Last Updated: July 24, 2024

How does the fear of public speaking impact your daily life and career goals?

This fear is more than just a minor inconvenience. It can significantly impact your daily life and career aspirations. Imagine being in a crucial meeting where you have an excellent idea but are too anxious to speak up or missing out on a promotion because you can't present your achievements confidently. This fear can lead to missed opportunities, hindered professional growth, and a persistent feeling of inadequacy.

What if the fear of talking to others affects your social life? You have a more challenging time making friends. Your social anxiety skyrockets when it’s time for guests to arrive for dinner or when you have been invited out. Your social awkwardness finds reasons why you should cancel, at the last minute, plans you set earlier. It can be crippling.

The simple truth is learning to speak with confidence can improve your personal and professional life.

The good news is that public speaking is a skill that can be developed and refined. With the right approach, anyone can learn to communicate effectively and confidently in front of an audience. The key lies in cultivation through practice and preparation.

Leaders who communicate well are better equipped to inspire their teams, drive innovation, and achieve organizational goals.

Leadership doesn’t just happen in the workplace. Effective communication builds confidence in your personal life, enriches your relationships with everyone around you, and contributes positively to your community. You confidently lead your own life.

Most books on communication are filled with psychology babble and too many “rules” to remember when you get in front of a group to talk. This leads to confusion, anxiety, and insecurities. In addition, it can take years to get good. I want you to get good in a few short weeks.

The rules I follow are simple, and simple equals confidence. All you have to remember is this:

What do you want to say?

To make this even easier for you, try to pick topics you are interested in, have experience with, and have a burning desire to talk about.

Once you pick the topic, narrow your focus to one.

The “what” is your desire. It is the desire you have to speak about that singular topic. Avoid getting sidetracked trying to tell your audience too much. The human mind focuses better on a single task rather than multitasking.

There’s a great marketing book I love, Great Leads, that I first really understood the power of one. The authors describe a formula they created to sell more products and services. It followed this thought that one big idea would pull better and outsell something using multiple core ideas. They tested this theory at one of their conventions with two of their speakers. One speaker used a common approach in delivering a speech. He used multiple benefits, ideas, stories, emotions, and outcomes. The other used one idea, one core emotion, one story, a straightforward benefit, and one response they wanted to achieve. They got an overwhelming response from the speaker using the rule of one.

From then on, they used this new rule of one in all their marketing. It crushed previous metrics and soon became the rule they used in giving speeches from the front of the room.

Why do you want to say it?

Your “why” is the motivation that wakes you up in the morning. It’s what moves you toward your goals. It’s what drives you forward, even when your doubts or fears are trying to hold you back. It’s what picks you up when you’ve been knocked down. It gets you through tough times.

This will drive the one emotion and story you tell your audience. It will also be what drives you to want to communicate your message. It will be why you make an impact by being a more effective communicator.

What do you want your audience to do next?

Most talks or speeches end with a conclusion or recap of the topic. This signals to the audience that you're done, and they can move on to something else.

A different approach is giving your audience a reason to keep listening. Tell them what they should do next to get the straightforward benefit from what you are teaching, talking about, or telling them.

It might be hard to imagine right now, but your impact is profound and far-reaching. Developing the ability to communicate and connect with people conveys your message more effectively and establishes credibility and trust with your team or audiences. This skill is crucial if you seek career advancement, as it will give you the tools to inspire and influence others, drive change, and articulate your vision with clarity and confidence.

Effective communication leads to better collaboration, morale, and successful project outcomes. You're seen as more competent and authoritative, which can open up new opportunities for career growth and professional recognition.

You can articulate your ideas while negotiating better deals and representing your organization more successfully in public forums.

It also means that you can leave a legacy of goodwill behind as you progress in your personal and professional life.

Preparation and practice are critical components in building your confidence to speak in front of others.

But there is nothing that builds your confidence faster than action.

I wanted to get on the fast track and build my abilities quickly. To do that, I needed to take a more tactile approach. What I mean is, if you want to learn how to swim, you can’t do that by practicing on the side of the pool. You have to get in the water, even if it means you flail around at first.

You must practice speaking in front of groups or small audiences to improve your speaking ability. I did this by starting to teach. I picked a subject I enjoyed and found an organization that needed teachers. For me, this was coaching martial arts. I would volunteer to teach classes for my instructor. Was I nervous? Oh yes. Did I make mistakes? A lot of them. Did I get better? Yes, and I did it at a rapid pace because I chose to coach every day. I forced myself to get in front of kids, teens, and adults to practice. For you, this could be your church or some other community organization.

Just follow the simple three steps I outlined earlier.

This quickly gave me the confidence to speak in front of groups at work, and eventually, I found my professional passion in leadership, personal success, and sales. This led me to find my “working genius” in being a counselor to others, sharing my experience and stories with them to help them achieve more in twelve months than they did in the last twelve years.

All great leaders have mastered one skill: human relations. To become a leader, you must start by becoming good at this skill and then work toward mastery. The good news is that it comes down to one thing. Read my next blog post, “Mastering The Ability To Deal With People Using Only One Technique.”

Get insights to become a better sales speaker in the next 12 weeks. 

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