201: 10 Tips for Public Speaking Without Fear

If you follow me on TikTok, you would have seen me share a favorite tip of mine for public speaking on the podcast this week. Nine More Tips. Welcome to the Indestructible PR Podcast, where we use current events and test immediate PR strategies to help prevent or manage a crisis and build an indestructible reputation. Something that can impact your reputation is if you bomb on st. Many people feel an intense fear when they are asked to speak in public, and if you're one of them, don't worry, you're not alone in this episode. 10 tips for overcoming your fear and delivering a great speech. More advice on Help you to feel confident and prepared when it's your turn to take the stage Yesterday I returned from a speaking gig, as we say, the biz. And it was a different one for me because it was a new presentation that I was giving. It was a customized one. Ask someone who works in Editorial A communicator, a statewide group of communicators who are editors of publications of a monthly publication for an industry, asked me to speak to the group about how to justify keeping print publications in the biz. It was a great topic and I appreciated her coming to me with that idea because it really was a talk about public relations. And I turned it into a crisis management talk as well because I told them in the end that in the crisis plan that I happen to be writing right now for a client, I'm updating my crisis plan to include all these digital elements. And not just digital, but publications, print. And I had mentioned it. It was the last thing that I mentioned in the end. And some people broke out in applause, which I loved because it just shows such a passion and commitment for a field. You know, journalists feel that way. But anyway, but that was the topic. But I mentioned that it was a new topic because even though I'm a seasoned speaker, I was a new speaker to this particular topic. I had to create a whole new deck and a whole new presentation to a newer audience about this topic. So I was going through the paces of like a new speaker. So I just wanted to share some of the tips that I use when I'm putting together a talk. So whether you are working from a deck, a PowerPoint or Keynote, or something online like a Prezi or Canva, or if you're just speaking just yourself on stage, I want to share some tips with you on how you can deliver just a knockout performance where at the end the goal is they give you a round of applause. So here are 10 tips for public Speaking with a caveat here of it can be daunting to speak in public and people get worried. They get a little fearful when they think about it. So these are tips for speaking in public without fear. Fear. All right, Number one, as I mentioned in the beginning, I'm seasoned in this and I will use that adjective not because I consider myself such a pro. It's because I'm old and I've been doing this for so long. So tip number one is practice, practice, practice. Always in threes. The more you do it, the easier it will become. And it's so true. I had mentioned in the open I posted a TikTok with one of my tips that I'll get to and someone had asked in the replies, do you get nervous speaking? And I said I don't get nervous speaking in public. When I get nervous is when I'm speaking with new material and I haven't practiced that material. That's when I get nervous. Number two, Know your audience. Find out as much as you can about your audience before you speak. This is going to help you tail your message and make sure that you are speaking to to their needs. Particularly it helps if you know what their roles are or if they have outside vendors that are going to be in the room as well. So knowing exactly who's there not only helps you customize, but it makes you more comfortable because you know you're hitting the right people and you can hit the right note. Number three, and this speaks to the fear. Know your material inside and out. This will help you feel more confident when you're speaking and less likely to get tongue tied or forget what you're saying or which is another question on my TikTok. What do you do about filler words? Filler words are something that comes up that kind of peppers up or bubbles up in a presentation or in the case someone mentioned on a podcast, they found themselves using filler words a lot. People will use them not because they're nervous is because they don't know what to say. They haven't constructed a perfect sentence with a beginning and an end. If you know your material inside and out, you are going to speak in clear, measured, complete sentences. When you do, you often do not have filler words. Filler words will creep in and I've already heard my filler words in this podcast and I use them when I'm riffing. Right, because you don't know what you're going to say next. And that's when the filler words come in. Number four, keep it Simple. Don't try to cram too much information into your talk. Just stick to the main points and make sure they're clear and concise. What helps is to create a controlling idea. For my talk about how to convince a board or leadership why you still need a print publication in your quiver, if you will, is because of a controlling idea that I used throughout the talk. It helps people along if they know what you're trying to get to. So if you have a simple controlling idea and you're not just cramming it in with all this extemporaneous information, you're going to have a better talk. Number five, use visual aids. Visuals can help you to engage your audience and make your points clear, but you don't want to rely on them too heavily because you want people to listen to what you're saying. Many times presentations will put in video clips or they might have, you know, graphics that are moving all over the place. You only want to use these bells and whistles if you really need them. Like I do, like video clips, because you're bringing someone to a place that they have to focus on. So if you say, roll the tape, people are going to stop talking. They're going to look up from their phones and they're going to watch. So visuals like that help. But don't worry about all the other pomp and circumstance, you know, all the other bells and whistles, nobody cares. They just want to be able to see clearly what you're talking about. Number six, speak slowly and clearly. This will help ensure that people understand you and don't miss anything important. Not only does it help you keep your nerves in check, but also, which I noticed in the talk that I gave this week, people are writing things down and the techie people are taking photographs of your screen. If you speak slowly, you're giving them time also to capture what you're talking about. If you just whip through these screens and slides, you're going to lose people and you're going to lose the opportunity for them to take in that information. Number seven, make eye contact with individual audience members throughout your talk. This will help them feel involved and connected to what you're saying, but it also helps you feel more comfortable because you're speaking to one person. So if you are someone who gets nervous speaking in front of a crowd, and what makes you nervous is the crowd aspect, just focus on one person at a time. You don't want to look at one person the entire talk. That would seem strange, but just bounce around people, to people and catch Their eyes. Number eight, use gestures and expressions to emphasize points and add interest to your talk. Just be sure not to overdo it. Too much movement can be distracting. My hand is raised in my podcast right now because I am someone who, who absolutely speaks with my