Art Of Great Speaking

Many people express fear of public speaking – which is quite a large category of fear when you think about everything that might be considered public speaking. But is it really “speaking” that they fear, or is it something else? What people are really afraid of may be something much more personal:

* Fear of being judged
* Fear of not being liked
* Fear of being boring and not having anything worthwhile to say
* Fear of being exposed as an imposter – as someone who isn’t really an expert
* Fear of losing one’s place during the talk
* Fear of making mistakes
* Discomfort with being the center of attention

Public speaking is perceived as a venue for scrutiny, and much of what people really fear is that their flaws will be revealed. Is your biggest fear on this list?

Now ask yourself these questions: How many of the fears on the list are based on reality for you – that is, you absolutely know that they will happen? How many of them have happened to you before? Which fears might you be able to decrease or lose entirely – with preparation, practice and letting go of rigid expectations of perfection?

Today’s pointers are not about you. They’re about your audience. Today’s pointers are also about reframing, or training your brain to perceive the situation of public speaking in a different way.

Pointer #1: People want you to succeed

The audience is not sitting there hoping you’ll fall on your face. The audience doesn’t care if you mess up. Even if you make a mistake, everyone can relate. We’ve all been there, and we’re all human.

It’s actually much easier to relate to a speaker who is human and imperfect than it is to relate to an overly polished, overly slick speaker. Put yourself in the audience’s shoes for a moment. You’ve been on the other side many times – did you ever want the speaker to fail? Of course not!

People want to connect with the speaker, have a relationship with the speaker, whether they are conscious of this or not. Your job, as the speaker, is to build that rapport with the audience. The more you connect on an emotional level, the better the audience relates to you.

Before the event, while you’re visualizing your successful presentation (you do visualize your successful presentation, don’t you?), say to yourself, “People want me to succeed.“

Pointer #2: People want to learn from you

They have come because they are expecting to learn something new or hear something interesting from you. They know you are the expert. They don’t know how nervous you are; they don’t know that you feel insecure. They expect you to know what you’re talking about. And guess what – you do!

Think of yourself as a teacher. You are there to convey information that your audience needs and wants. Nobody can deliver this particular information the way you can. Your content, style, and delivery are all unique and special to you. Take pride in your ability to pass along this valuable information to your audience.

Remember this phrase: “What’s in it for them?” If you put the needs of the audience above your own concerns about how you’re being perceived, you will find great satisfaction in meeting those needs and your fears will become secondary.

Before the event, while you’re visualizing your successful presentation, say to yourself, “I have valuable information to share and I know my stuff.“

Pointer #3: You can’t always tell what your audience is thinking

Have you ever looked out into the room where you’re speaking and noticed someone sending e-mails from his handheld device?

You’re rarely going to have the full attention of everyone in the room when you give a presentation. People have too many other things on their minds, and that’s just a reality that all speakers face.

You might be the most intelligent, engaging and humorous speaker they’ve ever heard, but someone in the room will not be paying attention. Are you going to focus on the one person who appears to be nodding off, or the 47 people who are smiling and enthralled?

Something else to keep in mind: not everyone expresses her/himself in the same way. We all know this rationally, yet we still feel uncomfortable and anxious when we spot someone who appears to be bored or distracted.

A participant may process your words better while doing something else, like reading e-mails, playing a game, or doodling. Some people hear better when they’re not distracted by visuals, so those people may not be making eye contact with you or looking at your materials. They may be paying attention to everything you say, but in a way that’s not familiar to you. You may even be surprised when one of these audience members comes to you at the end and tells you how much they enjoyed your presentation!

Now, if half of your audience appears to be nodding off or scrunching up their faces in confusion, there may be some basis for shifting gears a little. Do pay attention to your audience throughout your talk, and make an effort to read their body language so you know where you stand. There are plenty of good books and articles online about body language if you’d like to learn more.

Before the event, while you’re visualizing your successful presentation, say to yourself, “I am an interesting and engaging presenter.“

Practice reframing the way you perceive your audience, putting your attention on meeting their needs, and using positive affirmations before speaking engagements, and you will greatly reduce your public speaking anxiety.

Lisa Braithwaite works with individuals to uncover their challenges and build their strengths in presenting themselves confidently as speakers. Find your voice with public speaking coaching! Sign up for the Presentation Pointers newsletter and find out about having a free consultation at www.coachlisab.com.

Do you suffer from the fear of public speaking? You’re not alone! In fact, speaking in public is not only one of people’s biggest fears, it’s also the fear shared by a majority of people around the world. No one wants to get up in front of others and suffer under their scrutiny while stumbling through a speech and trying to keep sweaty palms dry.

