In 2022, I delivered a 45-minute talk at the Develop Conference to a room full of game developers, during which I had a very real crisis of confidence.
Let me set the scene: an hour and a half earlier, I walked to the venue, the Metropole hotel in Brighton. It was a hot day (Develop usually happens in July) and I was wearing some smart clothes: a short-sleeved shirt, which was fine, but the black jeans… they weren’t helping at all. Adding to my temperature issue were my nerves. The sunshine was also heating me gently, as was any physical movement. Bonus fact: this particular year, the hotel’s air-conditioning had failed.
I entered the hotel and went straight to the room where the talk was to take place. I’d scoped it out the day before (I checked the tech, introduced myself to the AV person, walked around the stage a bit), but at this moment the room was being used for another session, so I couldn’t set up my laptop until a few minutes before I needed to start. My heart was racing and I couldn’t cool down.
Then it was my turn. The room was full (perhaps 120 people). I got up onstage and started. The tech worked and my voice didn’t fail. So far, so good.
Then, ten minutes in, something completely unexpected happened: the room was completely silent. No nodding, laughter, or any visible reaction at all. This wasn’t something I had considered might happen. And my brain freaked out: it said irrational things like:
‘This is boring.’
‘They already know this stuff.’
‘You’re wasting everyone’s time.’
But the objective view (which I gained afterwards)?
It was FINE. They were just listening; no one was on their phone, or leaving, or whispering to the person next to them.
You see, without feedback, your mind can fill the gap with stories (usually bad ones). To someone like me who rather likes the reassurance (and who has a lot of stand-up comedy experience, where silence is generally bad), this particular silence felt like a loss of control, a sinister judgement.
So I asked a question about the next point. And thank goodness! Hands went up, people answered, energy shifted, and suddenly it was obvious: they hadn’t disengaged, they were simply thinking and processing – the exact thing I’d wanted. The ‘problem’ had been completely internal. I then improvised a little, there were laughs, and I was back in my element.
We’re addicted to social cues when we speak: nods, smiles, murmurs of agreement, little signals that say ‘you’re doing fine, please continue existing’. But audiences don’t owe us that; silence isn’t always disapproval; sometimes it’s genuine focus, or respect, or… it’s the speaker having a momentary existential crisis. Most of the time, the moment you think you’ve lost the room, that’s when they’re paying you the most attention, because they’re enjoying what you’re doing.
Speaking confidence isn’t about learning how to fill the silence; it’s about learning not to panic when the silence happens.