Most of us have been there at one point in our lives; most likely happening early on in some English class at school. The night before is spent rehearsing exactly what you want to say while lying awake for a long and sleepless night. As the time comes near, you can feel your heart start to race, the room seems to get uncomfortably hot and the feeling of being sick lurks in the pits of your stomach. The teacher finally calls your name and as you walk slowly to the front of the room, you start to sweat uncontrollably; a bugler can be heard playing “Taps” in the far distance. It is now time for you to deliver that dreaded public speech, how will you ever survive? I was once that guy, the one who would magically end up sick on days like this. It wasn’t until I reenlisted for a second tour in the United States Marine Corps that I would learn the tricks to overcoming glossophobia.
I was off to Marine Corps Recruiters School for seven long weeks of learning all there was about the Marine Corps, how to “sell” it, and even how to speak in front of large crowds. I soon found out that it really isn’t that bad and came up with a few ways to beat this crazy fear. My favorite technique was to pick two or three visual points in the room to focus on during the speech. These points would usually be spots on walls, empty desks or other significant structures that were spread across the room. I found these areas great for concentrating on instead of the crowd. It kept me from actually having to make eye contact with anyone in the audience but, gave the illusion that I was. The points were spread out to make it seem like I was “working the crowd with my eyes.” For some reason, this worked great to reduce stage fright. These points helped me to make the crowd disappear; a lot better than the old technique of picturing everyone in their underwear!
Even though impromptu speeches are a valuable tool to have, I do not like them. My second point would be to always do the work and research on the subject that you are speaking about. To me, every good presentation ends with a question and answer period. I was always prepared for that one person to believe they were smarter than me. Not giving them the opportunity to prove that they are is always a good idea! Having a thorough knowledge of what I talking about also made me feel more comfortable on the podium; being at ease on the podium made me feel like the speech was smoother and structured to a point without being over structured.
“Over structured” you ask? Yup, I feel that it is very possible; I will explain. I would always structure my note cards in bullet format and not written out verbatim to keep the speech simple. Don’t get me wrong, I would still rehearse my talking points before to get an idea of what I wanted to say; just not verbatim. I found that reading a speech verbatim makes you sound like a monotone robot and keeps your face buried in a paper; effectively putting the audience to sleep. Bullet format helps prevent you from doing this exact thing, building a more dynamic presentation. The second reason for using bullets is simple. I found that if I tried to read a speech verbatim, everything would go great until I stumbled on a punctuation error or some other sort of distraction; never able to fully recover from the slip up and making myself look like a fool. Bullets helped me to keep from getting distracted after a mistake since they allowed me to have more room to adjust what I saying and recover.
There are many tricks out there that people can teach you to get over the fear of public speaking. I found that the best way was to actually get on stage and go for it. With almost everything in life; practice makes perfect. Practice makes things seem a little less frightening and proves that you will not die of embarrassment if you make a mistake. So, find some focal points, know something about what you are talking about and use bulleted notes; these are my nuggets of wisdom on public speaking. If all else fails, remember that there are more people in the audience that would never dare to get up there themselves.
Kind of a shame that you lose the USMC connection after graf 1 & early graf 2--this would have been stronger with examples of the kinds of groups you talked to, some particular smartasses you outwitted, and so on. But it's strongly organized and I'll certainly take it.
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