Tips for Feeling Confident When Speaking in Public
Tips for Feeling Confident When Speaking in Public
Public speaking is part of most jobs, whether you have to give a presentation to your team or the board, or have been invited to be a keynote speaker at an industry conference. Being able to speak confidently in front of people is an important skill, but it is not one that comes naturally to everyone. It can be hard to learn how to speak confidently in front of others, but there are some tricks to help you put your best foot forward any time you need to do any public speaking.
Look Good
If you look professional and feel confident in your style, then you’re going to immediately come across as more confident to your audience. Your outfit cannot do all the work, but it can help you to feel more knowledgeable and relaxed if you know you look the part.
Make sure your outfit is appropriate for the situation, clean and ironed. Stay away from any accessories that can be distracting, and keep things like jewelry simple. If you wear glasses, choose high quality ones that will not reflect light off the lenses and distract you while you’re trying to talk.
If you are delivering a speech on stage, check how your outfit will behave under the lights and how it will look from the seats. You do not want to find that bright light makes your shirt see-through or that the front row can see up your skirt.
Get Prepared And Well Organized
If you are properly prepared and organized for your speech or presentation, you will feel more confident. This can increase your control and reduce the likelihood of things going wrong.
See if you can visit the venue and the room in which you will present, so you can see where everything is. If you will be needing to use any equipment, make sure you try it out first, so you do not have to fumble with it in front of your audience.
At least the day before, print out any materials that you will need. Create cue cards for yourself so you can stay on track and not lose your place.
Prepare for any potential faults. This could be bringing a second laptop if you will be giving a slide show presentation, and a back-up in case a video will not play.
Arrive early, so you are not rushing and arriving stressed and sweating for your speech. Practice your speech plenty of times so you are confident in what you are saying, and know your speech well.
Practice
If you are very familiar with the content of your speech, you will come across as confident to your audience.
Do not just read your presentation through. Practice everything, including using any visual aids and your transitions.
Stand up and speak your presentation out loud as though you were presenting to a real audience.
Make sure you practice your body language and gesturing.
Ask friends or colleagues if you can present to them for practice, and ask for feedback.
Film yourself presenting and watch it back to see what areas you could improve in.
Feel free to improvise so you will sound more natural on the day. Do not learn your presentation by heart, as this can make your sound uninterested and robotic. If you lose concentration for a moment, then you could forget the whole thing.
Use Positive Mental Imagery
It can really help boost your confidence if you use positive mental imagery before the speech. Visualize yourself delivering your presentation with success to reinforce your confidence. Really imagine yourself being there. Use all of your senses to form the images. If you find that your visualizations are all negative and you are struggling to picture the speech going well, then challenge these negative thoughts by drawing on your previous experiences of communicating successfully. Replace the negative images with more realistic, positive ones.
Manage Your Nerves
Remember that you have not been asked to present or give a speech so people can ridicule you. You have been asked because people want to hear what you have to say. Make a plan for managing your nerves.
Do not drink too many caffeinated drinks before your presentation. Caffeine is a stimulant, which can leave you feeling more nervous and shaky.
Prepare some music or a podcast that you can listen to on the way to your presentation that will relax you.
Find a mindfulness exercise that will make you feel comfortable while you travel to the venue. Breathing exercises or guided meditation could be ideal.
Learn to control your breathing. Practice some breathing exercises before you go on stage. This will help you breathe slowly and keep your voice steady.
If you have the time, it can help to take some exercise beforehand. Exercise releases endorphins that reduce your levels of stress and make you feel better.
Recognize that it is unlikely that the audience will know that you feel nervous. As far as they know, you do this every day. You probably do not look as anxious as you feel.
Connect With The Audience Right Away
The first five minutes of your presentation is vital for engaging your audience and capturing their attention. You could tell a story about a mistake you made in the past, as long as it is relevant to the aim of your presentation.
People will relate to this, as everyone has made mistakes and had failures. The more your audience relates to you, the more likely it is that they will stay engaged with what you’re saying.
Take Pauses
During your presentation, if you catch yourself speaking too fast, then take a pause to breathe. Do not worry about this looking strange. It will appear as though you are giving some thought to what you are saying. You can strategically plan in some of your pauses. After questions or at the end of sections are good places for this. Pauses give you a chance to calm down and it will give your audience an opportunity to think about what you are saying and reflect on it.
Pausing also can help you to avoid using filler words, like ‘um,’ which can make you sound unsure about what you are saying.
Give Confident Body Language
You will notice that people who give speeches for a living look relaxed and confident. The pros speak slowly and make positive body movements. To appear more confident, you can:
Maintain eye contact with your audience
Use gestures to emphasize points
Move around the stage
Match facial expressions to what you are saying
Cut back on any nervous habits, like nail-biting or playing with your hair
Breathe slowly and steadily
Use Your Nervous Energy
It can be hard to hide your nerves, so another effective way of dealing with your nerves is to emphasize your emotions. This means that you convey the emotions that you are explaining or that you felt at the time. For example, if you are talking about disappointment over failure, or excitement over a success, display that. Displaying that emotion will help to disguise your nerves.
Speak Slowly
When you are feeling nervous, it can be tempting to try to rush through your presentation and finish as quickly as you can. Doing this makes it obvious to your audience that you are nervous, and is likely to be frustrating for them to both listen to and watch. If you are rushing, then you are not taking the time to make a connection with them, and it is more likely that you will make mistakes. Try speaking at a speed that feels uncomfortably slow for you, because it is likely that this is the correct speed to be clear and understandable.
Learn from your experience. And, most importantly, try to enjoy yourself!