them well,
Changing how you see audiences so it’s not all about threat or judgement,

Being kinder to yourself, encouraging yourself rather than punishing,
Focusing on something that really matters to you and helps the audience,
Seeing it as a chat rather than a performance.

There now, I've said it! Some people may disagree...

*Why do I hate public speaking advice.
A lot of time the advice that is given makes things worse. The most common advice is “Practice, Practice, Practice” but unless you are practising new skills that will help your confidence, you could be just practising being more and more scared. People have said to me “John, I have been practising for 14 years and I still feel scared and I still feel rubbish”.

Call now to connect with business.

21/04/2024

This week was a rather special week for feedback, I got thank yous from…

• a man who just spoke at his father’s funeral, saying without doing the course a year ago, he wouldn’t have done that. He was also made redundant and found a new job this year.

• a doctor who ran her course to help sick children in new ways. She was able to run it with confidence for the first time. That brought tears to my eyes!

• a lecturer who lectured without using beta blockers and without the distressing levels of anxiety they used to have

• a woman who dared to start conversations with strangers and as a result had several amazing exchanges as she travelled to the States

• a woman whose course feedback brought tears again: “I can’t thank you enough for the shift in mindset you have triggered. I’ve been in a very dark place for far too long and I feel I’ve been given permission to shine.”

Learning to get out of your own way, learning to handle problematic thoughts and feelings differently , trusting yourself more to be the centre of attention, allowing yourself to take your space are NOT just a public speaking skills, these are skills for living life more fully....

06/03/2024

When you leave your comfort zone, what are you by definition? Uncomfortable.
We don't like to be uncomfortable, courage is uncomfortable and often hard work, so if we want to stand up for others, or stand up for ourselves, we are going to have difficult feelings.
I love the definition of courage in my Chambers dictionary which I only recently re-found "Courage: the QUALITY that enables people to meet danger without giving away to fear".
It doesn't say we ain't going to have fear. It says without GIVING away to fear.

We've got fear but learning NOT to give away to fear needs a quality. I think the quality here means a series of re-thinks, re-frames, new skills with ourselves about how we are with discomfort. Are we willing to have those feelings in service of speaking up? Are we aware enough of what is deeply important to us, what we value in life so that we have that QUALITY to meet danger/discomfort? And still move our feet towards what we value?
The courage...
to say I love you first in a relationship • to have that deeply difficult conversation with someone close about death • To stand up to racists. • To ring for your health results. • to leave a job that is toxic
Courage is one of the key skills that will lead us to a more authentic, move value-led life.
Courage for me last year was a conversation over weeks with my 93 year old Auntie about her dying and what is it going to be like and Yes she has reached the end of the road. Going towards that difficult conversation was one of the most rewarding connections of my life. Thank you courage!
What does courage look like to you?