You’ve doubtless heard of – and hopefully practise! – DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion). But have you heard of DEIB?

Can we train for confidence, or do naturally confident people arrive naturally at these jobs? Luckily, it’s proven that we can.

Confidence is the art of being comfortable with uncertainty. Sounds oxymoronic, right? Confidence is acting strong and making a choice, surely.

So I’m asking myself, what’s brought about this change? And as I got into it, I realised that I wanted to formulate a path towards confidence for you, too, and make a list of tips and hints. Cue an appropriate challenge: to post a Confidence Trick per day on LinkedIn (Follow at www.linkedin.com/company/the-offer-bank/ . Search #TheOfferBankConfidenceTricks for all 30 posts.

When I'm coaching people to greater confidence when speaking in public or in groups, they always ask me how they can be 'fast-tracked'. "What's the secret?" they say. What they really mean is: "How do I get to achieve this immediately without any feeling of discomfort?" This scary, brain-frying headspace – known in psychological terms as 'conscious incompetence' – is there for a reason: so that you can be creative, learn your craft, practice a heap of strategies... and become satisfyingly resilient along the way.

With luck (and not too much self-justification or defensiveness), the right balance of control and confidence means you'll swerve a debilitating mish-mash of controlling behaviour, bravado, bullsh*t and avoidance.

Today, please, put yourself first. Take up space. Be difficult. Be loud. No-one’s going to do it for you. Stop trying to make everything work for everyone around you and just please yourself!