Seven Steps to Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking
by Peter Dhu
Copyright © 2009 Peter Dhu
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. All materials and techniques are protected by copyright. You are invited and encouraged to forward this package to your friends, but this content may NOT be marketed or sold in any shape or form.
Disclaimer
This book does not contain legal advice. Author and publisher disclaim any and all warranties, liabilities, losses, costs, claims, demands, suits, or actions of any type or nature whatsoever, arising from or any way related to this book, the use of this book, and/or any claim that a particular technique or device described in this book is legal or reasonable in any jurisdiction.
Preface
As a career public speaking trainer and coach I am passionate about helping people find their voice and their confidence so that they can effectively get their message and their point of view across to others.
I wrote this book as a guide for people who have a fear of or are not yet confident at Public Speaking. Surprisingly, this fear is one of the greatest shared by individuals all over the world. Many people report not wishing to undertake public speaking. The guide gives you the tools and a way forward, a way to commence public speaking. But action and taking the steps outlined in this book are the only way that you will improve and achieve what you want.
My passion, my skills and my experience come from my own struggle as a person who stutters. For 30 years I avoided speaking and the effect was negative on my social life, career and general well being.
I have also seen thousands of other stutterers overlooked for jobs, treated unfairly, discriminated against, mocked or teased when they struggle to speak the words that are in their mind and heart.
I have also come to realise that there are many others out there with no such speech impediment, who have the same fears and self doubt and do not achieve their full potential. So now my life’s mission is to help all of those people find their voice, be confident and speak with surety, clarity and purpose.
Peter Dhu
PREPARE to Speak
Fear of public speaking is often reported as one of mankind’s greatest fears. It’s even sometimes categorised as a greater fear than death. Many people just do not enjoy public speaking and will not accept an offer to speak, even if it may result in advancement at work, making new friends or personal growth. It is said that at a funeral, most of us would rather be in the coffin than delivering the eulogy. Why is it that so many of us have this irrational fear of public speaking? Is it fear of failure, fear of ridicule, fear of judgement by our peers, or is it just our own personal self doubt that won’t allow us to take the stage or the microphone.
In this day and age it is becoming more and more important to be able to speak in public. Whether it is the eulogy at a dear friend’s funeral, job interviews, a wedding speech, or a request from your boss to present an update at a work meeting, speaking with confidence and eloquence is a very important life skill.
My background is that I have stuttered all my life, and still do, and the first 40 years of my life were lived in nearly complete silence. I would not talk at social events, did not go for job interviews and would remain silent at any work meetings. I was seen as a very quiet person with nothing to say who did not have an opinion or contribute to the workplace discussions. At some stages I chose to be an elective mute, writing down my requests and needs, rather than going through the humiliation, shame, stress and anxiety associated with trying to talk.
The last ten years have seen me break the shackles and become an accomplished public speaker, trainer and coach, who now has no fear of public speaking at all. Some people now say that I speak too much, but when you have been silent for so long and then find the freedom to speak, nothing can hold you back. Public speaking without fear, whenever required, is a very empowering and rewarding experience. I wish I knew ten years ago what I know now.
In this book I am going to take you through the seven steps that you can use to PREPARE to speak in public.
Purpose. Knowing the purpose of your speech and the reason why you want to become better at public speaking helps you to plan your approach and your strategy for becoming a more confident and polished speaker.
Relaxation. Being able to effectively use relaxation techniques to calm the nerves and control the anxiety is an essential step in confident public speaking.
Expand. Expanding your comfort zone and stretching yourself to gradually increase the complexity and difficulty of your speaking tasks is a proven way of facing your reluctance to public speaking.
Practise. Everyone knows practise makes perfect, but what does this mean in a public speaking environment? It means structured, planned and effective exercising of your abilities to speak in public that leads you gradually to where you want to go.
Attitude. When speaking, attitude and passion are everything.
Research. Do your homework on several fronts, including knowing your audience and knowing your venue.
Enjoy. Enjoy the journey, enjoy the challenge, enjoy learning from your hiccups and enjoy the feeling of success and pride as the audience thanks you for your excellent presentation.
These seven steps will give you confidence and knowledge of how to get ready for a particular presentation, how to prepare and enjoy the experience of public speaking. If you follow these steps, as I have, you will quickly overcome the fear of public speaking and be more ready and relaxed when required to speak. You will even volunteer to speak and will start looking for more opportunities to speak and use your new found confidence.
These are the seven steps that I used when I realised that I needed to start speaking and stop hiding behind my stutter, avoiding situations, and start to grow.
