Public Speaking and Panic Attacks by Peter Lawrence

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Public Speaking and Panic Attacks

Use Your Inside Voice by SellingPower.com

Voice control – great presenters use it to make sure their messages are heard loud and clear. Expert communications consultant, founder and president of Power Presentations, Inc., Sheri Jeavons offers these tips to use your voice more effectively:

Speak up. Pick a spot or a person in the back of the room to begin your communication. Make sure you speak loud enough for that person to hear you. However, warns Jeavons, if using a microphone, don't yell; instead, adjust the amplification so that you can be heard clearly while using your normal voice.

Tell stories. Some ways to make sure you have voice modulation and enthusiasm in your voice is to tell stories, and use analogies, metaphors, and alliteration. For example, using alliteration such as, "simple, selective service" can make a point memorable. You can also repeat a phrase so that it will be etched in your audience's mind. "You'll see a 30 percent cost savings. That's a 30 percent cost savings."

Use pauses. "If you feel that you speak particularly fast, stop and pause at the end of a key point and/or when you are changing a slide," says Jeavons. "This will stop the energy. Incorporating more pauses will help slow you down because it's a discipline."

Be natural. When you are presenting, use your everyday talking voice, says Jeavons. "People sometimes get into a presenter voice and it's a little too phony," she says. "Instead use your natural speech patterns because they have variations in pitch. For example, if you feel yourself droning on and notice that your audience is losing interest, the best thing you can do is stop talking and ask a question to change your tone of voice. This will engage you in a conversation and conversation is more natural because it adds modulation to your voice."

Seek variety. Tell a story so you can slow down or pick up your speech pace to make a point stand out. "Variety keeps it interesting," says Jeavons. "Think about where you want to speed things up or slow things down, and then slow down where you really want them to get it. Make it obvious." If your voice is really strong and quick normally, soften it, and slow it down. Conversely, if you tend to be laid back when speaking, get a little louder and intense on a part that's really meaningful to the client. Another way to add variety is to adopt a more staccato pace at certain points of your presentation – short, quick phrases can draw immediate attention to what you are saying. "That stop, start, stop, start will grab people's attention," says Jeavons.

Be enthusiastic. "Take it up a notch or two," advises Jeavons. "The way to do that is to tell the customer about the value they are going to receive from your product or service. When you are talking about something they want or need, you will see them smile or shake their head and that will create more enthusiasm for you, too."

Take care. Drink room temperature water before, during, and after you speak to prevent potential voice problems during your presentation. Jeavons says that coffee, tea, or sodas have acidic properties in them that can dry out your throat. She also warns against drinking cold drinks because they can constrict your throat.

Always practice. Jeavons suggests to audio record yourself and then listen to the way you present. Is there enthusiasm? No? Then tell more stories, ask more questions, or use people's names to create more energy. Does your tone vary? Does your pace vary? Do you need to pause more often? If so, where? Once you know where you need to improve, it can be easy to incorporate changes.

11 Tips to Be a Better Public Speaker by www.SixWise.com

Public speaking is a skill -- one that takes practice and perseverance to master.
(read more here http://www.sixwise.com/newsletters/08/05/07/11-Tips-to-Be-a-Better-Public-Speaker.htm)

And now, without further ado, here are the 11 top ways to become a better public speaker.

1. Know your audience. Tailor your message directly to this group, then greet some of the audience members as they arrive so you feel like you're speaking to friends.
   
2. Know your material. In general, you should only give a speech about something you know very well. Make sure you know even more about the topic than you intend to include in the speech.
   
3. Practice makes perfect. You should practice every speech, out loud, and including any visual aids you plan to use, numerous times.
   
4. Take a breath. Pauses can lend just the right emphasis to an important point, so be sure to include them when appropriate.

Remember to use body language, including your facial expressions, eye contact, posture, and hand gestures, to engage your audience and convey your confidence.

5. Use body language to your advantage. Your posture, eye contact, hand gestures and facial expressions speak volumes. Here are some tips to use this non-verbal form of communication.
   
6. Visualize a successful speech. Picture yourself wowing the audience with your charisma, poise and wit. It will help to ease your nerves.
   
7. Do not apologize. If you stumble on your words, appear nervous or mix up a part of your speech, don't say anything about it. The audience will probably not notice, unless you bring it up.
   
8. The audience is your friend. It's easy to think of the audience as the big, bad wolf. But in reality, they want your speech to be a success.
   
9. Figure out your take-home message. What is it that you want the audience to leave with? How would you want them to sum up your speech if they were to describe it to someone else? This is your take-home message. Use it to build your entire speech.
   
