Are you searching for some public speaking fear tips to overcome your fears during your speech or presentation to the management? When it comes to public speaking, our fear comes from what we do not know.  And in order to overcome them, we have to identify what exactly do we fear before we can prepare, practice and become an expert in public speaking.

I have narrow down 3 common ideas that your fear might have come from.

1 – Afraid that your audience don’t trust you

This is the most basic preparation to eliminate your fears.  Often, we have this voice in our head that can be pretty convincing.

We will be thinking the many “what ifs”.

- What if the audience find me boring,
- what if the audience hates my guts,
- what if they hate my hair,
- what if they look the way I look,
- what if they hate my voice,
- what if they find me stupid,
- what if they think i am a con artist

Trust comes from showing off your knowledge.  Your first task at hand is to convince yourself that you are the expert in your field and you are the best.  If you are not one of the best experts, then the audience should be the one on stage instead of you.  Use your body posture to show professionalism, your voice to command respect, your emotions to show your passion and finally your body language to support what you have just said.

2 – Afraid that you will not be able to capture the people’s attention

You are definitely not going to capture anyone’s attention if your voice sounds boring, your body posture looks lazy or uncomfortable and your speech is just presented in 1 tone.  Practice your commanding voice, add in jokes, add a bit of music, find the common factor between you and the audience and use that information to enforce an idea or to make them laugh together.

Building rapport at the beginning will go a long way in capturing their attention.  But everything needs research, and practice.  What are the common jargon they use, why they are here listening to you etc.  Use these information to your advantages.

3 – Afraid that you cannot answer the questions from the audiences

Remember, you are the best in your field, but it does not mean you are good at everything.  You cannot know everything but you are definitely strong in certain areas.  The best way is to research and anticipate the type of questions that might be asked.

Based on your experience, you should be able to figure them out.  Then with each question, you prepare an answer.  But if there is really an question that you do not know, do not lie.  Audiences are not stupid.  Just be honest and let them know you do not know the answer to that question.  The people below cannot fault you for something you do not have experience in.  But they will give you credit for being honest.

Conclusion

Hope that these 3 public speaking fears tips can help you in your future speech or presentation.  Basically, there is no easy way out.  It is always good to prepare, practice and practice to become perfect and be the best speaker on stage.

If you want to improve your speaking techiques, then you should check out how this former manager who had fear of speaking turn his presentation into a roaring success with his company's management and what techniques did he use that made him change his job and become a public speaker today.

Check out www.getapplausenow.com

For public speaking technique, we have briefly discussed the value of your body language, the 3 “P”s of a good speaker but it is also time to explore deeper into the way you talk and convey your speech.  Lets call this the public speaking voice technique. Though it may sound simple but it can actually be quite an art.

I have listed 3 factors you should look at:

1 – Emotions in your voice

What could be more boring than to have someone on stage talking straight out of a text book? There are no ups, no downs and no signs of humor or power.  This is the reason why people start dozing off, playing games on their mobile.  A good speaker will always make their speech come alive.  There may be no trees or wind blowing in a room but an experience speaker can deliver a speech with audiences imagining the trees around them making them relax or feel the force of wind blowing at them with convictions in the speaker’s voice.

2 – Volume of your speech in words and sentences

Would you stay and listen to someone whom you can barely hear what they are saying? And if the speaker is too loud, don’t you just want to leave the room immediately to stop the suffering of your ears? The volume of your voice can give wonders.  And it also gives the projection of emotions as well.  You should be soft when it needs to be and you should be loud when you want people to know your strong approval of objections.  Your volume can also give a certain calmness when people listen to you speak.

3 – Projection of honesty and Sincerity

I am not sure if you are aware of this point but did you know that a person’s voice can affect how others view him as a honest person or not.  It is strange that your voice can determine your honesty level but if the audiences don’t trust you, how can you expect them to continue listening to what you have to say.  If you fail on this point, which is especially crucial in the first 10 minutes of your speech, then you are going to face an impossible task to get the people to listen.