In spite of this all-encompassing fear, it’s surprising that presentation skills, including public speaking skills, are crucial “must-haves” for the person who wants to advance in their career. Opportunities to speak in public are business-building and career-boosting situations that can’t be ignored. From sales presentations to annual meetings, and from Chamber of Commerce events to trade shows, there will be a lot of opportunities in your career to get up in front of an audience and speak.

Will you let the fear of public speaking keep you from succeeding?

Don’t let the fear of public speaking eliminate the many opportunities to succeed at work. There are several ways that you can overcome your public speaking phobia. One of those ways is to simply pretend that you are confident.

That’s right – feign self-assurance! Why? People see the exterior: someone that has a smile on his face and can hear your clear, strong voice speaking knowledgably and engagingly about a topic won’t be aware of your knocking knees or pounding heart.

How can you act more confident? Here are 6 simple ways:

1. Offer to speak when the opportunities present themselves. Other people share your fear of public speaking and that keeps them from presenting. That leaves a vacuum… that you can fill!

2. Smile when called upon. Don’t frown or shake your head. Stride confidently up to the stage, shake the hand of the person who introduced you, face the audience and make eye contact.

3. Breathe! Inhale and exhale to help calm yourself down.

4. Remember that even though you’re scared to be up there, most people can’t even make it that far!

5. Be prepared. Know what you want to say before you have to say it. This requires doing some homework and practice, but the confidence & credibility it will give you will be unmatched.

6. Before going up to the front, look around the room for a couple friendly faces of people. When you take the stage, look for their faces again and make eye contact. Those faces smiling back at you, will help to give you the confidence, assurance and support that you need to begin speaking.

Many people will agree the hardest thing is getting started. Planning and practicing the moments immediately before public speaking and the first few minutes into your speech are the hardest. Being aware of these simple facts can give you the security you need to take a leap of faith to overcome the fear of public speaking one speech at a time.

Deborah Torres Patel an internationally acclaimed Voice & Presentation Coach. Sign up for complimentary online training at http://www.expressingyou.com . To dramatically reduce fear of public speaking, register for 20 free lessons at http://www.fearlessinfive.com .

I’m sure you know that the fear of public speaking is one of the strongest fears that people have. The truth is that it’s not the speaking that is the source of the fear, people speak everyday. The fear comes from the perception that the audience is judging the speaker. The true fear is the fear of a bad audience response.

You can ensure that you will get a good audience response every time by following a simple five step formula.

Step 1: Visualize a Successful Audience Response

A large percentage of your behavior is under the control of your subconscious mind. You subconscious mind is strongly influenced by your expectations. For this reason you should spend some time imagining a hearty applause at the end of your talk. You could also visualize happy, interested faces throughout the talk. This is the best way to set that expectation in your favor.

Step 2: Be Yourself

You can always tell a speaker who has been trained by one of the (unnamed) speaking groups. They have a rigid formula. They start their talk with a joke and so on. It is stiff and mechanical and rarely works well.

You don’t need a rigid formula like that. Just be yourself. If you are a funny person then a joke will pop out at an appropriate time and it will be funny. If that is not your nature then you don’t need to tell a joke. If you just be yourself then you don’t have to remember any mechanical formula because you have already been yourself for years.

Make sure that your talk contains no more than five key points and if the talk is a long one then you can further break those points down into no more than five sub-points per key point. You put those points down on a card (or five cards in the case of the long talk) and then you talk off the top of your head on each point. If you have prepared your topic well then you will know the material and it will flow naturally.

Step 3: Engage The Audience By Speaking To Them.

Treat the talk like a one on one conversation with a bunch of different individuals. Make eye contact with the most positive looking people in the audience and make sure that you do this with people in various parts of the room. As more people become interested make eye contact with them as well. They then feel like you are speaking to them.

Step 4: Use Everyday Words and Everyday Examples.

Use everyday words and everyday experiences to explain your points and the audience will follow you more easily.

If I am going to give a talk on a topic I haven’t spoken on before then I practice the talk while I’m driving around in the car. I do exactly as outlined in this article and talk off the top of my head on each point but I am listening to myself to make sure that the language I use is simple and easy to follow. I will do this as often as I can before I actually have to give the talk so that when I am on the platform the talk flows easily and the right words automatically come out.

Step 5: Be Friendly.

If you were having a social chat with your friends then you would have a friendly demeanor and you would naturally smile from time to time. Treat your audience as if they are your friends and you will find that you will naturally act in a friendly way toward them. When you smile people are more likely to smile at you. Friendliness attracts friendliness.

Try this simple five point system at your next talk and you will find that the audience will love you.

