About this episode

Susan Callender discusses the importance of social confidence in professional settings and how it differentiates high-performing individuals from those with mere credentials.

You've earned the seat at the table. So why does the room still feel like it belongs to someone else? In this episode, Susan Callender breaks down the skill that separates the people who get remembered, promoted, and trusted from the people who simply have the credentials to deserve it: social confidence. Susan opens by naming the real difference between confidence and social confidence, a distinction that most high-performing, highly analytical professionals in STEM, finance, and biotech have never had explained to them. Confidence lives in a specific skill you've drilled a thousand times. Social confidence lives in your belief that you can handle whatever emotion shows up in the room, whether that's silence after a comment, a joke that doesn't land, or a question you can't fully answer. Susan walks through why this belief, and not any particular talent for small talk, is what actually reads as executive presence. From there, the episode moves into the research behind the feeling: how posture and physical presence shape the way you walk into a high-stakes moment, why reframing anxiety as excitement changes performance in pitches and presentations, and why the fear of being…

People in this episode

Host: Susan Callender

Topics covered

• social confidence
• executive presence
• communication skills
• high-stakes moments
• anxiety management
• professional development

Keywords

• social skills
• confidence
• communication
• executive presence
• professional growth
• anxiety
• STEM
• finance
• biotech

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