hands. I do. Side note, I was reading Carolyn Hacks in the Washington Post. I read her every day and a woman wrote in about her son in law using hand gestures too much. And she found it offensive because when she was young, what she learned from her family was using your hands was a sign of laziness because you couldn't articulate what you were saying well. And Carolyn Hacks just basically gave it to her and said if you are that. Well, in short, if you are that small minded that you're going to judge someone on the amount of hand gestures that they use, then you're the person who should be judged. Which I was happy to hear that because I use gestures a lot. Try to keep them in check, but use them in the right way. I mean, look to presidential candidates, look to our presidents, how they use them. You know, Bill Clinton used the thumb. Donald Trump also uses a version of the thumb and the okay sign, you know, the chopping, you know, they do it for emphasis. Some political operative told George Bush senior not to point because in one of the debates he was pointing. And he got a lot of grief for that because it looks like he was scolding people. So ever since George Bush senior, George Herbert Walker Bush, you don't see the point anymore. Now you see variations of the thumb, but using gestures to get your point across can be helpful. But just don't overdo it. Number nine. Number nine. Number nine, take your time. Do not rush through your presentation just because you're nervous. People feel that, people see that. And there is no quicker way to diminish your authority than if you're nervous. If you're uncomfortable talking to people, and it's not just because you're comfortable not speaking in public, but it's that you're not comfortable speaking about something that you're supposedly an authority in. If you know it and you know it cold, you shouldn't be nervous. People do give grace, I believe, to people who are on a big stage or if you are interviewing someone. There's someone, a friend of mine who listens to this podcast who chimes in frequently. Hello, David, if you're listening, that's a test to see if you are. He moderated a panel on a big stage with a notable journalist. And when I saw that, I thought wow, I'm nervous for him. And he prepared and from all accounts did an amazing job. But those were the nerves to have in the right place. You know, when a lot is at stake, you can be nervous, but taking your time can be very powerful if you leverage it in your favor. If you need a minute to gather your thoughts, take it, because your audience is going to appreciate a well organized thought out talk more than a hastily delivered one or someone who's so incredibly nervous it's making them nervous and uncomfortable. But using a pause on stage or in a podcast is effective because people listen. And number 10, this is the tip that I shared on TikTok. And I shared it at the risk of looking completely stupid, because I was filming myself doing this before the talk. I was in the back of the room and I was filming myself. And I've mentioned this often on the podcast, but it's so important it deserves to be mentioned again. And that's breathing. The breath is your friend. If you run out of it, you look nervous, you look unorganized, you don't look polished. But if you speak slowly, you can take breaths without people noticing. Now the trick that I do that I mentioned in the TikTok is before I speak, I always take deep breaths. I use a tactic called the 911 tactic. When my oldest daughter went to a Shishi prep school, I was on the parent committee and I volunteered to be the parent representative for this parent information network. And it was a series of speakers throughout these independent schools, perhaps throughout New England. And every school would host a speaker. Well, you can imagine these speakers were phenomenal. So that's why I wanted to volunteer because my job was to listen to the speaker and then go back to the meetings and give, you know, just summation of what they talked about. And one of my favorite talks was from either Harvard trained or worked for Harvard or taught at Harvard or Harvard academic. I cannot remember. I just remember Harvard. But they talked about, gave a presentation on the breath. So all the science behind the breath. But the two exercises, one was called the Hot Chocolate where you put your hands up and you breathe through your nose like you're breathing in the smell of hot chocolate, you know, with your hands. And you're using your hands if you're picturing them above a cup of steaming hot chocolate and you're just inhaling it in and then you're blowing it out to cool down the hot chocolate. So that's one if you're using your gestures of your hands. But if you want to be a little More sly. You don't want people to notice that you're doing this. Which I'm doing is the 9 11. And they claim, they said that they taught this to a lot of emergency first responders before they were going into fight a fire. It's the 9 11. You inhale for nine seconds, and that's a long time. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. And you are, you are bringing your chest up when you're doing it. And then you exhale for 11 seconds and you just slowly breathe it out. I always do the 911 before I speak. And I don't do it on stage so people can see me looking like I'm hyperventilating on the side of the stage. But when I'm in the back or as I'm getting ready and I might be doing something with my hands, but I'm doing this breathing technique, I do it a lot or whenever I'm in a nervous situation. And not for nothing, it helps with kids. All my kids know this trick and they tell me that they use it all the time. So before a tryout, before the SATs, they will do the 9 11. And I'm telling you, it works all right. And in every episode, I always add an indestructible PR tip. It's that one easy to remember leave behind tip to help you build that indestructible reputation. One of the tips that helps calm you when you're giving a talk is this is speaking about something that you know about and something that you care about. So the tip is to tell a story. Either start off with a story or embed a story somewhere in your presentation. When you talk about something, you know, when you are the authentic voice about something, you are calm, you are confident. And if you are telling a story, it comes from complete confidence because it's your story. It also sets the mood of a room. But also, which is something that I mentioned in my talk, it gives you a sense of presence. You're bringing people into your story and also into your life. So they're going to get to know you. They're going to get to like you, unless it's a bad story. But when you do that, it kind of builds that connection. And when you have that connection, you feel it in the room. And when you feel it, you see it. And when you see it, it impacts you and how you feel and it takes away all of the nerves. So if you want to overcome your fear in public speaking, start by implementing some or all of the tips that I just shared. And if you really want to up your game, you might consider listening to my audiobook, Indestructible. It's out on Audible right now. It's all about developing this powerful mindset to help you be more confident, you know, particularly when handling, you know, a media crisis. But I talk about all aspects of it, and I think that you'll be able to glean some tips in there as well. So if you have a free Audible credit, and I know you do, don't we all? Check it out. You can also find the book online at your favorite bookstore, including Amazon. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks so much for listening. Bye for now.