Whether you are a person who stutters, have some other speech impediment, have English as a second language, or are just petrified of public speaking, this book will give you somewhere to start.
These seven steps may not immediately make you a world champion public speaker – that is another lesson and another set of skills – but they will give you tools that you can use immediately to gradually reduce the fear you feel when speaking in. It will give you tools to tackle, in a logical and structured way, your fear of speaking.
What you will learn in this book:
Focus your topic
Analyse your audience
Target the most interesting research
Organise your material
Simplify your language
Use rhetorical devices to create style
Use humour where appropriate
Allow enough rehearsal time to improve delivery.
1. Purpose
Before you give a speech, you really need to define what you want or expect to achieve in the talk. This is really the purpose of your talk, which can be any or all of the following:
To inform
To educate
To arouse
To persuade
To move to action
To entertain
It is important to make a personal statement of what you want to achieve before even starting to write your speech. For example, "In speaking to this group, I want to persuade them to consider our product, while also entertaining them with my stories."
What do you want to happen when you finish speaking? What results are you looking for? What do you want the individuals in your audience to do? If you are vague about the desired outcome, it is like jumping into a car and just driving without a specific destination until you run out of petrol. You might see a lot of pretty sights and have a good time, but without any real direction, you and your fellow travellers can end up going around in circles very dissatisfied.
You must have some desire to speak on a subject. If you are uninspired, you will have no conviction in your voice or body language and you will not keep the attention of the audience.
Speaking is a communication process. If the listener or audience does not understand or enjoy what you are saying, you have not achieved a major goal of the process.
Important factors to remember in obtaining listener satisfaction are:
Speak with confidence,
Speak with clarity, and
Get the audience to participate.
A major motivation in speaking to a group – or anyone for that matter – is to express your ideas. In some cases, people may actually ask you to express your thoughts on a certain subject.
It is sometimes difficult to verbally express what you are thinking to other people. Those without the "gift of gab" may have trouble putting their thoughts into words or may even fear speaking to others or to a group. Even professional speakers occasionally come down with the jitters before giving a speech.
You should organise your thoughts before speaking to a group or on a one-to-one basis with a superior. Try to keep things down to three major points. Some people can organise what they plan to say in their heads, while most need to write things down.
There are some techniques to facilitate the verbal expression of your thoughts, such as writing and public speaking methods.
You want to get some sort of reward for the work you have done. This may be self-satisfaction, applause from the audience, or financial gain.
Satisfaction comes from achieving your own goals and feeling that you did a good job. That is completely up to you. Don't set your expectations so high that you are never satisfied with your performance.
If you do a good job, you may get applause from the audience. Sometimes you have to set them up or even prompt them to applaud.
Your purpose gives you direction and goals and is another way of defining your reason for being. Having purpose allows you to plan, knowing that you have the direction and the passion to make it happen. What is your purpose for attending Toastmasters? What is your purpose for doing an MBA? What is my purpose for undertaking treatment for my stutter?
Like any new endeavour, new adventure or new set of skills that you wish to learn, you need to plan your strategy. Are you going to do this by yourself, with a friend or colleague or are you going to get professional help? How much time can you devote to the task? Do you want a quick fix solution (magic pill) which is unlikely, or are you gradually and continually going to work at it? How important is it to you to be able to speak without fear and anxiety? If it is not important, then there may be no need to change, you may be happy where you are with your speaking skills. What would the ability to speak confidently do for you? Will it gain you respect at work, improve your chance of a promotion, enable you to coach your son’s football team? Plan what public speaking you wish to do. Are you preparing for a wedding speech? Do you wish to improve your interview skills at job interviews or are you striving to be a radio announcer?
Put all this down on a piece of paper so you are absolutely clear and know exactly why you want to overcome your fear of speaking.
Compelling communicators know whether to feed their audience an appetiser, a three-course meal, or a pig roast. So, the place to begin is with yourself – by defining exactly what it is you want your audience to feel, take away from or to do in response to your communications. In other words, start by asking yourself this: “Why am I here?”
I cannot stress strongly enough the importance of this key ingredient. It is by not starting with it, or ignoring it altogether, that most public speeches fail. Regardless of whether the communicator is experienced or a novice, here is where the communication can go immediately awry. There’s an old Yogi Berra saying: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll wind up somewhere else.” It’s true. And, so will your audience!
After not defining an objective at all, other common mistakes people make are to choose an objective that is:
Too big – it tries to accomplish too much at one time.
Unrelated to the task at hand – it is focused on a goal that is irrelevant to the communication or the situation.
Too murky – it is so nonspecific and meanders aimlessly, to the extent that the audience or interviewer feel their time is being wasted.