The following excerpt was taken from SPLASH! A Leader's Guide to Effective Public Speaking. [Foreword written by Chris Brady]
I sat in my little metal folding chair absolutely petrified. My hands were sweaty, my posture slumped, and I couldn’t hear a word the presenter was saying. All my faculties were consumed with the fear of my impending doom.
What was so downright terrifying?
I was about to give my first official public presentation! I was eighteen years old and an engineering co-op student at General Motors. More for our benefit than anything else, at the end of each semester, we co-op students were required to give a review of our work assignments and accomplishments that term.
They were despicable affairs, to be sure, with a dim little old-fashioned bulb-type overhead projector and amateur flimsies comprised of lots of really unimportant information. One by one, each victim would get up and grind through a horrid three minutes.
Soon it would be my turn.
My memory blanks at this point. Perhaps it’s some sort of protection mechanism, the kind of thing that eliminates our past tragedies from memory or at least preserves our self-image by refusing to remind us of times when we made complete fools of ourselves! At any rate, I can’t recall one detail about that presentation except for how scared I was beforehand.
This condition didn’t go away anytime soon, either. Year after year, we went through the same drill, and I was just as scared each time.
Fast forward to today, where I basically make my living speaking in front of audiences around the world. I give approximately fifty public talks a year to audiences of all sizes and have been doing so (and often more) for almost twenty years. Now, I don’t even break a sweat. I am not only not scared by speaking in public; I actually relish each moment!
What happened?
If you’re like me at all, you probably can relate to the fear and trepidation I describe above. For some reason, most of us feel that way when we’re asked (or forced) to get up in front of a group and deliver any kind of message.
For me, the fear gradually dried up as I found myself in business for myself and confronted by the necessity of delivering information to other people through the spoken word. The proverbial “time on the water” did a lot to calm my nerves and make me feel comfortable speaking in front of a crowd.
But overcoming the fear of public speaking is only one part of the equation. The second, much bigger consideration is to overcome the tendency that afflicts almost all public speakers at some point in their development—namely, that of being boring and ineffective. Sadly, it seems as if the vast majority of public presentations are somewhere between merely adequate and downright sleep-inducing. There are reasons for this.
In the book SPLASH, you will become acquainted with specific steps you can take to put together and deliver engaging, entertaining, informative, and inspiring public talks. You will be encouraged to practice your ability to speak in public (by doing it often—the only sure way to finally get rid of those nerves) and equipped with the principles and specifics of how to make your talks truly effective.
I am convinced that public speaking is something anyone can master. As with many other things in life, it doesn’t really matter where you start but only that you do actually start! And once you’ve thus begun, the goal is to improve as quickly as you can. Put the thoughts and concepts to work for you, and take your public speaking to a whole new level.
Finally, imagine a speaker getting ready for a major speech to a large audience in a full arena.
He feels no nerves, no worries. Instead, he is excited to share his message. As the time for his speech arrives, he gets ready to go onstage.
He listens to the current speaker, taking notes and thinking about how to apply what she’s saying to his own situation. When they call for the break, he smiles and stands up. A friend walks past and asks, “Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?” he asks curiously.
“For your speech?”
“Oh.” He is genuinely surprised.
“What are you going to speak about?” the friend asks while the technician attaches the microphone to the speaker’s belt and tie.
“I’ve got a new concept I want to share,” he says. Then he asks about his friend’s work and family. He hasn’t seen him for a while.
When the master of ceremonies reopens the convention, he pulls out his note cards and glances at his outline. He’s been through it so many times in his mind that he doesn’t get past the first line. He immediately starts thinking of better ways to share it.
He stops himself, puts the note cards into his briefcase, and then leaves it on the table. He walks to the side of the stage, ready to head up the stairs to speak. He can see part of the audience from his vantage point, and he can already feel their energy, which only adds to his own excitement to share this vital message with them. “I love this!” he says to himself. “I can’t imagine being anywhere I’d like better.”
“This is so much fun. I’m ready to speak.…”
And you will be too. This is the goal for great speakers, along with delivering a transformational speech that really makes a difference to everyone in the audience. This is what we call SPLASH speaking, and is something we can all work toward as speakers.
More to come...
To purchase the book SPLASH! A Leader's Guide to Effective Public Speaking, click here.
[Posted by Kristen Seidl, on behalf of Chris Brady]
