How to Overcome The Fear of Public Speaking
“Let your tongue speak what your heart thinks.” – Davy Crockett
It is hard to reach an audience if you can’t relate to who is sitting in front of you. Whether you are a content expert, a well respected corporate executive, or renown motivational speaker, understanding how to build a connection with your audience quickly and effectively is sometimes challenging if you are not speaking from the right place in your body. Don’t bore your audience with what you know, impact them from what you have been through and how you turned your tragedy into a triumph. Your testimony on how you triumphed through a once tragedy should be the topic that you are teaching to your audience.
Open with Tragedy
Speaking from the heart was so tough for me because I was so afraid that the audience would judge me based on what I had been through. But the reality of it is that what I had been through gave me the right to stand on that stage and coach people on how to overcome some of the challenges they are currently facing. You know why? Because I’d gotten through it already! Opening with your tragedy will allow you to take the first step in telling a powerful story from your life. By being vulnerable and sharing a part of you, that will instantly draw the audience closer to you. It is not about telling success stories, it is about sharing the ones that are significant to you that developed your character and not just accelerated your career.
Connect Topic with Message
Once you have connected with your audience with significance, the next step is to spin your story a specific message. Once you do this, you take your audience from forward from the feeling level to the thinking level in order to not just reach them, but the goal is to influence them. By establishing a deeper connection, you increase the retention of your audience with the message that you are sharing.
Audience Connection with Testimony
Use the testimony that you are sharing to connect to the audience’s own experience. Whether you are speaking to students, engineers, or politicians, being able to connect your message to your audiences own experiences is the critical climax of your speech. This is where you connect some of the challenges that are faced in the given audience’s field and provide the necessary examples in order to align with who they are as a person.
Conclude with Triumph
Once you have connected your story with your audience, sharing your triumph is the glue that brings everything together. Don’t share just any story, share a personal story that gives your audience a deeper insight into who you were, who you’ve become, and how you were impacted. What steps did you take in order to triumph and how did it make you a better person?
Close to Lesson
My mentor always said that the introduction and the close are the most critical pieces of any speech. The first few minutes of your introduction sets the tone for the entirety of your time on stage, and the conclusion validates if everything you said was first truthful and impactful for not just your life but enough to influence your audience. During your conclusion summarize how the main point of sharing your once mess, turned into the message making sure the audience left with a clear understanding of what you wanted to get across. Your level of authenticity and how well you make deep connections will determine the level of impact that you leave with the audience.
Don’t Panic… Just Breath!
“When pressure builds up, don’t panic. Pray! Prayer is a tremendous stress reliever. It can be your safety valve.” – Rick Warren
I have delivered hundreds if not thousands of speeches and before each speech, there is always a bit of nervousness inside waiting to burst out. The reality of fear is that it reveals what we care about most and for me, every time I am in front of a group of people my goal is to have them leave better than when they came. The more frequently I speak, the more I’ve noticed where the anxiety and nervousness really are birthed from; the lack of preparation and planning. The more you prepare, the more likely the anxieties that you feel will be minimized. Before each speech I take time to say a brief prayer, positively affirm myself, and also take a deep breath and exhale all of the fears, anxieties, and nervousness so I can go out there and focus on three things: Impacting, Influencing, and Empowering my audience to become better than when I started my presentation. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and just let it go!
Having a “Mic Drop” Mentality
“The strongest factor for success is self-esteem; believing you can do it, believing you deserve it and believing you’ll get it.” – Anonymous
The moment former President, Barack Obama, dropped the Mic at his final White House Correspondents Dinner, was the same moment people labeled him as one of the “coolest” presidents ever. Even though an absolutely amazing speech, he found the time to include jokes, laughter and managed to share his optimism regardless of who was his predecessor as President of the United States of America. Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence. Just be Confident!!!
Confidence is NOT, ‘They will like me’. Confidence is ‘I’ll be fine if they don’t’.
– Anonymous
A lot of us want to deliver an amazing speech that ends in a standing ovation but we are not willing to put in the necessary work and preparation in order to do so. We can not sacrifice the process for the product; and every time we do, we are preparing ourselves to be the either laughed at, exposed, or taken off the speaker list for the following year. Taking time to know what you are you going to talk about and the true reason on why you showed up is the first step in delivering an impactful presentation.
Five Questions to Consider When Choosing a Topic:
What is your “why”?
What hurts you?
What/Who helps you?
What hinders you?
What do you represent?
What you thought was your mess, is the message someone needs to break free from their present circumstance. Circumstance does not define the purpose that is set in your life. Do not sell the business, sell what you represent.