Public speaking is a performance, but it is not the same as acting. There are two main differences. The first is fairly obvious – as an actor, you are being someone else, but as a public speaker, ideally you are being yourself. Many people struggle with being themselves in front of an audience. How often do you hear people go into 'presentation mode'? They take on a professional persona that is an unconscious form of acting.

The second difference is about your relationship with the audience. An actor pretends that the audience is not there. But as a public speaker, you are there to engage directly with the audience – you acknowledge your listeners. To the audience, you are the whole point – and vice versa. Otherwise,  you may as well just hand out notes!

Yoodli is an exciting new AI public speaking tool that I am using in my coaching.

A lot of my work is with people who have extreme public speaking anxiety that holds them back from achieving their career and life goals.
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In my experience, there are three things that people need to overcome a crippling fear of public speaking:

1. A supportive coach who can help build their self-confidence and bring about some mindset shifts
2. An understanding of the skills involved in public speaking
3. A safe place to practice their developing and newly acquired skills.

Yoodli won’t replace the coach but it is a great tool to enable safe practice and support skill development.

​Recently someone approach me for private coaching. She was nervous about an upcoming presentation. Before she ran through her presentation, she told me that her topic was important to her audience and she really wanted to have impact. Then she practiced her presentation by sharing her screen as she read, or sometimes paraphrased, a series of PowerPoint slides. 

She came across as professional, knowledgeable and confident. Had she not mentioned her desire to have impact, I would have been quite encouraging in my feedback. I would have suggested fewer words on the slides and starting and finishing without slides so that she was more visible to the audience. But I would have reassured her that presentation was as good as many work presentations I see.
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However, I knew that she would not achieve her goal of having impact. I could barely see her on my screen and I had read all the words on the slides before she spoke to them. I gave her positive feedback but I also told her that her presentation was not memorable. I also pointed out that she was adding very little value and she could just as easily have paused and let the audience read her slides for themselves!​

​Remember learning to ride a bike? You probably started with training wheels. What happened when your parents removed the training wheels? Perhaps you went, wobble, wobble, wobble, splat. The next time the wobble lasted a little longer before the splat, and then maybe by the third or fourth time, you went wobble, wobble and then took off. You were away!

Would you have ever learned to ride a bike if you had kept the training wheels? Unlikely. Training wheels don’t teach you to balance; they just give you a feel for sitting on a bike.

Relying heavily on notes when you are learning to speak publicly is similar to using training wheels on a bike. You will never be able to deliver a speech without notes if you always read your notes. But unlike training wheels, you may not need to ditch your notes altogether. But you will need to stop reading them!​

On the first night of my public speaking course, I tell people the story of my epic public speaking fail. You can read all about it on my Medium site. The short version is that I had a panic attack in front of the senior executive team of the organisation I was employed by. Six months later, I joined Toastmasters. Twelve years later, I became a public speaking coach. 

I tell this story to every new group without hesitation. My clients have a fear of public speaking. It is a perfect way to start the course because it helps reassure them that they are in a safe environment with a coach who understands how they feel. It also gives them hope that it is possible to move past a crippling fear of public speaking.
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The first time I told my story, I looked for reasons not to. I was concerned it would make me look weak. And I did not want to re-live the shame! I wondered if I could get away with something vague like, “I used to be a bit anxious about public speaking, and so I understand how you feel.” But I realised that would be dishonest and not nearly as powerful as sharing that I once was them!

​Although it is the right thing for me to share my story, I was justified in hesitating. I have been on the receiving end of speakers who have overshared — and you probably have too!

There are plenty of useful articles about public speaking, but many of them repackage similar tips. Remember to pause; practice your presentation thoroughly; maintain eye contact; focus on your audience; tell stories; and so on. Don’t get me wrong — it is all great advice! But I get excited when I stumble upon new insights.
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In this article, I have put together five less-known tips. Some of these I have discovered through my own practice and all of them I have put into effect or tested for myself. 

​It is easy to recognise an “authentic” speaker but unpacking what this really means can be confusing. Public speaking is a performance;  so how can you perform and be authentic at the same time?

Although public speaking is a performance, it is not the same as acting. As an actor, you are pretending to be someone else, but as a public speaker you are yourself. In fact, the trick is to come across so naturally that it doesn’t look like you are performing!

But this highlights a problem for inexperienced speakers. The advice to “be yourself’ is not helpful when you are trembling bundle of nerves. 

“Be yourself” does not mean for you to stand up and tell everyone how nervous you feel, then waffle on about your topic! You might look “real” but in a raw, uncomfortable way that lacks professional credibility and leaves the audience squirming.

Instead, you need to bring your best self to the stage – you “on form”.  A high energy version of yourself. The self that you might bring to a job interview! And it takes much practice to achieve that. Being “real” is not quite enough. An authentic speaker also has confidence and credibility.

Let’s take a look at what an authentic speaker does – and how you can do the same. 

Everyone wants to look confident when they are presenting. We also want to feel confident – but most people can handle feeling a bit nervous as long as they can hide it from others!

This in itself is interesting and I touched on it in a previous blog article (“Public speaking and the shame of looking nervous”). But this article is about how you can employ some techniques to look confident even if you don’t initially feel it. Or to put it another way, how to ‘fake it until you feel it.’

Before we look at the five tips there is some good news. You probably already look more confident than you feel. Surveys indicate that over 70% of people have some level of fear of public speaking. But most people look reasonably confident when they speak. So how can this be? Either fewer than 30% of the people are doing all the talking (unlikely) or most people don’t show their nerves (more likely).

Watching a video of yourself presenting can help reassure you that your nervousness is not on full display. You may feel your stomach churning, your palms sweating, your heart pounding – but these symptoms are not visible to your audience.
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Recognising that your nerves are not as visible as you imagine can be a huge relief in itself. But there are additional things you can do to look more confident. 

I had a cooking teacher at high school who told us that “good cooks are born, not made” which left me confused about why she had decided to become a cooking teacher!

This is a perfect illustration of a ‘fixed mindset’ described by Carol Dweck in her book ‘Mindset: The New Psychology of Success’.   A person with a fixed mindset believes that qualities such as intelligence and talent are innate and can’t be developed. Conversely, someone with a growth mindset has a thirst for learning, loves a challenge, and believes that they can improve by  commitment and hard work. Carol’s research demonstrates that having a growth mindset is a better predictor of success than natural talent.

You may have heard the expression 's/he has the gift of the gab' meaning someone is naturally good at talking. But this reflects a fixed mindset towards verbal communication and public speaking. While some people probably do have natural talents in this area, it is possible for anyone to become a strong public speaker.