Before we actually get under way.

Introduction and purpose:

Public speaking is not a natural skill, although some people are better at it than others, just like some people are better at football than others.

There are many different aspects to public speaking.

To improve one of these aspects will help a little, to improve two of them will help more, but to improve each of these aspects will produce an exponential improvement in your ability to present information to an audience.

I will attack these issues one by one, and over the installments I hope you see a sensible progression of information, which by the end of the posts I hope will have you speaking with confidence and flair.

To this end, I will begin with a discussion on confidence, which is one of the biggest issues that most people have with public speaking.

If you have no confidence in your abilities, then no amount of other information will help. Of course, fixing the other issues adds to your confidence, so this is a bit circular in fact, but to see where confidence comes from also shows the importance of the other matters.

We will also talk about notes – it has amazed me over time how many people think that using notes is cheating. It is a relatively recent thing to speak without notes, but in modern times it often appears as though a speaker has no notes, when in fact they are using high technology solutions to make it look that way. There are a few of course, but it is not as common as people think.

Then we will go into matters of style and technique. 

If there is any one thing that I would have people remember from all of this, it would be that everyone is different, and there is no single style that a person should learn. In fact, you need to find your own style and improve that – if you try to be someone else, you will never be comfortable.

And then we will talk about practice and assessment. Practice is the only thing that will improve your public speaking, and genuine feedback from a trusted source is invaluable in your success as a speaker.

Even within each of these wide subjects there is a lot of detail and fine points to discuss, so there will be many installments.

I am not charging anything for this information, so I can guarantee that you will get your money’s worth. 

I am also not "protecting" this information - you could simply copy it from the pages I post up if you wanted to.

I would however appreciate it if, rather than harvesting the information for your own use or to pass around, that you bookmark the page and revisit, and point your friends to it rather than copying and sending it – that way I might make a few extra dollars from the advertising to buy a coffee every now and then. At the time of posting this, my account has $2.77 in it, so please don't think that this is my way to riches.....

I would love to make a full on career out this kind of coaching and helping people, but I doubt that will ever happen. I am however happy to help people out in any way that I can.

Once I post all of the initial points, I will be happy to answer any questions, and may post extra bits if enough info keeps getting requested.

Thanks,

Dave.