10. Start with a bang. The first few minutes of your speech will set the tone for your entire presentation, so use them to your advantage. Try a joke, a shocking statistic, an inspiring quote or a news headline that will get the audience's attention and peak their curiosity.
    
11. Get personal. When appropriate, share your personal stories, experiences and thoughts. This keeps your speech unique while sharing your motivations and enthusiasm with the audience. Also, speak to the audience as you would a friend. It's generally not appropriate to keep things overly formal or technical.
    

Recommended Reading
How to Overcome Your Fear of Failure
Taking Risks: How to Take Calculated Risks to Get Ahead in Anything

A Convenient Truth at Toastmasters by Meryl Runion

Whitewash
Have you ever been beside yourself? I’m talking about the kind of mind-body disconnect where your body is there but your mind is someone else. That’s what I was like that day.

I took a deep breath as I observed the clock. It seemed to drag and fly at the same time. I didn’t hear a word the Toastmaster said until the sound of my name reached me through my fog. I somehow found my way to the front of the room.

The light from the window obscured the view of my audience. I was relieved that I couldn’t clearly see their reactions to my first speech ever. My mouth was moving, but I wasn’t aware enough to supervise what came out. I somehow knew when to stop and sat down to hear my presentation evaluated.

I feared the evaluation more than the presentation itself. I shouldn’t have. My evaluation was a whitewash. The evaluator sang my praises and failed to note a single flaw or idea for improvement. Wow. I must have been some kind of speaking genius.

I continued to present speeches and continued to receive rave reviews of my amazing, flawless presentations until something happened after my forth speech that took me down from my cloud.

Betrayed by the truth
What happened? I received an honest review. Bonnie, my evaluator, identified the strengths of my presentation and proceeded to identify the areas where I could improve.

I felt mistreated, abandoned and betrayed. Bonnie broke the rules! She was supposed to tell me how perfect I was like the others had done.

Yet beneath my inner protest I knew she had given me a far greater gift.

Nothing less than the truth would do
About a month later, I resolved to enter the Toastmasters humorous speech contest. Suddenly I was serious. Suddenly I wanted honest feedback. Suddenly I wanted Bonnie to evaluate all my speeches. And suddenly Bonnie left the club and was no longer available to tell me how I could improve.

I won second place for the Iowa Humorous Speech Competition that year. Had Bonnie been able to coach me, might I have won first?

A feast of feedback
Years later I sent a videotape of a Toastmasters speech to the largest seminar company in the United States. I was thrilled when they flew me in for an audition and later hired me.

At that point, when I spoke, 40 – 400 people who had paid money to hear me evaluated me each day. Some of the evaluations were whitewashes. Some were critical but lacking in recommendations I could implement. But mixed in, there were useful evaluations that Bonnie could have written. I used those evaluations to help me improve.

Now, I book my own speaking engagements. My platform is to Speak Strong – to be willing to tell people what they need to hear, even when they are reluctant to hear it. Bonnie demonstrated what it means to Speak Strong when she evaluated my presentation accurately.

A great resource
My career began for me at Toastmasters with a woman who was willing to tell me what I needed to know. I was terrified at my first presentation, and 1000 presentations later I still deal with that fear every time I present. I dreaded feedback then, and I still embrace it with trepidation today. But I love to speak more than I fear it, and I am grateful for the support that helped me get where I am.

Have you ever been beside yourself? It’s easy to disconnect and easier to give up. But then you’d miss the Toastmasters’ opportunity to learn how to speak well. You’d miss the opportunity to hear what you need to hear. You’d miss the opportunity to learn make your point so others get your point. You’d miss a fabulous opportunity to Speak Strong. What an opportunity that is!

For immediate help with your communication challenges, order the book PowerPhrases! now, and we'll email you a link to a free PDF of the book within hours.

Reprint/Reuse Policy:

You have permission to use any of these articles in your newsletter, publications, or on your web site. Please:

1. Let us know when and how you are using the article via email: E-mail Meryl.
2. If it is a web posting, please link back to this article
3. Place Meryl’s tag line at the end of the article with all her contact information. If on-line, please make certain that her web address links to her site. Thanks!

Tag line

Meryl Runion and Speak Strong (SpeakStrong) provides Power Phrases (PowerPhrases) and other tools to help you improve communication skills at work and at home.

She is the author of the books Speak Strong, PowerPhrases!, How to Use PowerPhrases, Perfect Phrases for Managers and Supervisors and How to Say It: Performance Reviews. She can be reached at 719-684-2633 or by email: E-mail Meryl.         

