5 Confidence Building Exercises from a Leadership Communication Coach
These confidence building exercises address what actually undermines confidence—status anxiety, scattered attention, and nervous system activation. No power poses or affirmations. Just practical tools from a leadership communications pro that work when you need them most.
Public Speaking Coach Lee Bonvissuto
You want to build confidence. But most confidence building exercises feel performative or forced. "Power poses" and affirmations don't address what's actually happening when your confidence disappears in high-stakes moments.
I've spent over a decade working with empathetic leaders who are confident in their expertise but lose that confidence around authority figures, in public speaking situations, or when they need to advocate for themselves.
Here are five confidence building exercises that actually work—no awkward poses required.
Why Traditional Confidence Exercises Don't Work
Most confidence building advice treats confidence as something you need to manufacture. Stand tall. Speak loudly. Fake it till you make it.
But that's performance. And performance is exhausting.
Here's what actually happens: You're confident when you're comfortable. The challenge isn't building confidence from scratch—it's accessing the confidence you already have in situations where status anxiety shows up.
These exercises focus on empathetic presence: accessing the confidence you already have, not performing confidence you don't feel. On staying present when your nervous system wants to shut down. On trusting your expertise even when power dynamics make you want to defer. On grounding yourself in your body instead of getting lost in anxious thoughts.
Exercise 1: The Grounded Bubble
What it is: A body-based anchoring technique from the Empathetic Presence framework that gets you out of your head and into your body.
How to do it:
Feel your feet on the floor or your back on the chair. Notice the pressure, the contact, the temperature.
Take one full exhale. Don't worry about the inhale—just let it happen naturally.
Notice one focal point. Pick one person or one object and really see it.
Why it works: When anxiety shows up, your attention scatters. You're thinking about what you should say, how you're coming across, what might go wrong. This exercise consolidates your focus in the present moment.
This isn't about calming down—it's about getting out of your head (where anxiety lives) and into your body (where confidence lives). It's presence, not perfection.
When you anchor your attention in your body instead of your anxious thoughts, your natural confidence becomes accessible.
When to use it: Before presentations, walking into difficult meetings, when you feel yourself starting to spiral in preparation, before speaking up in high-stakes situations.
This takes 10 seconds. You can do it anywhere, and no one will know you're doing it.
Exercise 2: The Concise Clarity Challenge
What it is: Practice responding to questions more concisely, using the Golden Nugget framework.
How to do it:
Have someone ask you questions about your work or expertise.
Create space to choose the most important thing you want the audience to know. Start with your conclusion, not your thinking process and see how that changes your response.
Stop talking even if it feels incomplete.
Why it works: Rambling erodes confidence. When you say too much, you signal to yourself and others that you're not sure what matters most.
This exercise trains you to trust that less is enough. To lead with your conclusion instead of over-explaining. That builds authentic confidence because you're practicing trusting your expertise.
It also trains you to identify your Zone of Expertise—what you uniquely know that matters. When you can articulate that concisely, you stop deferring to authority even though you have the knowledge.
When to use it: Practice this with a colleague or friend before high-stakes meetings with executives or presentations where you tend to over-explain.
Start with comfortable topics where you have clear expertise. Then gradually practice with more challenging subjects. The muscle you're building is trusting that your initial thought is enough.
Exercise 3: The Status Anxiety Audit
What it is: Identifying the specific situations where your confidence disappears.
How to do it:
Make two lists: Situations where you feel confident speaking, and situations where you don't.
For each situation where you lose confidence, identify what's different. Who's in the room? What's at stake? What power dynamics exist?
Notice the pattern. Is it authority figures? Dominant personalities? High-visibility moments? Being evaluated?
Why it works: You can't build confidence in a vacuum. You need to understand what triggers your loss of confidence.
When you see the pattern—that you're confident with your team but not with executives, or confident one-on-one but not in groups—you stop thinking something is globally wrong with you. You recognize that this is situational. And situational problems have situational solutions.
This is understanding that you're not broken. The rooms are broken. You defer to authority even though you have expertise because the system rewards dominance, even when depth matters more.
When to use it: Do this exercise once to gain clarity. Then refer back to it when you're preparing for challenging situations. Knowing your pattern helps you prepare the right tools.
Exercise 4: The Redirect Practice
What it is: Training yourself to shift attention from performance to impact—using empathy as a focusing tool.
How to do it:
Notice when you start thinking about how you're coming across: "Do I sound nervous? Are they judging me? Am I doing this right?"
Actively redirect your attention to your audience: "What do they need to understand? What matters most here? What value am I providing?"
Practice this redirect repeatedly—it's a muscle you're building.
Why it works: Confidence erodes when you're self-monitoring. When you're split between your content and your anxiety about the content, you can't fully access your expertise.
