Constructive feedback in a Toastmasters meeting contributes to continued skill development, building the confidence a person needs to reach his or her goals. Learn how to critique the performance, not the person.
Tips and Techniques for Effective Evaluation by Toastmasters International
In Toastmasters, feedback is called evaluation, and it is the heart of the Toastmasters
educational program. You observe the speeches of your fellow club members and offer evaluations of their speeches, and they do the same for you. If you want to improve your speaking skills, you must learn how to give and receive helpful evaluations.
Check out the article Evaluating Speeches Tactfully. It is a very good article about how to do evaluation effectively. Here is the introduction of the article.
“Teacher. Guide. Captain.
Evaluation is a systematic determination of a subject’s merit, worth and significance, using criteria governed by a set of standards. Source: Wikipedia.com
What Is Tact?
Tact is the ability to tell the truth in a way that considers other people’s feelings and reactions.
It allows you to give difficult feedback, communicate sensitive information, and say the right thing to preserve a relationship.
You have listened to and observed others and their work and offered feedback
You evaluate in some manner every day, at home, at the office, and in the community.
People join Toastmasters clubs to improve their speaking and leadership skills, and these skills are improved through evaluations.
Members prepare and present speeches based on Pathways
Their fellow club members evaluate the speeches or leadership efforts, enabling the members to develop their speaking or leadership skills.
The tone and content of an evaluation have great impact on the speaker and even on the club.
A harsh evaluation may cause a member to leave the club.
An overly kind evaluation may not help the member to improve, making the member frustrated and unhappy.
Good evaluators strive to find a balance between the extremes, giving evaluations that are helpful and encouraging.
Although most of the time you will be evaluating others in the club, the skills you learn can be applied in all aspects of your life. You will become a better listener and a more critical thinker…” Click hereto the other parts of the article.
Toastmasters – Giving An Evaluation That’s Worth A Darn
How to Give a Great Speech Evaluation in Toastmasters
Join Toastmasters and find a club that you like to practise your speaking skills. You are welcome to visit our Kampong Ubi Toastmasters Club if you are living in Singapore.
A great speech topic depends on your audience. Get tips for analyzing your audience before speaking in this video clip from a professional public speaker, Tracy Goodwin.
Here is the transcript of the speech.
Ok. We have established that you’re giving a speech on a certain topic: informative, persuasive, special occasion, so forth and so on. The first thing we have to look at is your audience. Who in the world are you speaking to?
Ok. We’ve got to look at a lot of different areas about your audience that you might not have thought of. Because we have to pick a speech topic that’s going to be appropriate for who you’re speaking to as well as remember something worthwhile and something that they’re going to be interested in.
So let’s just look across the board at the demographics now. By demographics, I’m talking about things like age. Are you talking to 20 years old? Are you talking to 60 years old? Because you and I both know you talk to them very differently okay. What is the age for they are? Are they all 20? Are they all 60 or are you looking at a cross-section?
What’s the gender? Are you talking to women? Are you talking to men? Because trust me you’re gonna find out if you don’t already know you talk to them differently. Okay? Do you need to look at anything like religious background, economic background, educational background and most importantly what do you have in common with these people.
What do you have that is similar and what do you have that’s different. Are you all college students? Great! Check that off. Ae you all working for the same company? Great. Check that off? Are you all in sales? Great. Check that off. It’s important to take a look at all those demographics because you want to write your speech and pick your topic to make it interesting for that group of people.
If you want to overcome stage fright and learn to speak with confidence, join a Toastmasters club.
Join Toastmasters and find a club that you like to practise your speeches in a friendly environment. You are welcome to visit our Kampong Ubi Toastmasters Club if you are living in Singapore.
Do you want to speak like a pro? Fed up of giving dull presentations? Learn the secrets from Presidents Kennedy and Obama. You too can put a man on the moon! Check out the below article, How to Speak Like a Pro.
Join Toastmasters and find a club that you like to practise your speeches in a friendly environment. You are welcome to visit our Kampong Ubi Toastmasters Club if you are living in Singapore.
On 25 May, 1961, President Kennedy stood before congress and delivered his famous “man on the moon” speech which mobilised 180m American’s to be the first country to put a man on the moon.
Not all presentations you give to your clients or teams will have such a powerful message as this, but nevertheless; there are a number of lessons which you can apply to give your presentations more impact.
1. Be yourself
You should never try to mimic someone else’s style. You need to develop your own and be authentic. You cannot talk about issues of importance to your audience when they don’t believe in you. That is not to say you can’t learn from the great masters. You should study them and learn from them.
