Liam Sandford

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Speaking tips I wish I knew 10 years ago

Liam Sandford

10 years ago I had a fear of public speaking and I was fed up of the racing heart, sweaty palms and complete overwhelm at the thought of speaking in public. Something had to change.

Step by step I researched what I needed to do to remove my public speaking fear but unfortunately most advice I came across was unhelpful. ‘Open with a joke’, ‘picture the audience naked’, and ‘focus on a 3 second pause’ were either bad advice or too advanced for where I was at. It was noise.

I decided to start small, using daily conversations to help me overcome the fear. The nano speech was born. My approach has led me from fear of public speaking to now teaching people how to speak stress free. Here are three lessons I wish I knew.

Calming your mind

In a social media age, information is coming at you from everywhere. There is no way to be bored anymore and your mind is constantly on. This has numbed your ability to pause, stop, and focus on what you need to do in moments of stress.

Being able to calm your mind is a superpower for public speaking. It is also a skill you have to learn long before you have a presentation to deliver. It is not even a speaking skill but it makes every difference to your presentation.

Spend time daily switching off. Take 10 minutes to sit still with no stimulus. Get bored. Allow your mind get used to not being switched on constantly. This will help you gain clarity and focus. With this daily practice you will learn to be able to stop in the chaos of a presentation, breathe, and focus on just two things: what you are saying, and your connection with the audience.

You are uncomfortable because you don’t do it

It’s a chicken and egg situation. You have never delivered a big presentation before in front of that many people, or maybe you have and it didn’t go very well so you have avoided it since.

To get comfortable and confident at speaking you have to speak. Think about the first time you walked into your current job. You didn’t know the company and how they worked, you didn’t know the people. You were probably a bit nervous. Every day you showed up and got to know colleagues and how the organization runs you got more comfortable. Speaking is the same.

You need an instigator to start. For me it was the uncomfortable feeling of sat in the university lecture theatre being visibly sweaty with a racing heart. For you it might be getting forced into doing a presentation at work. Rather than throwing yourself into the deep end think about how you can get a public speaking rep in today, and then tomorrow, and start building a daily speaking habit in just 5 minutes. The uncomfortable goes away with reps. And the small reps compound to you being comfortable and confident as a speaker over time.

PowerPoint is not the problem, its how you use it

Don’t hide behind PowerPoint. You will have experienced ‘death by PowerPoint’ before, but it was the speaker who was the problem. It was how they used it, not the tool itself.

Stop making PowerPoint your crutch. Using it to read from the screen gets you into bad habits, and actually makes you worse as a speaker. Instead you need to be the main event, PowerPoint is the support act that helps your audience understand your key messages.

For years I was hiding behind PowerPoint and the second I was asked to speak without it I crumbled. When you speak in public what will you do if the tech fails or there is no screen? You need to be comfortable with this scenario. Ensure you can deliver without a screen and stop using PowerPoint as your crutch. It is an enabler for your audience, not your speaking prompt.

Actionable takeaways

  • Switch off every day, embrace being bored, and breathe. This will improve your ability to perform at your best under pressure, including speaking in public. A calm mind leads to a clear performance.

  • Start getting small reps in daily. Practice is the only thing that will take you from a fear of public speaking to stress free presentations. If you don’t speak in public you can’t improve.

  • Stop using PowerPoint as your crutch. If it will not help the audience understand the key point you are trying to make, remove it.

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