Remember not to Overdo Things

In these 3 points, you have to be careful of over-doing it.  You might deliver a presence of being too cheeky, too unbelievable or you might deliver an image of a person not knowing what exactly is he talking about.  So always practise, practise and practise.  Memorise your speech by heart, totally understand each sentence, study which part of your speech to be soft, to be loud, to show emotions and you can easily win your audiences attention.

If you are going to deliver a presentation or give a speech, you must remember these 3 elements.  Your body posture, your presence in a room full of people and your voice projection to capture their attention.  If you want to deliver a rousing speech, then you have to take note of all 3 elements to be successful.

Posture

This concerns with how you stand.  Are your shoulders hunch, or are you standing straight with shoulders up right?  Stand straight with shoulders align with your feet to show your confidence, and to show your interest and excitement in what you are about to tell the audiences.  No one really wants to see someone on stage, hunching their backs, because it shows the speaker as being force or not being interested to be on stage.

Presence

Presence is sort of difficult to explain.  It requires posture and projection to this element appear in you.  It really depends on what you want to project to people.  Do you want people to see you as a person that has confidence, professional and approachable? Or do you want others to see you as boring, uncertain of your presentation or anxious.

What kind of presence you hope to present to the people?

The best person to model is President Obama.  Regardless of whether he is a good president or not, the way he delivers his speeches is one of the best I have ever seen.  Look at the way he captures his audience.  His hands raise up and down at the right time, his shoulders are always straight, his voice projects a certain conviction that you will be captivated by him.  And the choice of words he uses can bring you on a roller coaster ride of emotions.

Projection

Your voice is important in determining whether you have successfully capture your audiences attention.  People should be able to hear you clearly, understand your every word and sentence and capture the type of emotions that you want them to feel.  If you are too soft, or slurring your words, it will be an uphill task to captivate anyone.

Combination of the 3 “P”s

If you can understand the importance of each of these “P”s, and combine them, you will definitely have no problems getting people to pay attention to what you have to say.  The best way to learn, will be to watch videos of role models like Tony Robins (how he motivates and cracks jokes), Jay Abraham (his passion in marketing and the endless ideas flowing out) and former president Bill Clinton, or the current President Obama (watch his speeches while he was campaigning to be president).

If you are going to do a management presentation, or about to speak to a large crowd of people, you have to know how to co-ordinate your body language with your speech.  The number one thing you should never do is to just stand still for an hour on stage, giving your speech.  You will only deliver the message to others that you are boring, uncomfortable and your audiences will think you will want to be somewhere else, instead of being on stage.

Best Example is to watch the American Idol Competition

Take for an example, the American idol competition.  You will notice that some competitors have a great voice but they are never that popular.  One of the major factors affecting their popularity is the way their body behaves when they sing.  You might be able to sing some great notes but if you continue to stand on stage, looking stiff and uncomfortable, you will not be able to have an emotional connection with them.

Remember, if you don’t know how to move, the audiences will move instead.

Being a good speaker means capturing everyone’s attention.  And to do that, you have got to move around, show all your facial and body expressions to them.  Of course, it has your body language has to match the contents of your speech.  How do you know if you have failed in motivating the room? You will easily recognize it because with each passing minute you stand uncomfortably on stage, your audiences will start to check their mobile, fidgeting, looking at the time and start talking amongst themselves.

So the first question you might be thinking could be “how much movement is enough”?

My solution for you will be to record a video of yourself giving a speech to a room full of invisible people.  Record the video and imagine the scenario while giving your speech.  And then watch yourself on tape.

Keep track of the following while watching yourself:

1 – Did you feel comfortable with your performance?
2 – Did you reveal a lot of emotions while you speak?
3 – Are your hands moving while you are talking or are your hands just sticking to your sides like glue?
4 – Did your tone of voice go up and down to enforce your points?
5 – Did you have a long pause of silence that makes people uncomfortable?

Get a family member or friend to watch your performance and get them to give you comments on improving.

Most important thing to remember is to be yourself.  It is just like talking to a friend.