2. Make it Relevant
When Kennedy stood up to address Congress there was a single black and white image of the moon . Nothing could be quite so evocative a backdrop for such a presentation.
Start by talking about the situation the audience faces. You want them to start by agreeing with you so your message becomes easier to sell. Once you have their attention you can lead them wherever you want to take them.
Start where your audience is, not where you are. Start talking by broadly describing the situation they are facing, then move on to talk about what’s on their minds and the challenges they are facing.
3. Keep it Simple
Throughout his presidential campaign, President Obama kept his message simple – “change you can believe in” – which is not only simple, it’s easy to remember. You too can keep it simple, even if you have a complicated subject such as finance or engineering and involving large amounts of technical data.
What’s your core message? When you start preparing your presentation or speech you will no doubt have a number of messages. Keep chiselling away at them until you have a single core message.
Once you have achieved this, then all of the other ideas can hang off it.
Don’t confuse a complete message with a persuasive one. Just because you’re presenting doesn’t mean the audience will grant you all the time in the world to deliver your message. Audiences have limited attention spans and a limited ability to absorb complex data.
4. Anticipate what your audience is thinking
Be aware that when you express one view the audience will automatically associate an opposite or alternative aspects to it as well.
A presentation that does not deal with these alternatives loses the audience’s attention because it fails to address the questions and concerns that come up in people’s minds.
Therefore, you need to anticipate it. Show your audience that you understand the opposite view better than they do, and explain why your proposal or argument is still superior.
5. Pace
Taking an extract from the “man on the moon” speech we see the following:
“These are extraordinary times // And we face an extraordinary challenge // Our strength as well as our convictions have imposed upon this nation the role of leader in freedom’s cause // No role in history could be more difficult or more important // We stand for freedom // That is our conviction for ourselves-that is our only commitment to others // No friend, no neutral and no adversary should think otherwise // We are not against any man-or any nation-or any system-except as it is hostile to freedom // Nor am I here to present a new military doctrine, bearing any one name or aimed at any one area. I am here to promote the freedom doctrine. …//”
He pauses for impact, for us to catch up with him. Break up your messages into short sentences and mark up with // to show breathing marks and speak it in the same way. Speak as though you have plenty of time, but not so much that it looks like you’re filling time!!
6. Impact, Emphasis and Body Language
When presenting you need to be conscious of where your hands are and that they aren’t too distracting by waving about.
If standing in front of an audience but without the benefit of a lectern to hide behind, stand with your feet slightly apart and with equal balance on each leg. Then with you palms crossed facing up and just in front of you – as if you were holding an egg, this is your default position. It’s fine to move your hand or point for emphasis, just be conscious you aren’t doing it too much.
Finally, you’ll need to rehearse. Practice calmly walking up to the lectern or the front of the room. Pause for effect. Arrange your papers calmly. Look out to the audience with a sense of command and with assertiveness. Then deliver your opening remarks.
Calmness bestows a sense of authority. If you appear in control, you will in fact gain control and command attention.
Improve Your Listening Skills with Active Listening
Listening is one of the most important skills you can have. Being able to do it well has a positive impact on all aspects of your life, including how effective you are at work.
Research suggests, however, that we only remember 25-50 percent of what we hear, meaning that we could be missing important messages.
Key Points It takes a lot of concentration and determination to be an active listener. Old habits are hard to break, and if your listening skills are as bad as many people’s are, then you’ll need to do a lot of work to break these bad habits.
There are five key techniques you can use to develop your active listening skills:
Pay attention.
Show that you’re listening.
Provide feedback.
Defer judgment.
Respond appropriately.
Start using active listening techniques today to become a better communicator, improve your workplace productivity, and develop better relationships.
Join Toastmasters and find a club that you like to practise your speeches in a friendly environment. You are welcome to visit our Kampong Ubi Toastmasters Club if you are living in Singapore.
To be a good speaker, we need to be a good listener.
The following are some good other resources on active listening skills.
Talk Less and Listen More by the people of Give More Media
Improve Your Results With Active Listening
Listening is one of the most common and important things that we do. Recent research on work behaviour suggests that we spend approximately 9% of our time writing, 16% of our time reading, 30% of our time talking and 45% of our time listening.
Listening is a fundamental part of the communication process. Regardless of the type of job you do or the industry in which you work, it is important to understand the listening process, have an awareness of barriers to listening effectively, and learn how to listen actively.
