My Top 3 Tips for a Confident Speaker

Norman took to the stage. He stumbled as he approached the mic, regained his footing and gave the audience a terrified glance while mumbling an apology. When he spoke into the microphone, a squeal of feedback shrieked out. Norman recoiled with a terrified look on his face before tentatively trying again.

“H-h-h-hi, my name is N-Norman” he stuttered.

Unfortunately, things did not get better for Norman. He was visibly nervous, wringing his hands and clawing at his collar as if he was choking. A quick look around the room showed the audience was as restless as he was nervous.

Have you ever sat in the audience with a visibly nervous speaker?

How did that make you feel?

Even the story about Norman was a little uncomfortable to hear. The problem is when we are in the audience, and the speaker in front of us is nervous, it doesn’t matter what they share. We aren’t taking it in.

When you are speaking, one of the jobs you have is to make your audience comfortable so that they can focus on your message. Overcoming fear or nervousness on stage is not just about you it is how you can be in service to your audience.

So, let’s examine how fear of speaking manifests and what we can do about it.

Tip 1 - Focus on your audience.

In my experience with speaking on stages of various types over the past 45 years, the problem has its roots in having the wrong focus. Whenever you are focusing on yourself, you will have problems.

When you are wondering how you look, how you sound, what words you are meant to say, worrying about screwing something up - you are focusing on yourself. This ALWAYS results in poorer performance.

You need to trust yourself to do what is necessary and focus externally. This is a lesson I learned during my fighting career. Whenever I focused internally on what I would do next, I would soon get a kick to the head or a punch in the gut. When I focused on what was happening externally with my goal in mind, I was able to react and use the opportunities that presented themselves.

In speaking, the same rule applies. Your focus should be on how your message is landing with your audience. Focus on taking your audience where you want to take them, and noticing if they are making that journey makes all the difference. When you have that focus, you cannot simultaneously think about yourself, and the nervousness and self-concern disappear.

If I notice myself getting nervous and “in my head” when I am on stage, I will pick someone in the audience and ask myself, “are they getting my message?” Then, I focus on them to see if they are getting the message I share as I continue. This never fails.

Tip 2 - Avoid the spiral.

If you are aware enough to manage your focus, you shouldn’t find yourself in a spiral. But even the best of us sometimes find ourselves here because of a sequence of events.

But first, what is the spiral?

This is where our minds go into a loop, going around in a circle, spiralling inwards and downwards. An example might go something like this:

What will they think of me if I forget my next point? -> If I forget, they will think I don’t know what I am talking about. -> If they think I don’t know what I am talking about, they will judge me. -> If they judge me, they will say bad things about me later. -> If they say bad things about me, my clients and friends won’t trust me any more. -> If they don’t trust me, I will lose money, and will not be happy -> So I had better not forget my next point -> Because if I do…

And it repeats.

Getting louder and louder in your mind, taking more and more of your focus until you can’t think of anything else. - This is almost exactly how a computer crashes. And the result in your brain can be the same. Your brain will almost shut down. Many people freeze.

If you find yourself in a loop, it can be hard to break out of it. I have found the best way to break out of a mental loop is with a physical activity.

At TEDxRuakura, we had an “Escape Hatch”. At the back of the stage was a jug of water and some upside-down glasses. Speakers were trained that if they found themselves in a mental loop, they coughed politely and said, “I just need some water”. They walked over to the little table, turned over a glass, poured water into it, and took a sip.

This act was enough to pull their mind out of the loop. Your brain concentrates on pouring water into the glass, not over the stage. This breaks the loop, and because our speakers knew their talk really well by this stage, they could jump back in.

Most of the time, this Escape Hatch was never used. Just the fact there was something there was enough for most. I remember one person using it as described. It worked perfectly. The interruption was edited out of the video, and when I asked audience members in the break, most didn’t even remember it.

Tip 3 - Take them for a ride

To work with the two points above, I find that focusing on the journey you are taking your audience on is the best way to serve them and keep yourself on track. But this works best when you fully understand the previous tips.

Through my framework for crafting your talk, speakers learn how to craft both a logical and an emotional journey for their audience, and focusing on what you want your audience to learn and to feel ensures that your message lands and also keeps you far too busy to become self-concerned.

I am certain that the fictional Norman, at the beginning, knew these things, he would have had a better experience. He may not have been perfect, none of us are, but with a positive experience, he would have learned some things for next time, and you will too.

Snippets is a section where I take some interesting text I have come across in the previous week and comment on it.

Every Social Platform is a Stage.

I heard this the other day, and it really hit me. This may seem obvious to you, but to me, it was a bit of a revelation. I just hadn’t seen Social Media that way, and I will be thinking about this a bit more going forward, and it may change how I do things.

I had the opportunity, this week, to listen to Shawn Harper, an ex-professional Gridiron player and now professional speaker. He mentioned a couple of things that resonated with me.

Persistence through resistance. Often, it is not the forward motion that makes the difference. When you are hitting that wall and can’t seem to get around it, often the best thing you can do is stand your ground, withstand the onslaught and wait for your opportunity to move forward.

So many times in my fighting career, I was in a situation where I felt outmatched. I couldn’t see how I could win. But I could stand my ground. Refuse to go down. And hang on as long as I could. Sometimes, an opportunity presented itself, and I was able to win. But that would never have happened if I hadn’t had the mindset of Withstand and wait.

Unpacking Wisdom is a weekly section where I dive into a famous (or not so famous) quote and explore how this can apply to the Compelling Communicator.

This quote of Buddha is generally applied to the sharing of happiness and joy which doesn’t diminish your own happiness and joy. - In fact, I think it enhances it!

But for today I want to consider it in terms of knowledge, particularly your own specialised knowledge. Often people are very protective of what they know. They don’t want to give others the secrets they spent so much time and money learning for themselves. But I think this is a false economy.

I believe that by freely sharing and collaborating with that specialised knowledge you have worked so hard to gain, you lose nothing yourself. But you ignite so many others that the overall light in the room is improved.

Others using and sharing your knowledge and wisdom is not creating competition. It is elevating the conversation, generating more opportunities for collaboration, spreading the word further and making far more opportunities available to you than you thought were possible.

This is one reason I decided to write this newsletter. To grow the conversation about how we can communicate more effectively. I am freely sharing things that people have paid me to learn in the past, and I am happy for these things to be shared further because I know it will open more opportunities.

How can you do the same in your world?

What I am up to this week…

Professionally:

I am frantically finishing my own online course due this week.

Recreationally:

I am getting the last things in place for this coming weekend’s Misty Flicks Film Festival that I am helping with.