Through my coaching and training I have observed many individuals display significant anxiety about speaking in front of a group of people.

At the same time I have observed others who appeared to be very confident and talented at public speaking. I spoke to some of these individuals after they were finished and complimented them on their performance. Many of them confided that they were extremely nervous the whole time and that they thought their hearts were going to beat out of their chest. Yet nothing in their presentation showed this.

I reflected on this and realized that they had created the perception of confidence. You don’t become a confident speaker overnight. It took many years to acquire your speaking anxiety. Only time and a constant commitment to improvement will let you gain the confidence you desire.

However, you can begin, almost immediately, to create the perception of confidence. This can be done by focusing on the tools you have available; gestures/body language, facial expression and vocal variety to name a few. The more you focus on creating the perception of confidence and the more confident you will become. Eventually that will become your new norm.

So work on creating the perception of confidence and let the real thing follow naturally.

Now go out and Make Your Voice Heard!

Want to learn the 5 Tools (you already have) to become a confident, engaging and effective speaker?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave me a comment or suggest a topic for a future blog.

I have a quote that I use from time to time. I think it is attributed to Abraham Lincoln. It goes something like this. “If I were given 8 hours to cut down a large tree I would spend 7 hours sharpening my axe.” (I say saw in the video. Not sure where that came from!)

This is a great analogy for public speaking. It really is about the preparation and the rehearsal to sharpen your speaking skills. You don’t want to over rehearse. You do want to be comfortable with your content and how you intend to deliver it. The best way to do that is to rehearse.

One of the more powerful tools available to us today is video capability. Everyone has a smart phone and you can purchase a small tripod and adapter for less than $20. Capture video of yourself rehearsing your speech. You don’t have to show it to anyone. However, if you would like additional feedback I would encourage you to do so.

Either way you have to look at your video with a constructive eye not a critical eye. Pat yourself on the back for the things you do well and look for things that you can improve on and deal with them.

Now go out and Make Your Voice Heard!

Want to learn the 5 Tools (you already have) to become a confident, engaging and effective speaker?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave me a comment or suggest a topic for a future blog.

The phrase “I have butterflies in my stomach” is commonly used to describe the feeling that occurs with speaking anxiety. This is not a good feeling. Fortunately we have the power to get our butterflies in order.

In the early days of my own personal journey to overcome speaking anxiety I was given lots of advise for how I could deal with it. Some of the advice was good. Some, not so good.

A couple still stand out. One was that I should image my audience naked when I speak to them. I don’t know about you, but I had enough trouble talking to them dressed. Imagining them naked wasn’t going to work. Another piece of advice was to find a spot on the back wall and focus on that while I speak. I realized very quickly that I needed to to use my eyes to engage my audience. Staring at the back wall would lot allow me to do that.

Anxiety is negative energy and I believe that we only have so much energy. So anytime we can focus on something constructive we peal away that negative energy and convert it to positive. The more we focus on our audience and our message to them the more positive energy we create and the more comfortable we become.

Speaking is a craft. If we focus on the tools we have and how to use them we become more confident.

Now go out and Make Your Voice Heard!

Want to learn the 5 Tools (you already have) to become a confident, engaging and effective speaker?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave me a comment or suggest a topic for a future blog.

In order to develop and improve your speaking and presentation skills you need to consider 3 P’s.

The first P is Participation. You do not become a better speaker by listening to others speak or by reading a book or by listening to a coach. You learn to become a better speaker by applying that information and knowledge when you speak. You have to participate.

The second P is Perseverance. There will be set backs. When these occur you need to consider the bigger picture, remember what your goal is and how you are advancing toward that goal. Don’t let the setbacks get you down.

The third P is Patience. you have to be patient with yourself. There is no magic pill, secret sauce or special elixir to help you become a better speaker. It takes time.

You are on a journey. A journey to become a confident, engaging and effective speaker. Enjoy the journey.

Now go out and Make Your Voice Heard!

Want to learn the 5 Tools (you already have) to become a confident, engaging and effective speaker?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave me a comment or suggest a topic for a future blog.

If you want to be known as an effective speaker and presenter you have to learn to engage your audience.

The sooner you engage your audience in your speech or presentation the more likely you are to capture their attention. There are several ways to do that. I will focus on a couple techniques.

Early in your speech you could ask a question? If I am speaking on public speaking and presentations skills I could ask my audience; “By a show of hands who wants to be a better speaker or presenter?” I can pretty much guarantee that everyone will put up their hand.

You could ask a rhetorical question. You are not expecting a response. The question could be “How would your life change if you could improve your speaking and presentation skills?”

Both of these questions are examples of how you can pull your audience into your content before you even begin sharing your content.

Don’t stop there. Look for other opportunities to engage your audience throughout your speech or presentation. If you are going to share a story you could say to your audience, “I want you to imagine this.” Then share your story. You have now made them a participant in the story.

When you engage your audience you are making it about them and not about you.

Now go out and Make Your Voice Heard!

Want to learn the 5 Tools (you already have) to become a confident, engaging and effective speaker?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave me a comment or suggest a topic for a future blog.

This blog post was inspired by the Olympics in Brazil. The Olympics are well into its second week with over 11,000 athletes participating. Each one of those athletes has a story of how they got to the Olympics. Many of the stories are compelling and inspiring. All of them are unique. It is amazing to learn about some of the obstacles that have been overcome in order to achieve their goal of participating in the Olympics.

