July 17, 2020, at 10:04 am
A great and some might say an essential element that will help you succeed across several domains of life is communicating your ideas clearly while presenting them openly in a public forum.
Undoubtedly, being a good public speaker can help you advance your career, grow your business, and form strong collaborations.
It can help you promote ideas and move people to action on issues that affect them directly or even globally at large. To do these things well, though, You are required to have spent a significant amount of time standing in front of an audience to deliver a pitch, an idea, or a body of work. More often than not, the only thing that stands between you and your audience is fear.
“Public speaking” is one of the most popular answers given by people when asked, “what terrifies you?”.
Interestingly enough, the majority of human beings are terrified of speaking in front of a crowd because they want to make a great impression and are afraid that the stress and anxiety will not allow them to.
Thankfully, the Partners In Excellence networking conventions provide the perfect medium for you to reach the maximum possible number of relevant people, and each speaker is equipped with 90 seconds to pitch their idea successfully. Nevertheless, below are some key ways to help you overcome the fear of public speaking and excel during the 90 – seconds – to–impress session.
A piece of great advice is first to change the way you think of public speaking. Robert Dixon broke it down into four
straightforward steps:
Accept that you are uncomfortable.
Recognize that you have something of importance,
and value for the audience. The crowd is eager to hear from you.
3. The audience wants you to be successful, so imagine the crowd as your friends.
4. Stop thinking about it as a presentation. Instead, think about
it as telling a story.
PUBLIC SPEAKING IS A SKILL THAT CAN BE LEARNED.
Of course, many talented speakers make you think that either you have this innate ability to shine in front of a crowd or are better off shying away entirely.
Well guess again, public speaking is a skill that can be learned – you do not have to be born with it. Anyone can be an effective presenter or speaker if they are willing to learn the skills. Skills are learnable. Thinking about something as a skill set allows the mind to believe it can learn how to do it. Just think back in time, the skills that you have mastered, once you started you were clumsy and awkward, you simply mastered them because you believed that they were essential to your wellbeing – the same mindset is to be applied in this case as well.
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT.
Since public speaking is a skill that can be learned, it will take much practice to achieve the wanted results. Practice in front of a mirror to study your facial expressions, a great way
to further enhance your point is the emotions displayed on your facial expressions. Once you get comfortable with practicing in front of the mirror, then record yourself; this will enable you to have a clear image of how body language and posture, in general, play a vital role in a presentation. By playing back the recording, you can see all the areas you can correct, but its also a great way to see the “before” and “after.” Boosting your confidence is essential, and seeing all the progress you made from the first time you recorded yourself to the last is the best way to do that.
THE ILLUSION OF TRANSPARENCY.
The illusion of transparency is a form of cognitive bias that causes us to overestimate people’s ability to know our emotional state. Remember, just because you are in direct contact with your thoughts and emotions does not mean that the audience is. You could be on the verge of a breakdown, but if you control your voice tone, for example, the audience will have no clue. Itamar Shatz explains, “Research on the topic shows that simply being aware of this bias can reduce its influence, which could allow you to feel less anxious and more confident while you’re presenting. Before giving a talk, if you’re feeling nervous, try to remember that the people in the audience can’t tell how nervous you are, even if it seems obvious to you.”