As a leading health expert, it is your duty to attend many of the top health conferences so that you can share your valuable knowledge with others who are passionate about helping people improve their well-being. Whether you want to discuss the Coronavirus to the latest nutrition trends, you are going to need to develop your skills as a speaker. Here are some things to consider if you want to be a successful speaker.
Have Something to Say
“The trouble with many speakers is that they go before an audience with their minds a blank” says Dan Smith of Keynote Speaker. It is no wonder that nature, abhorring a vacuum, fills them with the nearest thing handy, which generally happens to be, “I wonder if I am doing this right! How does my hair look? I know I shall fail.” Their prophetic souls are sure to be right.
It is not enough to be absorbed by your subject—to acquire self-confidence you must have something in which to be confident. If you go before an audience without any preparation, or previous knowledge of your subject, you ought to be self-conscious—you ought to be ashamed to steal the time of your audience.
Prepare yourself
If you want to succeed, you must invest some time in preparing your speech. Know what you are going to talk about, and, in general, how you are going to say it. Have the first few sentences worked out completely so that you may not be troubled in the beginning to find words.
Know your subject better than your hearers know it, and you have nothing to fear.
After Preparing for Success, Expect It
Let your bearing be modestly confident, but most of all be modestly confident within. According to the Coaching Institute, over-confidence is bad, but to tolerate premonitions of failure is worse, for a bold man may win attention by his very bearing, while a rabbit-hearted coward invites disaster.
Humility is not the personal discount that we must offer in the presence of others—against this old interpretation there has been a most healthy modern reaction. True humility any man who thoroughly knows himself must feel; but it is not a humility that assumes a worm-like meekness; it is rather a strong, vibrant prayer for greater power for service—a prayer that Uriah Heep could never have uttered.
Washington Irving once introduced Charles Dickens at a dinner given in the latter’s honor. In the middle of his speech Irving hesitated, became embarrassed, and sat down awkwardly. Turning to a friend beside him he remarked, “There, I told you I would fail, and I did.”
If you believe you will fail, there is no hope for you. You will.
Rid yourself of this I-am-a-poor-worm-in-the-dust idea. You are a god, with infinite capabilities. “All things are ready if the mind be so.” The eagle looks the cloudless sun in the face.
Assume Mastery Over Your Audience
In public speech, as in electricity, there is a positive and a negative force. Either you or your audience are going to possess the positive factor. If you assume it you can almost invariably make it yours. If you assume the negative you are sure to be negative. Assuming a virtue or a vice vitalizes it. Summon all your power of self-direction, and remember that though your audience is infinitely more important than you, the truth is more important than both of you, because it is eternal. If your mind falters in its leadership the sword will drop from your hands.
Your assumption of being able to instruct or lead or inspire a multitude or even a small group of people may appall you as being colossal impudence—as indeed it may be; but having once essayed to speak, be courageous. BE courageous—it lies within you to be what you will. MAKE yourself be calm and confident.
Reflect that your audience will not hurt you. In facing your audience, pause a moment and look them over—a hundred chances to one they want you to succeed, for what man is so foolish as to spend his time, perhaps his money, in the hope that you will waste his investment by talking dully?
Concluding Hints
Take a deep breath, relax, and begin in a quiet conversational tone as though you were speaking to one large friend. You will not find it half as bad as you imagined; really, it is like taking a cold plunge: after you are in, the water is fine. In fact, having spoken a few times you will even anticipate the plunge with exhilaration.
To stand before an audience and make them think your thoughts after you is one of the greatest pleasures you can ever know. Instead of fearing it, you ought to be as anxious as the fox hounds straining at their leashes, or the race horses tugging at their reins.
So cast out fear, for fear is cowardly—when it is not mastered. The bravest know fear, but they do not yield to it. Face your audience pluckily—if your knees quake, MAKE them stop. In your audience lies some victory for you and the cause you represent. Go win it.
The world owes its progress to the men who have dared, and you must dare to speak the effective word that is in your heart to speak—for often it requires courage to utter a single sentence. But remember that men erect no monuments and weave no laurels for those who fear to do what they can.
No one doubts that temperament and nerves and illness and even praiseworthy modesty may, singly or combined, cause the speaker’s cheek to blanch before an audience, but neither can any one doubt that coddling will magnify this weakness. The victory lies in a fearless frame of mind. Prof. Walter Dill Scott says: “Success or failure in business is caused more by mental attitude even than by mental capacity.” Banish the fear-attitude; acquire the confident attitude. And remember that the only way to acquire it is—to acquire it.