Listening as a process
Hearing and listening are not the same thing. In fact, hearing is just the first of three stages in the listening process, all of which are fairly obvious but still worth remembering.
– Hearing Simply the process of sound waves being transformed by our brains into impulses.
– Attention Important so that we can hear what is being said to us, but often difficult due to distractions such as noise intrusion or internal distractions such as thinking about something else rather than what is being said.
– Understanding This is the most crucial aspect of the process on a number of levels. As well as understanding what is being said, we need to try to understand the context of the message, and understand the significance of any verbal or non-verbal clues from the speaker. Having a degree of background knowledge regarding the speaker or the subject is also helpful.
Barriers to listening
In most situations, there are a number of obstacles which can stop us from listening effectively, and as a trainer it is important to appreciate what these obstacles are and how to overcome each of them. Broadly speaking, there are four types of barriers to listening –
– Psychological barriers, including prejudice, apathy or fear on the part of the listener. For example, someone working in marketing or production may not be as interested in a presentation on annual financial results as an accountant or sales director, given that it may not directly impact on their day to day activities.
– Physical barriers, including disability, fatigue or poor health on the part of the listener. For example, trying to listen to a speaker for long periods while you are suffering from a heavy cold is a fairly difficult thing to do.
– Environmental barriers, including distracting noises, uncomfortable or poorly positioned seating, or an unsuitable climate such as an overheated, stuffy meeting room.
– Expectation barriers, such as anticipating a mundane or boring presentation, expecting to receive bad news, or being spoken to in confusing jargon.
In a work or educational situation, you can certainly address tangible barriers such as environmental factors or physical obstacles. Dealing with internal barriers can be more difficult, but a lot of this can be achieved by thorough preparation before any meetings or group sessions.
Activelistening
In order to understand the concept and value of activelistening, it is worth considering it as one of three different types of listening.
– Competitive listeningYou will see this most often in negotiation situations, or when politicians are debating with each other. The person being spoken to is more interested in getting their own point of view across when the other person stops speaking, rather than acknowledging what they have just heard. Alternatively, they are distracted by thinking about their own argument or point of view rather than listening properly.
– Passive or attentive listeningThis is always a danger in lecture style presentation sessions. An audience will pay attention to the slides and listen carefully to the speaker, but there is no real opportunity to interact. This means that the speaker may not know how well their message is being understood.
– Activelistening This is the best way to listen for and understand the real message in what people are saying. It involves taking the next step from just listening attentively, by looking to show obvious interest in what the speaker is saying, and by trying to interact with them. As a manager, salesperson or trainer you need to try to use activelistening yourself, and provide opportunities for colleagues, customers and learners to use activelistening techniques as well. This is of particular importance when involved in informal training activities such as coaching and mentoring.
In terms of outlining the techniques which can be used for activelistening, it is useful to think back to the three basic stages of the listening process – hearing, attention and understanding.
Hearing and attention
– First and hopefully obviously, stop talking.
– Try to eliminate as many distractions as possible, both external and internal.
– Try to control your own non-verbal signals to the person speaking. This could mean paying attention to your physical stance, your body movements, eye contact with the speaker, and encouraging motions such as nodding or smiling.
Understanding
– Make sure that you understand the purpose of the speaker, and also be aware of you want from the conversation.
– It also helps to take notes, but try to focus on writing down keywords and phrases that will jog your memory later, rather than trying to write down everything that is being said in an act of dictation.
– If possible, try to ask questions. You can use the notes you have written to remind you of points that need clarification. Try not to interrupt though!
– Finally, try to use the technique of reflecting what the speaker says to you.
Reflecting
This is a technique used extensively by people involved in consultative selling, but it is also a very useful tool for anyone involved in business, education, training or voluntary work. Communication can be broken down into three levels – facts, thoughts (or beliefs) and feelings (or emotions). Reflecting works on all three levels.
– Repeat the facts that you think you have been given by the speaker. This is sometimes referred to as ‘parroting’. If you are right, you know that you are getting the basic elements of what the speaker is telling you. If you have made any mistakes, this gives you both an opportunity to get back on to the same page.
– Also, share the thoughts or beliefs that you have heard, and try to convey the underlying feelings or emotions which you believe are involved. For example, the speaker may be very upset and wants you to display empathy or sympathy with their situation. It is this reflection of thoughts and feelings which distinguishes reflecting from just parroting back to the speaker, which might get a bit tedious and annoying for all concerned.
