a good public speaker is a good Boy Scout!

Be Prepared!

Confidence part 2:

There are certain mechanisms that we can work on that will help our confidence.

People are afraid of many things when they present – most of them are wrapped around the idea that they will forget what they are supposed to say.

This is where we can take some practical steps and put in place some procedures to minimize the chance of this happening.

·         Preparation is KING – if you are prepared, it is so much easier to be confident.

P⁶ was something I was told many, many moons ago. P to the power of six stands for Prior Preparation Prevents Pretty Poor Performance.

Preparation of yourself and your subject is essential if you are to have confidence.

Since one of the biggest fears in public speaking is about forgetting your subject or points, the first place to start is with your preparation.

o   Know your subject.

§  If you have been asked to speak on a subject, then you obviously have some knowledge of it to begin with.

All of us know the general subject we are going to speak on, otherwise we would not have been asked to do so. But we are not talking about your general knowledge of the subject, but the specifics of the presentation.

Every Presentation has a specific subject, and this is what you have to prepare. Make sure you know everything you can about the specific subject of your presentation. Even if you think you know it well, you need to go over the information until it is thoroughly soaked into your mind. This gives you a vast storehouse of information from which to draw for your presentation.

I must say also, that just because you have all this information in your head, doesn’t mean you have to give it all to the audience. In fact, having that information in your head and leaving some of it there, actually gives you more confidence, knowing that you have more info on tap if it becomes necessary. There is such a thing as overloading your audience, so keep the info you give out to the effective minimum required to get the point across. Better to cover a few points well, than to touch on everything just a little.

And if you keep some in reserve, it means that you have more info for the next time you are asked to present on the subject.

This is a balancing act that you only really become comfortable with after practice.

Before we move on from this sub point, we have to look at another point regarding confidence:

§  Remember, even if the audience are experts, they do not know what you are going to say. If anyone thinks they have nothing to learn, they are not worth worrying about anyway.

Sometimes people will say something like: “Most of the people in the audience know more than I do about the subject.”

This may very well be true, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind:

·         They don’t know exactly what you are going to say.

This is another time to remind you that they want your presentation to be enjoyable – even if they know it all, they still want to enjoy the time. But they don’t know exactly what you are going to say and how you are going to say it, so they are hoping to be a bit surprised along the way, either by the style of the presentation, or by some of the content.

And of course, it is YOUR presentation, not theirs, so they may know a lot about the subject, but they know almost nothing about YOUR presentation.

·         If they know more than you, they probably have stood in your shoes, and they want you to do well.

This is worth remembering – very few people are naturals at this remember, and as a result if they know more than you, it is likely that they have done a presentation or two along the way. They don’t want you to suffer the way that they did – they want you to do well.

·         They still want to learn – they are searching for a tidbit of info that they hadn’t noticed or considered.

Any wise man understands that he still has things to learn, and sometimes a great truth can be presented by a novice. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our own ideas and processes that the simple things can slip our notice. Any smart guy knows this from experience, even if they have never thought it out loud. As a result, they go to these things HOPING desperately for a different angle or a different view of something, and that can come from anyone. There are times when the question of a child can turn a researcher’s mind onto a different track that leads to the answer he was looking for.

So, don’t worry if there are smarter minds than yours in the audience: anyone worth worrying about in the audience is looking for the bit you present that they hadn’t noticed.