Video 2: The Key to Unforgettable Speaking

Clarity is key! So what’s the something you’d like achieve (or achieve more of) when it comes to your public speaking? It’s great to think of this for yourself.

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TRANSCRIPT

Two Pro Tips For Preparing to Speak

There’s a couple of things that I can share with you that certainly have helped me and taken me longer to realize than I care to admit.

I’ve been a speaker for over 10 years, and did not start out with much coaching so I’ve learned a lot of these things on my own, slowly and over time.

Number one: comfort before content.

Focus on being comfortable rather than nailing your content.

It sounds a little bit counterintuitive, because whenever you’re asked to speak in public, your first instinct is to write down what you would say and then work on memorizing it and crafting your delivery to share in the best way you can.

The problem is this does nothing to help deal with your own expectations of what a speaker is ‘supposed’ to be, and the resulting nervousness that comes from that!

There are few requests more likely to activate our inner critic and our imposter syndrome than being asked to speak.

So I encourage you to first try to identify the thought in your head that fills you with the most nervousness and craft a different thought in response. I’ll give you a couple examples.

If you find yourself thinking “Who do you think you are?” I’d love to point out that that’s actually a question. It sounds rhetorical, but you can answer it. You can say, “Sure, thanks for asking. I’m a human being with love to give and passion and knowledge that I want to share. That’s who I think I am.”

Thoughts in our head like this one are really questions, not the end of the conversation.

It could be, “I’m not qualified to do this.” or “I haven’t spoken enough to be expert at this.” or “I’m not _________ enough.”

With any of these thoughts, the real opportunity you have is to respond to these thoughts throughout your preparation and throughout your speech itself. Just keep reminding yourself of your new mantra, which might be:

I have every right to be here.
I was asked to be here.
I have something to offer.
I truly care.
I’m a good person.

Pick a mantra that feels true for you, and remind yourself of as many times as you need to. Because without managing that inner thought process, you can easily spiral into self-doubt and this leads to endless drafting and over-preparation. It’s also not much fun.

Believe me, I’ve been there.

So your first goal is to strive to be psychologically and emotionally comfortable. You’ll find as you create your content that when you’re comfortable in your writing and in your speaking, you’ll actually do a lot better. You’ll even come up with some gems and great thoughts and impress yourself. This happens when you’re no longer in your own way because you’re no longer beating yourself up.

Number two: be present not perfect.

We have this idea of what we expect a speaker to be.

A speaker is impressive, polished, eloquent, and memorable. They they have gravitas and charisma.

Forget all that.

We’ve all seen somebody speak who was so good and if we’re honest we can’t remember anything they talked about.

Because their performance was so polished and perfect we couldn’t see their humanity.

Humanity is what people really want from you. When you speak to them they want you to be present in the room, or present on the screen.

They want to know that you are here for this. You’re here for them. Because you care and you want to be here. You want to know what their questions are. You want to give value.

You can convey this without saying it, through your body language and facial expressions, by:

smiling and laughing
owning your expertise and your human goofy relatable side
playfully acknowledging mistakes or stumbles in your words
having fun with their contributions

The more you do that the more you are present, and it is that presence that people remember.