Susan DrummCEO Advisor & Executive Coach | Leadership Change Agent

Struggle With Public Speaking? This Is the Trick

18 Sept 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:50

Susan Drumm shares a technique from her acting training at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art: shift your focus from your internal critic to the audience. The mantra is simple: when in doubt, focus out. It works because it stops you from thinking about yourself and points you toward what the audience actually needs.

Chapters

When in doubt, focus out. Public speaking is a confidence shaking experience for a lot of people. Now, there are many ways to communicate confidence as an executive, but let's talk about how to showcase your confidence in conferences, meetings or presentation situations, as that's where the lack of confidence is most on display. Here's the trick. Move your attention away from your inner critic. You know that voice inside your head and towards connecting with your audience. This was one of the best things I learned from my postgraduate degree in acting from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Rather than obsessing about how you look standing in front of people or the typo on that slide, focus on what you think they need or how this information will shift their thinking to help you remember this in moments of stress. When in doubt, focus out.