Your hands will raise up if you want to enforce a point, your face will twitch if you don’t like something, you will move back and forth to show your interest or dislikes.  If you can instill this mentality in yourself to treat everyone as a friend and give a speech like you are talking to a friend, everyone will be captivated by your speech.

Watch videos of the best speakers in the world and see how they interact, walk close to the audiences to create intimacy, act silly when they are telling jokes, pumping their fists in the air to prove a point, and then start mentally visualizing that you are one of the best speakers.

With constant improvements, you can definitely captivate your audiences.

Who would have thought that ‘funny’ is never to be associated with words such as ‘writing’ and ‘speech’? Well, whoever he is, he must not have been able to deliver a single good speech in his lifetime. This is because a good speech requires humor.

Remember that in a communication process, interaction is necessary. You do not want hundreds of passive listeners as your audience. You want them to respond to what you are saying. And you achieve this by providing them an area to respond. That area is what we call ‘humor’. So how does humor work in a speech?

First, humor eases the tension between the speaker and his listeners.

It breaks the wall between you and consequently helps the ideas flow smoothly. And you need your ideas flowing smoothly. Just make sure that you don’t overdose your audience with humor that you fail to achieve your main purpose.

Second, humor adds to your credibility.

Yes, you heard it right. Humor can actually raise your profile up a notch and change how you are perceived by others, in a positive way. It makes you look like your oozing of confidence and that is what the audience need from someone who lectures them on ‘How to Manage Your Business Right’ or ‘How to Be Successful’.

So now you want to write a good funny speech. But how do you do it? Your dilemma is that you’ve never been a funny person your entire life and since the last joke you made, you have been treated like an alien at work. Well, humor may be a talent or so, but it is also a skill. You have to practice. Search the net for the most hilarious jokes ever. Watch comedies. Try out your first lines on people who laugh at everything. Then, improve yourself constantly.

The essentials of speech writing with humor are just the same as those of speech writing without humor. You choose a topic that is appropriate to you as a speaker, to your audience and to the situation. You do not want to discuss the ‘History of Architecture’ with a bunch of Biology majors. In that case, you won’t be needing humor in your speech to be funny.

Remember that it is most important to consider your audience when delivering a speech and especially, when doing so with humor. A common mistake of public speakers is that they blurt out jokes to entertain and in turn, offend their audience. So, study your listeners before writing a speech.

When you have chosen a good topic, start with the body of your message first. In this way, you may concentrate on how to write your introduction as good as you can later on. Take in mind that the initial part of your speech is the judgment time; the time when your audience is contemplating on whether to listen to you or not.

And last but not the least, the end of your speech shall be one that your listeners will remember even if they experience amnesia.

Yes, that is possible. You are one good speaker and you deserve a place in their memories. Bring out your best ‘relevant’ humor and have them smiling for a month. And then you’ll see that you don’t need some excessively serious and formal speech to be effective.

How does a kindergarten poetry reading contest differ from a seminar on ‘The History of Biochemical Reactive Substances’? Sure, we have a lot to say. But pertaining to the speakers, with whom did we feel much empathy?

We have heard various definition of a good speaker. A good speaker looks credible, speaks fluently and earns more respect through what he is able to offer the audience. However, we often forget the one simple attribute that we unknowingly search for in public speakers.

And that is having an emotional connection with their audience.

The words of a speaker do not only pierce through our brains. They do not only entertain us and make our hearts lighter. They transfer to us the necessary emotions that help stimulate the meaning of his very message. The connection built by the speaker is an avenue of all the active feelings he wants the audience to have and not just to know.

So, how do you establish that emotional connection with your listeners? It may be complex at first but as you proceed, you’ll realize nothing so natural can be that hard.

First, have a clear objective of what you want your audience to feel.

It can be loss, happiness, love or satisfaction. Just imagine an Italian chef on television. He describes his works in such carefully crafted words that they succeed in influencing your taste buds, even if the chef is a hundred miles away.

Second, divide your speech in three stages.

