How to feel more confident in meetings: the science tells us to use both facts and emotion

Feeling nervous about an upcoming interview or meeting? Asking yourself this one question can help you change your approach and build confidence:

How do you want the other people to FEEL when they come out of a wildly successful meeting?

Ever thrown every fact in the book at someone, but failed to budge them? Or conversely, how often have you sat firm in an opinion despite the best efforts of someone to convince you that you were wrong? It happens when people use facts to try and persuade – when emotions work much more convincingly.

More and more, we’re understanding that emotions play a central role in decision making. Neuroscientist Antonio Demasio discovered that people who injured the part of their brain governing emotion were left otherwise intellectually intact - but unable to make decisions. He has shown that emotions and thinking are intertwined - often unconsciously.

It’s not that facts are unimportant – they’re very important. It’s just that we’ve tended to give them all the weight and ignore emotions. When you get that equation back into balance by restoring the role of emotions you’re going to be much more effective.

I often coach clients who have an important meeting coming up – such as a job interview, performance review or a presentation to key people. My clients are smart and they’re definitely prepared – they’ve got their facts straight, they’ve done their homework. So if they’re still feeling a lack of confidence, that’s when I often ask them to consider how they want the other people to feel when they come out of the meeting.

If it’s a job interview, the answer might be “confident”, “relieved”, “excited” and “secure”. Those people have to take a gamble when they decide who to hire. Yes, you need to show them that you can do the job (facts) – but if they come out of the room feeling even a tiny bit doubtful, on-edge, bored or worried, they ain’t hiring you.

Your job, then, is to do what you can to put those people in the right state. Think about what would make you, if you were in their shoes, feel those things.

This will help you gain confidence. Thinking about how you can make the others feel good tends to reverse your perception of the hierarchy in the room. This helps with nerves. Instead of thinking of them as powerful superiors looking for your flaws and shortcomings, you are now thinking of them as what they are – human beings with emotional needs that you can meet. You're then naturally more able to share your ideas in a way they will be able to hear.

Take that awareness and intention into the meeting with you, speak to it, and notice what happens. Likely, your body language will present more confidently and you will find yourself naturally making more eye contact and speaking with a clearer, stronger voice without having to work at doing that in a jarring, “techniquey” way. In my experience, consciously following this process makes a huge difference to the energy and success of interactions with other people.

What about you? How do you prepare for those important meetings?

Take care of yourself and others,

Madeleine

PS This is another updated version of a post I wrote in 2010. Since then, the science of emotion in decision making has really developed into the mainstream – and yet, I still see many people grappling with trying to remain totally fact-based. We need both.

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