As I watched various events the past few days it struck me that everyone of those athletes are clear on their ‘why’. They are crystal clear on why they do what they do. Understanding the why is so important to many of the things we do in our lives. This is certainly true of public speaking and presenting. If you are clear on why you want to be a better speaker and presenter then we can work on the how. Some may feel very strongly that they have a message that the world needs to hear. For others it could be about personal growth and development.

Once you know your why you can tap into the tremendous potential of the human spirit to make your goals happen.

Do you know your why?

Now go out and Make Your Voice Heard!

Want to learn the 5 Tools (you already have) to become a confident, engaging and effective speaker?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave me a comment or suggest a topic for a future blog.

About a month ago I posted my first Facebook Live video. The topic of the video was the importance of commitment to achieving coaching success.

I feel the message is an important one and I would like to share it on my blog. So this will be a slightly different blog post. Instead of embedding the video in my blog post I am inserting the link to the video which is located on Facebook. Why am I doing that? Because I haven’t figured how to embed Facebook videos into my blog … smiling.

The commitment I talk about is not the commitment of the coach. I feel that is a given. The coach must be committed, must e experienced at coaching and must be knowledgeable in his/her area of expertise.

The commitment that I speak about is the commitment of the client. The client has to be committed to the process, to following that process and to doing the work.

My area of expertise is public and presentation skills. I help entrepreneurs and business professionals become confident, engaging and effective speakers. One of the things I tell my clients early in the coaching cycle is that you don’t learn how to speak by listening to me speak. I help them identify and grow their strengths and discover areas that need improvement and together we develop strategies to help them become confident, engaging and effective speakers.

I have been coaching clients for several years and the one thing that determines if the client is successful in achieving their speaking goals is their level of commitment. They have to be willing to follow the process and more importantly they have to be committed to doing the work. The ones who had that commitment showed tremendous progress.

I believe that client commitment is the secret sauce for any type of coaching. There is nothing more inspiring than watching someone who is committed to doing the work necessary to achieve their goals.

Now go out and Make Your Voice Heard!

Video – Client Commitment in Coaching

Want to learn the 5 Tools (you already have) to become a confident, engaging and effective speaker?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave me a comment or suggest a topic for a future blog.

For public speaking and presentations timing is important.

This topic covers a variety of possibilities. I’d like to focus on two for this post. First is your rate of speech. It is important that you are aware of your natural speaking speed. If you have a tendency to talk slow you run the risk of boring your audience. Speeding up your rate of speech will help make your presentation more vibrant. If you have a tendency to speak too fast then you run the risk of your audience not understanding what you are saying. You also run the risk of tripping up on your words. I am guilty of speaking too fast. I use to have to make a conscious effort to slow down when I spoke to a group of people. Now it just comes automatically.

The second point I’d like to make is to encourage you to consider using pauses. They are almost critical if you are sharing a story or telling a joke. Well placed pauses put emphasis on key aspects of your story. They allow your audience the opportunity to process what you are saying and they allow you the opportunity to assess your audience by ‘listening with your eyes’.

Bring your next presentation to life by adjusting your rate of speech to suit your message and your audience and leveraging the pause where appropriate.

Now go out and Make Your Voice Heard!

Want to learn the 5 Tools (you already have) to become a confident, engaging and effective speaker? Click the link for FREE video training. The Speaker’s Tool Box

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave me a comment or suggest a topic for a future blog.

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I have posted a couple of videos on story telling and have received some great feedback and a few suggestions. One of the suggestions was that I offer a category of stories. After giving it some thought I came up with a category I know we all have. I call it Defining Moments. 

It refers to those moments that have contributed in a very positive way to our lives and who we have become. They are not the obvious ones of marriage and birth of a child. They are the ones that are unique to only ourselves. Mine are not the same as yours and yours are not the same as anyone else.

Because they are unique to us we are the only ones who can tell them. So think about the defining moments in your life. There may be some nuggets there that you can use in a future speech or presentation. 

Remember, you still need to link them to your topic. Otherwise they won’t work well.

Now go out and Make Your Voice Heard!

Want to learn the 5 Tools (you already have) to become a confident, engaging and effective speaker? Click the link for FREE video training. The Speaker’s Tool Box

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave me a comment or suggest a topic for a future blog.

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“If You Want to be Known as Pleasant Tell Your Face.”

It is important that our facial expression and vocal tone are in synch with what we want to be known for. If we want our audience (1 or 1000) to perceive us as pleasant we need to ensure that our facial expression and tone of voice are reflecting that message. If they aren’t our audience will pay less attention to the words and will focus on our facial expression and tone of voice.

This applies to all our oral communications and whatever quality we want to convey. If we want to be perceived as enthusiastic, sincere, committed, grateful, etc. we will be more successful if our facial expression and tone of voice supports those qualities.

If you are using video to communicate your message remember that you will not have the advantage of immediate feedback from your audience. This isn’t a bad thing. It will give you a greater opportunity to focus more energy on delivering your message.

What’s your face telling your audience?

Now go out and Make Your Voice Heard!

Want to learn the 5 Tools (you already have) to become a confident, engaging and effective speaker? Click the link for FREE video training. The Speaker’s Tool Box

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave me a comment or suggest a topic for a future blog.