Overcoming Speaking Anxiety - free podcast

Coach Ian Scott interviews professional speaker Lenny Laskowski. Lenny is the President of LJL Seminars, a public speaking training company. We discuss the fear of public speaking. Techniques to relax and be a more confident speaker. How taking the time to improve your communication skills can improve your career,increase your income,and impact upon ALL aspects of your life. Plus much, much more! To learn more about Lenny's company, visit: http://www.ljlseminars.com. To learn more about Coach Ian Scott, visit his official website here: http://www.coachianscott.com

7 Tips to Improve Your Public Speaking

We all have to speak in public one time or another, and according to some (somewhat doubtful) research, public speaking is the number one fear of most people. However, with some preparation, mostly anyone can do a pretty good job at it. There isn't as much magic to public speaking as some make it seem. By implementing the following 7 Tips anyone can come accross as a pretty good speaker. You don't believe me??? Try it!

1. Dress for success!
While this might seem an obvious one, I regularly encounter speakers who majorly underdress or (some) overdress. The thumb of rule is, of course, better be overdressed than underdressed. Your audience wants to look up to you and good "packaging" will enhance your image tremendously. When unsure, contact the event organizer and find out what is the expected attire for speakers.

2. Develop a great intro and closing and practice them till you can say them forward and backward even in your dreams!
There are only few things screaming "I'm not a professional" than someone starting their presentation with excuses or some weak mumbo-jumbo. Start your presentation with a quote, an intriguing question, humor, or a short story, or even magic; then link your intro to the topic of the day. Close your presentation by bringing up elements of your intro and build to a strong finish to elicit your well-deserved applause. One of my favorite techniques is the short suspense story that captivates the audience, then without finishing it, link it to the topic of the day. Then as a closing of the presentation, bring up again the suspense story, make a comparison to the topic again, and this time finish it.

3. Notice your tendency to use "Ah's," Mmm's" and other fillers in your presentation!
It can become really annoying when a speaker is uncomfortable with pauses in between sentences or while thinking, and fills those gaps with "Ahhh..," "Mmm.," or other sounds. Another, almost equally, annoying fillers are the constantly repeated "You know what I mean," "You see what I'm saying," and other constantly repeated fillers.There are two good ways to raise your awareness about these fillers: a) record one (or more) of your presentation(s) and listen with an ear for filers; b) Join your local Toastmasters International club - they are really good about helping you break your filler habits. (I had around 60 "Ahh's" and "Mmmm's" in my first speech I delivered at Toastmasters. By the time I gave my 7th or 8th speech I had zero fillers.) Once you are aware of your tendencies of using certain fillers, you can consciously take steps to eliminating them.

4. Don't overwhelm your audience with too much information!
Do you want your audiences to leave with a sense of "This was great! Today I learned something?" Then narrow down the information you want to present in a way that will not overwhelm your audience. Ask yourself "What is it that the audience really needs to know about this topic?" Then break down that info into chunks that will fit the length of your presentation. At the end of your presentation give your audience information on how they can learn more about the topic - hopefully, by buying your book(s), tapes, CD, extended course, etc.

5. Build your presentation in an easy to follow format!
Whether you are using PowerPoint, flip chart, or other methods to stay on track and to keep your audiences on track, make sure that you tell them in the introduction what points you will cover, then stick to the "plan" as close as possible. An easy way to accomplish this is by giving out handouts where participants can follow your train of thought. One of the most effective ways would be to have the main points spelled out on the handout, then have some fill-in-the-blanks fragments relating to each particular point.

6. Time yourself!
When you practice, time each segment of your presentation and prepare a little cheat sheet (a 2 X 4 card, for example) that you will keep in your sight while you speak, right near a timer or watch. With this little "tool" you'll always know whether you are on track. If you are running out of time, speed up or skip parts of your presentation and conclude with your rehearsed closing.

7. Keep eye contact!
One of the biggest difficulties of novice public speakers is keeping eye contact with the audience. However, this is a very crucial element to come accross as a great speaker. When a speaker keeps looking above the audiences head, the ceiling, the floor, etc., after a while the audience starts wandering "Who the heck is this guy talking to?"
The easyiest method to keeping good eye contact with your audience is by finding one smiling or friendly face and keep eye contact most of the time with that person... Then as the presentation moves on, start making eye contact (for a second or two) with some other audience members, but always returning to your smiling/friendly face. Then once you find another encouraging audince member, start keeping eye contact for some time period with this second person, while also wandering away to make eye contact with other audience members for a second or two.
By following this method, usually one finds themselves more and more encouraged and the confidence gained that way will result in an easier flow of the message and more and more audience members will become engaged and be transformed into "friendly and smiling" faces.

......

Public speaking can be one of the most rewarding experiences. When applying the above 7 tips should make it more enjoyable for anyone, including your audiences who definitely do not want to see a speaker fail, mumble, talk to the walls, etc. People listen to a speaker to learn something or to get entertained; so follow the above tips and give your audience the great presentation they deserve.

