Eight Ways to Be More Like Jessie

Here are eight things that my daughter Jessie did to become confident in her ability to play the role of Nancy in the musical Oliver! They are totally transferable to the business world—so I dare you...have a go at doing them and see what happens. I think you will see confidence rise in unexpected ways.

1. Print it out.

Jessie has been learning her lines from a script—printed pieces of paper stapled together. It has travelled everywhere with her and has become more and more battered as time has gone on. The best way we learn is by speaking out loud our lines, and the best way to do that is by printing out those lines and carrying them around with us.

You may not have a script. You may have points that you know you need to hit on each slide. I call these anchor points. Print those points out. If you keep them on the screen when you are rehearsing then you risk being distracted by open tabs, notifications, emails and the pull of social media.

But you can’t open a tab with a piece of paper. You have to focus on one thing. Cal Newport calls this ‘deep work’, some call it going back to the 1990s—but either way, this is how you begin to nail knowing your presentation.

2. Find your space.

Every morning, if it was sunny Jessie would sit on the egg chair in our garden, or if not she would sit at her chair around our dining table. Once she sat down she had found her space and I could see the concentration on her face. Then she got out her lines and went over them.

It isn’t monastery-type silence in our house—we have a dog, a loud Dad, loud son and quite loud Mum for Jessie to contend with, but none of that mattered when she was in her space. Because she was able zone in.

Where is your space? Your favourite chair? A spot by the window? The toilet seat? Find it, and use it to zone in to learning your lines.

3. Speak out the first five lines of your presentation, line by line.

Jessie learned by going over her Nancy speeches line by line and speaking them out loud. When she had repeated it five times it had sunk into her brain.

I never told her to do this—I didn’t give her any of the techniques I had learnt at drama school. But she just knew this was how she had to do it. Hard work and engaging the brain. She is right. This is the way!

4. Now do it faster.

You don’t play a part on your own. You are surrounded by cues, by distractions, by other people. Anything can throw you off, so learning your lines is much more than knowing what to say. It is about embedding them into you, so when the time comes and the pressure is on, they just come out of you.

The way Jessie made them to be intuitive was to speak them faster than she wanted to. Speaking faster forces you to realise the words, phrases and lines you don’t know. It is deeply unpleasant and frustrating, but so important. It is better to realise the weak spots in rehearsal and not in the actual moment of performance or presentation.

Now do it in a French accent (if you are French, do it in an American accent).

Learning your presentation is a serious endeavour but it doesn’t mean you can’t have fun. In fact, having fun and being playful is exactly what’s needed to make you excellent.

One morning, when there was a line Jessie was really struggling with, I knew I needed to get playful. As she kept stumbling over the same words I knew her brain was getting used to this stumble. This is dangerous—our brains love to latch onto a bad habit. So I said to her, ‘Jessie, say it in a French accent.’ Immediately, as she spoke in her bast Parisian voice the words came to life and she brought a lot more joy and meaning to the words—all because she was able to play! And her brain thanked her by not stumbling any more.

6. Rap it.

Everyone likes a well-paced presentation with energy. Rhythm is very important when we speak words. So the best way to find the rhythm is to pretend you are a rapper and to literally rap the lines to a beat. There is always a beat. And if you can find the beat you can actually find the pace of the presentation.

After Jessie had presented in a French accent she then started rapping her lines. And it was so powerful. Her body started to respond to her words. And 55% of what we present is our body language. 

7. Breathe.

Our bodies do weird things when we feel under pressure. Whenever we present, we always feel under pressure. This morning Jessie came downstairs with butterflies in her stomach—I could tell she was tense and nervous and struggling to eat. So I reminded her of what was happening to her  body: she wasn’t ill, this is just part of the process.

Step one is to notice what is going on and not beat yourself up. Step two is to breathe—and you can do this by watching my video on breathing in The Confident Communicator Blueprint. I highly encourage you to do this. It makes all the difference just before you speak. It’s free to watch, but you need to want to watch it. So click on the link and let’s get you breathing well.

8. Now do it.

All of this is ultimately for the moment when you actually do it—speaking in front of an audience. You have prepared, you have learnt your lines, you have (hopefully) spoken in a French accent, rapped it, danced it, breathed...now as you speak remember that you know this. Allow the energy to flow as you speak, because it is ready to flow. Keep smiling, keep breathing. Remember: you know your lines, you know what you want to say. Even when adrenaline kicks in and tries to throw you off, you can breathe and that breath will be the moment where your memory kicks in and grounds you.

Jessie will be doing this tonight and I might be weeping as she does it. And it won’t matter if she gets a line wrong. What matters will be how she confidently picks herself up from that moment and keeps going.

It’s exactly the same for you. Go for it!