Confident Public Speaking Skills
Hi, I’m Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.
Do you have a fear of public speaking?
Let me help you.
Have you ever needed to give a speech in your
native language?
How about in English?
A very nonprofessional study I did of my friends
show that 99.99% of people have a fear of
giving a speech in public.
If you are part of that 0.01% you can go ahead
and leave.
But oh, okay, I see everyone is still there,
all right.
Today I’d like to give you some more tools
in your public speaking toolbox to help you
feel more comfortable and confident when you
give a presentation or when you speak in public.
To be a confident public speaker, you need
to bring your A game.
When you bring your A game, that means that
you are bringing the best part of yourself
forward.
You are doing your best.
So let’s talk about three skills that you
need.
In order to bring your A game, you need to
bring your body game, your mental game, and
your preparation game.
To help you bring your A game, I am going
to give you a little presentation.
This is going to be a public speaking practice
for me, but it’s also a presentation about
the way you can best bring your A game.
Are you ready?
Let’s go.
Let’s start by talking about your body game.
When you give a presentation, how are your
shoulders?
Are they hunched forward, are they back?
Do you feel like you’re standing up tall?
How about your spine?
Is it leaning over or do you feel like you’re
reaching tall to the sky?
So one of the most popular TED Talks on YouTube
is from a lady called Amy Cuddy.
And she was talking about how your posture
affects how other people see you.
But it’s also how you see yourself.
So when you are giving a presentation like
this, or even if you stand like this, you
feel smaller and less important.
If you stand strong, other people will feel
like that too.
But most importantly you will feel like that.
So that’s why we’re talking about your body
game first, so that you can prepare your body
with good posture, which will also affect
your mind.
When you walk into a conference room to give
a speech, are you walking like this, kind
of hunched over and not sure of yourself trying
to feel a little bit smaller?
Or are you standing straight and tall and
confident?
Even if you don’t feel like it, it’s good
to have posture like that.
You don’t have to walk in like some kind of
overconfident gorilla, being a little bit
crazy.
But being confident with your posture, even
a little bit, will make a big difference.
The next part is your mental game.
So we’ve already talked about your body game,
making sure that your body and your posture
is the best it can be.
But what about what’s going on inside your
head?
Well, when you are prepared and ready and
thinking positively about your presentation,
it’s already the best start.
I want you to focus your mind being positive.
This is easier for some people than for other
people.
Some people are naturally more positive and
some people are naturally more negative about
things in their life.
So I have one big tip that will help you to
be a little bit more positive.
When you’re giving a presentation, whether
it’s in front of a big crowd of people or
just a couple of people or just a business
presentation, try to focus on how your presentation
will help other people.
When you focus on helping other people and
meeting their needs, you’re less likely to
be stressed about it yourself.
So I challenge you to think about how will
this marketing presentation affect the people
I’m talking with?
If you think, “Okay, my presentation will
help them to get a better marketing plan and
will sell more,” then you’re already feeling
a little bit more positive.
For those of you that really struggle with
negative self talk.
So this mental game section is really tough
for you.
I challenge you every morning, especially
right before you’re about to give a presentation,
to create some kind of short and easy positive
sentence.
Sometimes we call that an affirmation and
that means that you’re thinking about something
that will positively affect your mind and
usually that’s how your presentation will
affect other people.
So maybe in the morning when you wake up,
two days before your presentation, you say,
“My marketing presentation will help us to
sell more products.”
This is super simple and it’s not really fancy.
But when you say that to yourself with a deep
breath, “My marketing presentation will help
us to sell more products.”
Super simple, hopefully it’s true.
You’re focusing on the positive things, the
impact that your presentation will have instead
of the mistakes that you’ll make, and all
of those things that make us feel really nervous.
The third game is the preparation game.
Now, this is the one that a lot of us focus
on the most.
Writing the speech, making sure we have the
best pictures on our PowerPoint, all of that.
But do you know what?
Sometimes we overlook actually saying the
speech out loud and preparing it verbally.
If English is your native language, usually
it’s recommended that you practice your speech
three times.
But if English is not your native language
and imagine if you are watching this, it’s
probably not.
It is best to do it more than three times.
Three times is not enough.
This is my recommendation.
Practice your speech through twice, practice
your intonation, the way that you say it.
Make sure that you have all the words exactly
the way that you’d like them and then on the
third try, I challenge you to record yourself.
You could just record your voice.
That’s a good first step, but because we’ve
already talked about how your body and your
mental game are also really important, I challenge
you to record yourself with your phone.
