How to Speak and Succeed – Sept. 2011

A great way to market yourself and establish your expertise to your clients and partners is through public speaking. The problem is that public speaking isn’t something that comes naturally to most people. You might be a silver-tongued networking pro when it comes to one-to-one communications, but it’s another thing entirely to speak in front of a large group of people.

The problem is a fear of failure and public embarrassment. However, there are multiple steps you can take to not only remove the fear from public speaking, but ensure you excel at it. Let’s review some key ways you can drop your fears, gain confidence and use public speaking to further your success:

•Speak with a purpose. If you walk into your presentation with an objective — a message that you want to get across or a point that you want to teach your audience — that singular purpose will always keep you on track. If you make an error and start to get distracted and worried, ask yourself, “Why am I speaking here today?” If you came to the podium with a purpose, you’ll instantly remember and get yourself back on track. Moreover, this purpose will keep you fired up and engaging for the audience.

•Prepare and practice. You can’t walk into a public speaking environment unprepared and expect to do a good job. You need to build a presentation that you feel is strong and that motivates you, and then start practicing it regularly. A great way to practice is not just in front of the mirror or a family member, but to break off pieces of your presentation and use those lines when you are interfacing with clients, coworkers or partners. Consider it some real life road-testing for the main event.

•Keep things simple. Don’t get bogged down in overly complex or numerous presentation slides. Have a direct and logical outline to your presentation that keeps you from going off tangents. You want the audience to follow your ideas and they can’t if they have to continually go from reading your slide to listening to what you have to say. Keep it simple and you’ll do a much better job of getting your message across in a memorable way.

•Remember, the audience is your ally. If you have fears about making a mistake, drop them. Your audience is actually very forgiving. In fact, they are rooting for you. When a person decides to commit his or her time to come see you, he or she wants you to do a good job, because then the trip will have been worth their while. Moreover, chances are they see you as a peer and will identify with you when you do a good job, and when you stumble.

•The audience can still be rude. It’s not that they mean to, but audience members of conference sessions or seminars don’t feel they have to live up to the same niceties of, say, those attending the opera. They’re there on their own time and might need to step out to make a call or catch a cab. The key is to not let that behavior throw you or to take it as a commentary on your performance. They’re just doing what they have to do — just like you. So keep your head on your presentation and not what the audience is doing.

•Own your mistakes. Everybody fouls up on stage. Period. Shakespearean actors make mistakes. Movie stars make mistakes. News anchors make mistakes. And you make mistakes. It’s the nature of the public speaking beast. So, if you flub your words or forget a point, simply say to the audience, “You know what? I didn’t say that clearly. Let me go back and make that point again so I’m sure you get it.” You’ll score big points with the audience for wanting to do a good job for them.

Remember and follow these tips and you just might find on your next public speaking opportunity that you not only lose your fear of getting up on stage, but you just might come to enjoy it — break a leg!