Again, this is a very useful tool when coaching or mentoring. It can also be used during feedback sessions in a more formal situation such as a performance review meeting.
Speaking in public provides you the opportunity to promote your brand, your company and yourself. It enables you to expand your circle of influence. Yet many people are reluctant to speak before an audience. Here are ten strategies to help you wow and win over audiences, and become a better speaker.
Practice is the key to helping you improve in public speaking.
Join Toastmasters and find a club that you like to practise your speeches in a friendly environment. You are welcome to visit our Kampong Ubi Toastmasters Club if you are living in Singapore.
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Power Speaking – 10 Strategies to Wow and Win Audiences
By Dawne Simmons
You know the feeling. Your mouth dries. Your palms moisten. Your heartbeat pounds in your ears. Butterflies swoop and soar in your stomach. What’s the cause? You’re about to give a speech. Several studies report that public speaking ranks top among people’s fears. Yet, public speaking also affords you the opportunity to promote your brand, your company and yourself. It enables you to expand your circle of influence. More importantly, public speaking remains a powerful communication tool for your strategic business messages. Here are 10 tips to help you wow and win your audiences, and become a better public speaker.
1. Have something to say. Sounds simple enough. Yet too many speakers merely present encyclopedic reports of facts and figures. Take a stand. Express an opinion. Put your facts in context.
2. Use gentle humor. No, this is not the time to practice your stand-up routine. Try instead to use humorous stories and anecdotes. They can evoke smiles that relax your audience and make them more receptive to your message.
3. Share your personal experiences. You’ve been invited to speak because of your knowledge about a subject. Your experiences – both the successes and stumbles, as well as what you’ve learned from each – add an important human touch.
4. Stay within your allotted time – or even shorter. On the subject of making speeches, Franklin Roosevelt once advised, “Be sincere; be brief; be seated.” Your audience will appreciate your consideration of their time.
5. Allow your personality to shine. Everyone has a personal style – especially you. Allow your manner of speaking to reflect the real you. Are you soft spoken with understated wit? Then don’t try to emulate Carol Burnett or Eddie Murphy. Are you an extrovert with lots of pizzazz? Then it’s a mistake to take on the persona of Queen Elizabeth or Mother Teresa. Make sure it’s your personality that shines in the limelight.
6. Engage your entire body. Use hand gestures, eye contact and facial expressions to get your point across. Whenever possible, move around the stage. Vary your voice with stage whispers or muted yells. Your speech must be more than a dry recitation of facts and opinions. Effective public speaking is a performance that engages the audience. They will appreciate your efforts to keep them entertained.
7. Research your audience. Why is your subject important to them? How will the issue affect their lives? Knowing the answer to those questions enables you to tailor your presentation to the audience’s specific needs.
8. Understand your goals. How do you want your audience to feel after your conclusion? Speeches have the power to persuade, inform, inspire, entertain or move your audience to action. Tailor your remarks to meet both your goals and the audiences’.
9. Practice, practice, practice. Whether you use a full written text, talking points or brief notes, rehearse your remarks. Mark Twain explained that it took him more than three weeks to prepare an impromptu speech. Don’t just read it silently. Speak it aloud. This gives you the opportunity to time your talk and to change words or phrases that trip you up. An added bonus: Practice enables you to transform your anxiety into a poised high-energy performance.
10. Enjoy yourself. Your attitude determines whether public speaking presents stumbling blocks or stepping-stones. Have fun. The more speaking opportunities you accept, the better you’ll become. Like any roller coaster ride, public speaking provides both chills and thrills. Climb aboard. The experience is worth the trip.
Dawne Y. Simmons is president and founder of WordStorm Communications, Inc. With more than 20 years of experience in all areas of corporate communications, she assists company leaders develop and promote their strategic messages. For the last 10 years, she has written speeches, presentations, scripts and other business materials for high-level executives in the corporate, government and not-for-profit sectors. An award-winning speaker, Ms. Simmons assists executives improve their on-stage presence. She provides confidential, private coaching sessions that help business leaders quickly improve their presentation skills.
Just because you have to deal with stagefright does not mean that you have to be a bad speaker. I don’t know anyone that does not have a difficult time speaking in front of an audience to one degree or another. In fact, a healthy amount of fear while giving a speech will help you to be a better speaker. So you have a choice to make, you can either fall apart because you are afraid to speak in front of an audience or you can use your fear to help you to be the best speaker possible. Here are some typical problems that many new speakers face that can make you a bad speaker and can easily be overcome with a little practice.
