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.

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.

You read 23 Ways To Feel In Control On Zoom – now here’s 26 more Zoom ‘light bulb’ moments. Hopefully they’ll support you to feel more confident and in control of your calls.

“It was thrilling to improvise with people in Nigeria and India in the same session. To open up creativity across borders with V.I. people on continents we haven’t engaged with before was awesome.”

Presentations are tricky and there’s no magic pill. Storms are inevitable. Get comfortable with failure: the process is part of the process. Embrace it!

Give a team space to think imaginatively and they’ll be stronger, braver, more creative and more resilient.

Since V.U.C.A. represents what we need to manage in our businesses or our lives, I created a new V.U.C.A. with definitions that make me react positively (or in improv terms, cause me to “Yes, And!”) from the outset.