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© Copyright E.G. Sebastian, 2005. All rights reserved.
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E.G. Sebastian is a performance coach and an international speaker (speaks 6 languages).
E.G. is a certified DiSC Behavioral System trainer and DiSC personality assessments distributor.

To hire E.G. to provide Public Speaking/Presentation Skills training - for groups or for individuals - call him toll-free at 877.379.3793, or contact him by E-mail at info@egsebastian.com.

Online Public-Speaking Resources

A great collection of links to blogs at http://speaking.alltop.com/ 

Presentation Zen http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/ 

Six Minutes Your guide to becoming a confident and effective speaker http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/ 

Interesting, presentations are available at http://www.ted.com /

Podcast for Toastmasters - called Toastcaster http://toastcaster.podbean.com/ 

For humorous speech http://www.humorpower.com/

The best public speaking tip ever by Scott Berkun

This is it. This is the big one. It’s the best, simplest advice I’ve ever heard about public speaking: Videotape yourself speaking and watch it.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
This is not new (title says best tip, not the most original), but most people are terrified of this and never do it. Well guess what - if you’re afraid to do it, how should your audience feel? Would you hire an accountant that doesn’t do their own taxes? Well, if you’re a speaker, you should, once in awhile, be your own audience.
We’ve all seen thousands of professional speakers, actors and presenters on tv and in the workplace making us all excellent critics of presentations. But what most of us lack is the most basic feedback on how we perform ourselves.
If you watch even 5 minutes of yourself presenting, you can catch:

• Lazy speaking habits, like ummms and aaaaws.
• Lack of eye contact (reading isn’t presenting) and presence.
• Body language issues and distractions.
• Moments when you’re confused by your own material.
• Energy level (do you seem to care about what you’re saying?).
• Personality - are you indistinguishable from a presentation robot?

Watch yourself and take notes. After you’ve caught things like above that distract you as a viewer, videotape yourself again - on the same material - with the goal of doing less of the above, and more or the things you did well. As you repeat the material with these things in mind, more and more of your material will come through. Still think you suck? Do it again and again and I promise you will get better nearly every time.
With the video, you can ask friends to review and give feedback - but pick your presentation minded, critical friends, not the ones who, like your Mom, will just tell you how great you were.
This requires no training, no special Powerpoint voodoo, just your willingness to swallow your pride for an hour or more. Believe me - your audience will appreciate it.

10 common presentation tips by Daryl Mather

As part of my own consulting, as well as mentoring of colleagues and others that I come in contact with, I often give them the following tips on presentations.

This is sort of a small summary of the one day presenting skills course that I have developed over the past couple of years. I hope it is of use and of interest to you. (And if it is please share it with others)

And yes.. this means you need to revisit that presentation and cut it to ribbons.

1. Drink water about 20 minutes before speaking. It makes you think better. (Fact!) THis is good for interviews, exams and negotiations by the way.

2. Don't just use the bog-standard Power Point Fonts. (Fontstock.net)

3. Use open gestures. Do not point at anybody except with the back of your hands. (Flowing movement) Do not hide behind the flipchart. (Please!!)

4. Images win over text. The presentationis not your teleprompter, it is there for the audience. iStockphoto, Google Images, Flickr and Photobucket are all low cost sources of images. (Careful of copyright)

5. If you must use text then be creative. Don't write everything you know, only the points they need to remember. Don't use ten words when two will do, you can add it later verbally.

Do use scrolling, don't accentuate every word. Do change sizes, colors, etcetera.

6. Relax - they want you to succeed. (normally)

7. Remember the rule of thirds. Cut your screen into thirds and make sure that you place items in the right places. (For good perspective)

8. Be conversational, be socratic. (Ask questions)

9. State your claim. In your first minute or two make it quite clear that you have the right to be there talking to them about this theme. The more important you are the smaller introduction you need. (Anybody ever ask "who's Elvis?") So until you are that important you need to make sure everyone is comfortable spending the money they have spent.

10. Take questions during the presentation.

You dont want to get into the situation where a) you take questions from the most important person in the room but not everyone else, or b) you tell the most important person in the room to shut up.

Not an exhaustive list, but a good starting point for anybody about to present.

Another good article is 6 Tips for Presenting without Software

Secrets of interesting conversation by Peter Murphy

In this video Peter mentions a number of common mistakes to avoid.
Make sure you catch those points. You´ll know why this is so
important after you hear Peter explain how those mistakes can really
get in the way of making great conversation.

Turn on your speakers and watch the video at:

http://www.howtotalkwithconfidence.com/interesting/interesting.html