Some people that have anxieties tend to take their problems to the opposite extreme. For example, if somebody is dealing with stagefright they may overcompensate by becoming overly relaxed. This will not come across as you being relaxed and poised to your audience. What it will do, however, is to make you a poor speaker. One classic example of this is that many new speakers that are nervous will overcompensate for their nervousness by leaning on the podium or becoming overly familiar with a strange audience. It is necessary to maintain your composure by standing up tall when you’re speaking and to build a relationship with your audience during the course of your presentation. Do not allow your nervousness to make you seem arrogant.
Another problem that many people have is that they let their nervousness show up by using unnatural body infections. I once heard a talk that was given by somebody that was supposed to be experienced yet the entire time that they were speaking they were jingling their keys in their pocket. This was not only distracting but it also showed that the person was nervous and was difficult to concentrate on the information that they were trying to convey. Nervousness can also show up in over gesturing or facial tics. One of the best ways to pick up on this kind of a problem is to have somebody videotape you giving the presentation in front of a group of trusted friends. You can then watch yourself for any of your body movements that come across as being unnatural.
The most important thing in dealing with stagefright is that you do not allow your audience to know that you are nervous. Many speakers will feed off of the emotions of their audience and if they are able to control the situation they’re stagefright will disappear quickly after they began their presentation. This is something that is very important to remember because if you are dealing with severe stagefright you need to handle yourself correctly from the beginning in order to overcome it. Once you realize that you are in control of the situation it will be much easier for you to relax and to go through your information in a logical and comfortable manner.
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Overcoming The Symptoms Of StageFright
If you suffer from stagefright in any form then I’m sure that you would like to be able to overcome those problems. Since stagefright can take on many different forms and have a wide variety of symptoms so it is difficult to diagnose each case in one article. What we can do, however, is to speak about a few of the most common symptoms of stagefright and what you can do to overcome them. This will help to cover the basics and will also give you an idea of what you can do to overcome any additional stagefright symptoms that you may be experiencing. Here are the top three stagefright symptoms and what you can do to overcome them before you take the platform.
Dry Mouth – this is a very annoying problem to have, especially when you are going to be speaking in a public engagement. Because your dry mouth will cause you to do things like smacking your lips uncontrollably and it will also change the pitch and tone of your voice. If you are suffering from dry mouth then you need to take a moment to relax, and then go suck a lemon. This may seem like a rather flip comment, but it actually works. The sourness of the lemon will cause your mouth to produce saliva for a long period of time. If you are going to be speaking for a long time, then have some lemon water on the platform for you to sip during your speech.
Shaky Hands – The problem of shaking is not usually confined to only the hands, but this is where it is typically noticed because of you holding your notes. At times your hands may shake so much that you are not able to read your own notes and this can bring your presentation to a screeching halt. Other than really being able to relax a little bit there are very few options to overcome this problem. I have found, however, that holding my notes with two hands will help a great deal. The only other option that you really have is to have a place to set your notes, such as a podium or perhaps even have them on a clipboard.
Shaky Knees – The problem of your knees knocking together is actually something that has been around for thousands of years, the first written instance of it being recorded in the Bible. So you are actually in good company when it comes to having a problem with shaking knees. There are also a few options to be able to overcome this, but one of the best ways is to shift your weight a little bit from side to side. It is necessary to stand straight with your feet below you in order to appear poised for your speech. But there is nothing wrong with shifting your weight slightly to overcome shaky knees provided you do not draw notice to it from your audience.
There are many other things that could go wrong whenever you are giving your speech. One of the best things to do is just to be prepared to take a deep breath during your talk without being too noticeable about it. The moment that you take a deep breath you will find that you will regain your composure to one degree or another.
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“Youtube Video – 6 Ways to Control Your Stage Fright”
Professional speaker and communication coach Dr. Bill Lampton tells you how to control your stage fright, in six easy steps…
Here is the transcript.
Hello! I’m Bill Lampton welcome to another version of let’s talk about it. Today we’re going to talk about six ways to control your stage fright. Notice that I didn’t say eliminated we never really get rid of it even seasoned performers like Carly Simon and Barbra Streisand stayed away from audiences for years because they didn’t want to face a live audience.
You might want to know Bill you’re a professional speaker. Do you ever get stage fright? Yeah, I still do but I’ve found six ways to control it and I want to share those with you.
PREPARE.
In the first place, PREPARE. It sounds like an oversimplification but it really does matter. Prepare, this is something that I tell the people that I work with when I’m providing executive coaching so that they can improve their presentation skills. One of the comments I make is the more preparation you have ahead of time, the less perspiration you have during the speech.