James Delrojo would like to help you by giving you his ebook “Unleash the Success Power of Your Mind” (valued at $27) completely FREE. Go to http://www.YourSuccessMind.com

James Delrojo would like to help you by giving you his ebook “Unleash the Success Power of Your Mind” (valued at $27) completely FREE. Go to http://www.YourSuccessMind.com

he fear of public speaking is one of the worst phobias to suffer at the hands of – if not the worst! Sufferers can be almost paralyzed with the fear in some cases. In my clinic and via my products, I help hundreds of people over each and every year to control their fear and actually begin to enjoy the art of public speaking.

I use Hypnosis, Emotional Freedom Technique and Neuro-Linguistic Programming to achieve the client’s desired results. If you are currently battling a phobia of public speaking then I would really encourage you to get some professional help, either from a practitioner of the three mentioned therapies or from one of the many successful products available on the internet for instant download.

To get you off to a flying start though I have included a few tips that I give to my clients that you maybe able to use to alleviate your fear somewhat. Here they are:

1. Understand that up to 90% of the nerves that you feel don’t actually show! You will always feel worse than you look and there is a very good reason for this. When you feel nervous it is because you body/brain is trying to tell you that maybe this is not such a good idea. In most cases you will be the only one actually picking up on this.

2. Try to pause and breathe regularly. We do this naturally in conversation and doing it while speaking publicly will help you to remain calm and stop you from talking too fast.

3. Never memorize a talk word for word – this will only confuse you more if you lose your place. Instead have notes and pointers that you have memorized. Have these with you so that you can refer back if you get lost.

4. Always speak on things that you are an expert on. This way you will nearly always know more about the subject than your audience. This is a real confidence boost.

5. In the days that are leading up to your talk – When you feel nervous – spend some time feeling positive. You see, it is actually the lead up to a presentation that makes most people nervous. By concentrating hard on the positives as well as the negatives it allows those bad thoughts running through your head to have another more positive outcome. This is in fact the most important as if you can change that dread to positively then you at 90% of the way to success.

So there you have it – my top tips! Remember that once you get up there you notice that it is not as bad as you thought it would be. And once you get a little bit of belief in your abilities then you will soon be on the track to success.

Richard MacKenzie in an expert in Hypnosis. He is also the best-selling author of Self-Change Hypnosis.

The experts on our fears and stresses consistently tell us that the fear of public speaking is the greatest fear that most people have. When I first started public speaking I would have happily agreed with them, but now I love it and I earn a large amount of money whenever I speak. Here are a couple of tips that may help you love it too.

The first tip is that the audience is not your enemy (unless you are a politician) and that they are actually on your side.

Imagine the following situation. You are sitting in the audience with a few hundred people, waiting for the speaker to arrive on stage. The speaker is introduced and as he steps onto the stage he trips over a loose cable, falls flat on his face, his notes go everywhere. As he gets up and starts picking up his notes how do you feel about his predicament?

If you are like most people you feel for him. You may well see the funny side but you also feel sympathy for his situation. When you are a speaker the audience isn’t out to get you. They have come along to hear what you have to say. Also most people realize that you are doing something that they are not brave enough to do themselves and they respect you for it.

That tip was given to me, by a very successful public speaker, shortly after I started public speaking. Whenever I was about to get on stage I reminded myself that the audience had come to listen to me and were on my side. I always found that thinking in this way helped me get into a positive, confident state of mind.

The second tip was also given to me by the same experienced speaker and this is something that I do in every talk I give, even to the present day.

When I take the stage and begin speaking I look around the audience for interested faces. I then spend more time looking at those people than I spend looking at others. I imagine that I am having a one to one conversation with those interested people. This helps the flow of the talk and soon I am seeing more interested faces.

This technique helps me build a rapport with the audience and before long almost everyone is listening with an interested, involved look on their face.

Occasionally as I am scanning the faces I see someone who doesn’t want to be there. Perhaps they have been dragged along by a partner and have no interest in what I am saying. When I see that uninterested face I immediately turn to one of the key, very interested faces that that I have been using to build the rapport. In this way the uninterested face doesn’t distract me from my momentum.

I have also learned over the years that sometimes people who appear disinterested are in fact very interested in what you are saying; they just don’t have a face that shows it.

I was once giving a talk where a gentleman in the front row fell asleep a few minutes after my talk began. He went so deeply into sleep that a couple of times he almost fell out of his chair (fortunately he didn’t snore). At the end of the talk I opened the floor to questions and this guy woke up and proceeded to ask me very specific and interesting questions about things I had said. I don’t know how he did it but I learned never to assume that someone isn’t listening.

I hope that these two tips will help you in the next talk that you give. Remember that the audience is on your side and remember to build rapport by talking to those interested faces.

James Delrojo would like to help you by giving you his ebook “Unleash the Success Power of Your Mind” (valued at $27) completely FREE. Go to http://www.YourSuccessMind.com

James Delrojo would like to help you by giving you his ebook “Unleash the Success Power of Your Mind” (valued at $27) completely FREE. Go to http://www.YourSuccessMind.com