This exercise trains you to leverage your empathy as a focusing tool instead of a distraction. Every time you redirect from yourself to your audience, you're building the neural pathway that lets you do this automatically in high-pressure moments.
This is the core of empathetic presence: using your empathy to center your impact instead of your performance.
When to use it: Practice during lower-stakes conversations first. Notice your self-monitoring thoughts without judgment, then gently redirect to the other person.
Then apply it in meetings, presentations, and difficult conversations. The more you practice the redirect, the more automatic it becomes.
Exercise 5: The Imperfect Speaking Practice
What it is: Deliberately speaking without full preparation to build tolerance for uncertainty and imperfection.
How to do it:
Identify a lower-stakes opportunity to speak—a team meeting, a conversation with a peer, a practice session with a friend.
Prepare less than you normally would. Know your key points (your Zone of Expertise) but don't script it.
Speak anyway, even if it's messy. Even if you lose your train of thought or need to pause to think.
Notice that you survived. That imperfection didn't destroy your credibility.
Why it works: Over-preparation reinforces the belief that you're not ready. That you need to work harder to be good enough. That you can't trust yourself without a script.
This is the difference between scaffolding and scripting. Scaffolding gives you structure (key points, your Zone of Expertise, your objective) while allowing flexibility. Scripting locks you in and falls apart when something unexpected happens.
This exercise builds confidence in your ability to think on your feet. To recover when you stumble. To trust that you can handle the unexpected. That's real confidence—not eliminating mistakes, but trusting you can navigate imperfection.
When to use it: Start with genuinely low-stakes situations where mistakes won't have serious consequences. Practice in team meetings before trying it with executives. Build up gradually to higher-stakes contexts.
The goal is to create evidence that you can handle speaking imperfectly. Each time you do this and survive, you're building authentic confidence.
What These Exercises Actually Build
These aren't exercises in pretending to be confident. They're exercises in empathetic presence—staying grounded in yourself even when discomfort shows up.
They help you:
EMBODY your confidence by getting into your body instead of your anxious head (Grounded Bubble)
LEVERAGE your empathy as a focusing tool instead of a distraction (Redirect Practice)
OWN your expertise by trusting what you know and articulating it concisely (Concise Clarity, Zone of Expertise)
That's the difference between authentic confidence and performed confidence.
Authentic confidence doesn't mean never feeling nervous. It means having tools to stay grounded when nervousness shows up. It means trusting that you can speak effectively even when your heart is racing. It means knowing that the anxiety is situational and systemic, not a personal failing.
How to Practice These Exercises
You don't need to do all five at once. Start with the one that addresses your specific challenge:
If you lose confidence in the moment: Practice Exercise 1 (The Grounded Bubble)
If you ramble or over-explain: Practice Exercise 2 (Concise Clarity Challenge)
If you're not sure when confidence disappears: Do Exercise 3 (Status Anxiety Audit)
If you obsess about perception: Practice Exercise 4 (The Redirect)
If you over-prepare everything: Try Exercise 5 (Imperfect Speaking Practice)
Build the muscle gradually. These are practices, not one-time fixes. The more you use them, the more automatic they become.
And here's what the data shows: 94.3% of leaders who practice these tools report improved confidence with PresentVoices. Not because they became different people, but because they stopped performing and started practicing presence.
Confidence Is Not About Fixing Yourself
Here's what I need you to understand: You don't lack confidence because something is wrong with you.
You're confident in your expertise. You're confident when you're comfortable. The challenge is accessing that confidence in situations where power dynamics, status anxiety, or high stakes make you shrink.
These confidence building exercises don't ask you to become someone else. They give you tools to be more of yourself—even in situations designed to make your voice feel small.
That's what authentic confidence looks like. Not performing strength you don't feel. But staying present and grounded even when it's hard.
And that's something you can build. Not through affirmations or power poses, but through practices that address what's actually happening in your body and your nervous system when confidence disappears.
One redirect at a time. One grounding practice at a time. One imperfect speaking opportunity at a time.
That's how you build confidence that lasts. Not by pretending you're not nervous, but by refusing to let nervousness silence you.
This is empathetic presence: being fully yourself, fully present, without performing either confidence or certainty.
Practice, not perfection. Presence, not performance.
Ready to Stop Performing and Start Speaking?
If you're tired of over-preparing, second-guessing yourself, and losing your voice when it matters most—there's a better way.
I've spent over a decade helping empathetic leaders develop what I call Empathetic Presence: the ability to access your natural confidence even when status anxiety shows up.
It's built on three pillars:
EMBODY Your Confidence → Get out of your head and into your body
LEVERAGE Your Empathy → Use empathy as a focusing tool, not a distraction
OWN Your Expertise → Articulate your unique perspective clearly
This isn't about perfecting your voice. It's about liberating it.
Because the work isn't about becoming someone else. It's about being more fully yourself.
Practice, not perfection. Presence, not performance.
