Motivational Public Speaking

Some of you might have experienced this sensation. As you wait for your turn to address the audience, your throat grows dry, mind blank and stomach churns. This is the most crucial tension period. How does one handle this and get over? This has no quick-fix solution. It has to be dealt with at all levels, mental, physical and logistics.

Handling fear at a mental level

Spend at least 10 minutes for every minute of your speech to gain mental confidence that you are completely prepared to deliver the talk and handle any questions thereof. This preparation time remains very high till you gain experience and become a seasoned speaker. Remember to commit to heart the opening and closing paragraphs of your speech. Make a note of the key points of your talk and keep these points less in number, say four or five. This helps your confidence boosting.

Handling fear at the venue

Get familiar well the venue. Arrive at the auditorium or hall well in advance, at least an hour before the scheduled time of talk. Walk around, study the stage, seating etc and feel relaxed in the surroundings. Practice talking on the stage to an imaginary audience, walk around and simulate/ dramatize your speech. This will help take your mind off the surroundings while you actually deliver the talk.

Avoiding physical stress and gaining confidence

If there are less number of listeners or if you are addressing a small audience one good way of instant comfort is to go to each member of the audience and shake hands and get introduced. In a larger meeting it is best to arrive early and greet the first 10-20 people. This helps connecting to your audience and makes them your fans. Since your tension stems from looking at large groups, making friends with few members of the group ensures that you have a comfort level with some of them.

Feeling tensed is natural; you need to find ways to relax. One way can be through physical activity, go to a secluded place, wave, and dance, make faces, shake head, legs, flail your arms etc. These activities help shake nervousness out of your physical self.

Don’t sit in one place as you await your turn, this will help nervousness settle in. Walk around the back rows or in the corridors outside the venue. This also gives you access to the bathroom to relieve yourself or to the drinking water etc this helps you concentrate on the speech and how to relax.

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One of the most vital steps to become a persuasive speaker is to improve self-esteem. One usually feels tensed while delivering a talk. This fear plagues even established theater persons, artistes, actors etc. Taking on this fear and conquering the nervousness are the keys to a successful career in public speaking.

Using notes makes it easier to rebuild confidence in those speakers who become tensed in the face of the audience and forget their speeches. But notes should only be pointers to a particular topic and the entire speech should never be carried. It will appear very stupid if a speaker just hunches over the paper and read out his speech. A major disadvantage of using notes is the fact that it prevents you from looking the audience in the eye.

One of the most important things to do while preparing for a major presentation is to go through a rehearsal. You can ask your colleagues, friends, family, club members etc to sit as audience and grill you as you deliver your speech. It would be a good idea to first practice in front of the mirror and then in front of a small group and then in front of a large audience.

Remember that like in any other field, the old adage ‘practice makes perfect’ holds good for public speaking too. You have to constantly look for and take up every chance to give a talk and consider these opportunities as stepping stones to success. Continuously delivering talks will improve your speaking abilities and further your prospects in the area.

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