(This post was first published here on September 21, 2015.) 

Public Speaking! Yikes!! For many people, public speaking is more feared than death!

All you have to do is avoid it, right? The problem is that public speaking is an important skill for organizational leaders. And you are all organizational leaders. I recall some of you saying that, “I don’t really do public speaking.” Then we would ask, “Do you ever give an update to your team?” And of course the reply was, “Yes…sometimes daily.” Well that is an example of public speaking. Anytime you are verbally communicating to a group, whether large or small, it is public speaking.

Leaders who do public speaking well have an advantage over those that don’t. It’s that simple.

Here is a list of some of the things we taught when we were public speaking in front of you—while trying to keeps our hands relaxed and at our sides!

Be yourself! This is hard to do when you’re nervous. This is partly due to fact that anxiety makes me stupid. It’s also hard to do when you are working on developing new skills. This is true in golf, tennis, music—any endeavor that takes a lot of skill development. But ultimately, the best leaders are able to be themselves when they are on stage.

Public speaking is a great chance to share yourself with others. Very often your team wants to hear from you! Here’s your chance; don’t waste it.

Decide if it’s more important to inspire your audience than to inform them. Sometimes the information is the most important thing they need. If that is the case you might ask yourself if there is a better way to communicate the information—maybe through email or a report.

Public speaking gives you a great chance to try to inspire your people while you are also providing relevant information. Stories, examples, and metaphors can be a great way to do this. If you can do this well, it can be a delight factor for your followers. You might remember the slide we showed that said, “People get more from how a speaker makes them feel than from the actual content of the message.” This may not always be true, but often it is.

Work to reduce the “noise” in your presentation. This isn’t just audible noise but anything that distracts from your message. This includes ums, ahs, and ands (which can be replaced with silent ums, ahs, and ands making you seem like a deep thinker because of the dramatic pause your audience will experience). This also includes visual noise like rocking, walking or pacing, jingling pocket change, clicking a pen, and so on. All of this reduction of noise takes practice, and unfortunately there aren’t any easy shortcuts.

Work to connect with your audience. As you plan your talk—whether you plan for months or just a few seconds—start by putting yourself in their shoes. What would they want to hear and see? What do they need to hear and see? Make your message centered on their needs and wants, NOT yours.

Then use your main connection tool—your eyes. If you’re speaking to a large audience pick out some people throughout the room and then focus on them for a couple of seconds. Shorter than that keep the connection from happening. Longer than that and it can start to feel like an marriage proposal! The cool thing is that this not only connects you to them, but to the entire audience.

We have a lot more information on the slides. We encourage you to look at them when you’re planning a big speech, or just working on continuing to improve your public speaking ability.

I was VERY privileged to see one of you make a presentation recently. Wow, it was very powerful!What made it powerful wasn’t the information, though that was good. It wasn’t some new insight into success, though there were many good insights offered.

It was this person’s sharing from the heart that made it a special speech. This led to tears and the whole thing was very powerful—probably so powerful that it made the speaker uncomfortable. This wonderful emotion radiated right through the living system, which was a small audience. The impact was so palpable that a CFO in the audience said afterward, “I don’t normally get emotional but that presentation made me go there.” This CFO went on to greatly affirm this speaker’s presentation.

Almost everyone one of us HATES crying in front of other people. ESPECIALLY in a speech. And it turns out this kind of is one of the most powerful ways to connect with your people. Letting your audience see deep emotion in you is almost irresistible and builds instant trust and love.

I don’t want to call you out  by name—but you know who you are. You were amazing!

One of the best speeches I ever witnessed was by a ninth grader who broke almost all of the public speaking rules, and he shared his heart with an audience of three hundred. He was crying and wiping snot on his sleeve while talking about some people he loved, and the audience was also crying (and only a few wiped snot on their sleeves).

Public speaking is a great tool for leaders. It can be really fun and powerful. And yes, it’s hard and takes a lot of practice, but it’s worth it. If you care about making a positive difference in people’s lives, keep looking for opportunities to speak publicly.

We hope you have a great week with some moments of real growth! Maybe you’ll even get a chance to make someone’s week better by sharing yourself in some public speaking.

Lead on,
Rodg

Image by Photo Cindy. Used under CC by 2.0 license.