Then, determine what type of emotions you want to give your audience at each stage. It is important that you provide variations, but keep in mind the main objective you have set in the first step.

Third, do some self-evaluation before the actual day.

How do you this? You can practice in front of the mirror and hone your emotions first. And then if you think you’re still not ready, try to record yourself. Do the entire speech with your video cam and be a critical judge to your own performance. It is crucial that you improve first your inefficiencies before going into venture.

Emotional connection is, indeed, a vital part of an individual’s speech. Either he informs without empathy or educates through building a connection with his audience is up to him. And to you who want to strengthen this skill: read books, widen your vocabulary, and practice.

Be a master in this world of public speaking.

Have you ever seen an activist deliver a speech about the flaws of the government and do so without his brows curved or his facial muscles even slightly tensed? No, you haven’t. It is because humans are made to create and display emotions, especially in public speaking events such as this. We are designed to exhibit those we call as ‘facial expressions’ and we do just the same when we speak to an audience.

Facial expression, along with body language, is considered one of the most vital elements of public speaking.

It serves as a physical observation of how organized the speaker’s thought is. It also allows the audience to convey the message of the speech being delivered. You do not actually want a terribly emotionless man to discuss with you the principles of love. You want him to look as credible as his words before you believe in everything he says.

But you don’t know how you perform in this area of face and speech coordination? Are you showing any emotions? Or if you think you are, is it enough and apparent to your listeners? Stop wondering and see for yourself. Best thing to do is record your performance using a video camera and then evaluate.

If you think your facial expressions do not pass your requirement for acceptance, work on it using your mirror. Explore your different angles and discover the best ones to capture the essence of your speech.

Study your speech and know what to put on your face. If you are delivering remarks on corruption then let them influence your facial attributes by curving your brows or tightening your jaws a little.

If you are delivering a speech on the profoundness of love then let your listeners see through your sweet words with the assistance of a smile or of twinkling eyes. Be in-the-know of appropriate facial expressions and use them to accentuate your speech.

And if you still can’t pull it off, practice with someone who releases the inner beast in you. Through this you will get the best of your emotions and be aware of what you lack.

So, speaker, good luck on your journey to becoming one of the bests in your field. Show them the face factor.

If ever you come across someone who says he’s learned to overcome nervousness whenever he delivers a speech, do not believe him. He is either not telling the truth or is an awful speaker after all. This is simply because ‘stage fright’ or what experts call as ‘communication apprehension’ is an essential key to each individual’s success as a public speaker.

Stage fright or nervousness in public speaking occurs when one is confronted with a situation wherein performance is vital and the outcome is unknown. Some symptoms of this are excessive sweating of hands, difficulty in breathing and memory loss. And though most perceive it negatively, nervousness can actually help you in ways you are just not aware of, until now.

How does stage fright enhance your public speaking?

First, it provides a channel for the adrenalin rush to flow. You see, the problem with those dull speakers you’ve been having is that they lack the energy. Nervousness inspires energy in the speakers to come out and in turn, makes his every word more convincing and requiring of attention.

Another advantage of stage fright is that it boozes a speaker’s self-esteem. And that is only possible if he learns how to manage it. Oftentimes, the fear eats the individual up, causing him to forget parts of his speech or even experience a black-out on stage. This phenomenon is not entirely new to us but can be prevented by proper handling.

So, the issue is not about ‘how to overcome’ stage fright anymore. It is about how one can manage it. Control your fear by entertaining positive thoughts. Avoid future errors by preparing thoroughly for your speech. Do not sink in your chair whenever you feel nervous. Instead, turn that feeling to your advantage and use the energy on making your speech one of the best ones ever made. Who knows? Oprah might make you famous for it.

Lastly, stage fright opens an avenue for construction of good rapport between the speaker and his audience. Your energy is transferred to them and they begin to respond to your ideas accordingly.

Now that you have learned nervousness in public speaking can actually be a benefit, might as well start practicing now. Breathe properly and think of your pulse racing as a sign of awareness you’re in such predicament. Then, control it and work your way up the ladder of success.