So what is the real secret to being a confident speaker? It is knowing this little secret: You have little competition! Most speakers are horrible! And most speeches are awful!
Think about this for very long and you will become filled with confidence for your next speech. When is the last time you heard a colleague or someone in your industry give a fantastic and memorable speech? Chances are, you can’t remember one.
Why are most speeches bad? Because the speaker didn’t practice AND he or she never received any formal training on how to give a speech. How would this translate into other areas in your life?
Imagine you are an average weekend hack golfer with a 20 handicap. Someone enters you in a golf tournament with a $5000 entry fee and a $100,000 prize to the winner. All of a sudden, you are getting very nervous, right?
But what if you found out that every other player in the tournament had never played golf before, never had a lesson, and in fact, didn’t know which end of the club to hold? All of a sudden you would be brimming with confidence.
What if you had to enter an English writing contest, and all of your competitors didn’t read or write English and had never taken an English class. All of a sudden you are William Shakespeare in comparison!
I belief these analogies are fair when it comes to public speaking. Most presentations in the world consist of someone standing up and then nervously giving a boring data dump. When that is your primary completion, it is incredibly easy to make a great speech, in relative terms.
For most people in most organizations, simply being able to get up and look at people (rather than stare at notes or screens) and explain a few points with a couple of examples and stories will automatically make you the best speaker of the day if not the week.
So if you find yourself getting nervous before you give your next speech, think about your competition. If that doesn’t make you relax, then nothing will.
