Caroline Goyder | 2025 ABOUT (CAROLINE’S STORY)

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Caroline’s Story:

A Story Your Audience Can Relate To

For many years I had pretty much no confidence or gravitas when it came to speaking up when the pressure hit.

This wasn’t simply because I was - and still am - an introvert.

It was because talking in any kind of formal, workplace or high-stakes situation drew too much of the spotlight on me – and that made me physically tense and nervous. The worst thing was that it showed. I was once told that even in normal conversational situations I had no presence and my voice was thin and lacked power. I felt so stuck and frustrated as I watched other people around me, who had seemingly effortless confidence and presence. When they spoke others listened. I wondered if I could ever find that.

Maybe I just didn’t have it in me? But there was a part of me that wanted to see if I could find my own gravitas and presence.

I sought out the teachers who could help me find my confidence. They showed me that it was possible to change. That there were simple tools for quickly settling my nerves and finding my calm, confidence and authority. And most importantly everything I needed was already within me. It was a revelation and frankly a huge relief. I’ve wanted everyone else to know that secret ever since – it’s why I do what I do.

I made these tools mine and when I did a magic started to happen. I began to find the presence, gravitas and ease within me.

I found an inner gravitas that meant that when I spoke people listened. I started to feel more confident as a speaker in front of audiences. It enabled me to say ‘yes’ to speaking at big events - and it changed my work and my life.

I got curious about what more there was to know – you could call this my life’s work…I spent the next year or so interviewing 40 A-list actors about confidence- from Helen Mirren to Sarah Jessica Parker to Kate Winslet to Ewan McGregor – it turned out they were all just as nervous as the rest of us.

As a coach I started to work with politicians, business leaders exploring everything that existed in the field of turning anxious, reluctant communicators into relaxed, eager ones.

“Caroline Goyder a voice specialist, whose TED talk on overcoming stage paralysis has had many millions of views”

FINANCIAL TIMES

It all started to coalesce into a system. I started to see the patterns, the processes that worked over and over again for me and for my clients.

And I turned everything I learned into a succinct but very powerful set of routines and tactics that allow anyone to do exactly what I did: cast aside nerves and worst-case-scenario thinking and actually get to enjoy – in just about any circumstances imaginable – the act of discussion, presenting, interviewing and speaking. I turned my knowledge into three books, and Gravitas and Find Your Voice, published by Penguin Random House globally have become perennial best-sellers. Then I tested the system under extreme pressure…The height of all this was, of course, my TedxTalk about – talking (no pressure!). It’s currently been viewed well over 11 million times.

Today the tools that got me from nervous and unsure to confident and effective are used by senior people from household-name companies across the world

Exactly as I did, they’ve transformed their own communication capabilities and so raised their profiles and reputation in their workplace – and, often, in their social and private lives too.
If you’ve any doubts or concerns about your speaking under pressure – please rest assured: you’re not broken!
Speaking – in any circumstances – is a very learnable skill and thousands of people just like you have changed – profoundly and forever – the way they show up in any kind of high-stakes moment.