You can just set it up.
It could be really simple and practice the
speech in front of the camera.
And then go back, watch that as if you were
the audience as if you were your coworkers
sitting and watching your presentation.
Or if you’re giving a speech in front of a
big group of people, imagine that you’re the
audience.
How are you with the audience?
Are you engaging, looking at them?
Are you feeling really nervous?
And you can see, “Oh, I’m stuttering a lot,
I’m shaking a lot.”
Try to assess your body and your words as
if you were the audience.
After you’ve recorded yourself, I want you
to practice it two more times and this is
going to help you to just level up your skills,
you’ve already kind of assessed or critique
yourself.
So those two other times should be way better
than the first two times that you did it.
What do you think that a professional athlete
does on the day of their big game?
Do you think that they watch some TV and kind
of just sit around?
No, they do not distract themselves from their
objective, which is winning that game.
So this is what I want you to do on the day
that you have a presentation.
Let’s say you have a presentation at 3:00
PM, when you go to work, focus on that presentation,
review it, do everything that you can for
that presentation.
I want to give you a quick example about this
guy, Ryan Suter, he’s a hockey player.
He has a very strict game day routine and
I think it’s a good way to see that professional
athletes are not distracted on the day of
their big game because they want to fulfill
their potential.
They want to do the best that they can.
So you can also kind of imitate his style,
on the day of his big game, he goes to the
skating rink, skates a little bit, talks with
his coaches, they have a meeting with the
team.
Then his team goes out to lunch, he orders
the same thing.
You don’t need to do that, it’s a little extreme.
But he orders the same thing every time.
And then after that, takes a quick nap and
he goes back to the rink and talks with his
coworkers or his teammates and he talks with
the coaches and he gets a chance to kind of
mentally prepare for the game.
Then they go on the ice, they practice and
they have the game.
Did he do anything that day that wasn’t related
to hockey?
Not really, except eat and take a nap, which
is kind of necessary for life.
So I want you, if you have a big presentation
and you especially feel really nervous about
it, focus on nothing else that day.
Try to surround… do everything that you
can possible for that speech on the date to
get your mind ready, to prepare yourself.
So on the day of your big presentation, I
want you to not distract yourself, don’t have
friends over for lunch and talk about other
things.
Focus on your presentation, visualize it going
well.
Everyone’s responding positively, you’re having
a great time, they’re understanding, they’re
learning a lot, and your speech is helping
them to improve their goals.
So in conclusion, to bring your A game to
your presentation, you need to bring your
body game, great posture, your mental game,
positive thoughts, and your preparation game,
active practice.
So thank you so much for this quick presentation.
Thank you for learning with me.
I hope that your presentation skills will
increase and improve from here.
How did you enjoy that presentation?
My presentation skills are not perfect.
My speaking style is not perfect, but I want
to bring you a professional.
Someone who knows a lot more about public
speaking than me.
So if you would like to dig deeper into this
topic of having confidence when you give a
speech in public, I invite you to join me
in my course, The Fearless Fluency Club.
This month you’re going to meet Nathan, who’s
one of the organizers of a local group called
Toastmasters.
Toastmasters is a nonprofit international
organization that helps anyone in the community
who wants to participate, to learn to speak
better and more confidently in front of others.
I also visited Nathan’s toastmaster meeting
here in my city.
So if you join The Fearless Fluency Club this
month, you’ll get access to my conversation
with Nathan about public speaking skills,
some of the positive things he’s learned,
some of the negative things he’s learned.
And you’ll also get access to a Toastmasters
meeting.
I went to this meeting and I recorded it,
so you can kind of get a sneak preview into
what a Toastmasters' meeting is like.
It was actually a lot of fun.
So if you would like to learn more about public
speaking, feel free to join me in The Fearless
Fluency Club.
And make sure that you write the word new
in the coupon code section, so that you can
get the first 30 days of the course for only
$5.
The regular price is $35 per month.
But if you write the word new, you’ll get
it for just $5 for the first month.
Now I have a question for you.
Have you ever given a speech in English?
Have you ever given a speech in your own language?
Let me know in the comments below.
Thank you so much for learning English with
me and I’ll see you again next Friday for
a new lesson here on my YouTube channel.
Bye.
The next step is to download my free ebook,
Five Steps To Becoming A Confident English
Speaker.
You’ll learn what you need to do to speak
confidently and fluently.
Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel
for more free lessons.
Thanks so much.
Bye.