PUT IN PERSPECTIVE.
The second thing I would say is PUT YOUR SPEAKING in PERSPECTIVE while the event is so important to you and seems even monumental. Remember it’s really not likely to be earth-shattering. In fact, in your lifetime in mind there are only a few speeches that have changed history. Don’t expect yours too. In fact, your job will probably not be in jeopardy nor will any other relationships nor your reputation if you give one bad speech. Roger Ailes said you have 720 hours in the month what if one of those hours is a bad speech you’ve still got many other great hours in your month.
THINK ABOUT SYMPTOMS.
Again, I would say, think about the symptoms of stage fright: sweaty palms, your throat gets constricted and dry you. Wish you could have a drink of water. Your hands are trembling. Your knees are shaking. Your stomach is churning. But wait, think about it all of these are internal, not external and the audience won’t be aware of them. This is one of the great values of videotapes. Playback one of your speeches that you gave and you’ll be amazed you’ll say gosh you know I was so scared but it didn’t show at all. Therefore, don’t ever tell your audience that you’re afraid because they’re not likely to know it unless you tip them off and that will diminish their confidence in you.
AUDIENCES ARE FRIENDLY.
Speaking of audiences. Let’s remember that we need to change our attitude about audiences. Audiences are not waiting to be our critics they’re waiting to be our cheerleaders. Why? Because they have been in the same situation themselves and frankly they’re glad that you’re the one up there speaking and not them. Think about it. When you sit in an audience do you want the speaker to fail? No. You want the speaker to succeed because failure is very uncomfortable for everybody.
FORGET IMPRESSION.
Another point DON’T TRY to MAKE a GREAT IMPRESSION If that sounds contradictory, there is another side to it. If you are trying to make a great impression, your focus is on yourself. Your focus instead should be on the message and on the audience that you want to receive that message. So don’t think about what’s my gesture inappropriate. Don’t mispronounce a word did I stumble here are there. No. Think instead about the message that you want to convey to this audience.
THE TRUMP CARD
And then to I would suggest. Remember that you as the speaker hold the trump card. If you play bridge you know how powerful the trump card is. The trump card makes you a winner. Okay? Likewise in speaking, you have the trump card because you and only you know what you intended to say what you meant to say. So if you leave out something or if you miss the state of fact, don’t beat yourself over the head about that. Never let the audience know that you’re aware of it because they certainly aren’t.
Now take these six tips that I have mentioned and use them they really work they have worked for me and for many veteran speakers and they will work for you. I’m Bill Lampton and I’m glad we got to talk about it.
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Reducing Stage Fright to Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking
Stagefright is by far the most common reason for people to develop their fear of speaking in public and reducing stagefright to overcome your fear of public speaking may be the best way to go.
There is actually no definite science that will help you reduce your fear of public speaking, but surely, here are some common steps to use to make it work for you.
Try to accept the fear and embrace it, not that you want your fear to take over, but for you to know how your fear works and understand its nature. Don’t try to fight the feeling, instead, try to look for a way around it. Rest assured, your fear will pass more easily once you get to terms with it and not be frightened about it anymore.
Next, try to feed yourself with the idea of calming exercises and gain firm footing by taking deep and slow gentle breaths to help relax your mind and body.
You may also aid this by thinking of positive thoughts and enjoyable images to help clear your mind and attention to the matter at hand.
Never ever try to lose track of reality and stay connected with what goes on around and what is happening at the present moment.
Listen closely to others and pay attention to what goes on around you.
Make the most of the situation by telling yourself of supportive, positive, encouraging and esteemable things.
Think of yourself as your greatest fan and supporter, who could help you go through the circumstance of fear you hope to overcome.
Reflect on your past successes and make the most out of our strengths and abilities, by drawing out that inner strength within you to make you weather through the situation.
Practice makes perfect since it is important to help you keep track of focus by mastering your topic or subject.
Maintain a positive mental attitude, since it will surely reflect on your current disposition and attitude towards your audience.
Make sure to prepare ahead of time and never ever entertain the thought of cramming. Rehearsing more and even overdoing it can be good for you since it will help you gain mastery of your subject matter.
Always make it a point to project confident and self-assured attitude. Body posture is an important indicator so try to make it look as if everything is fine even if you don’t feel like it. Your body language can tell if you are at your weak spot or not.
Always have focus, never try to be distracted by anything, lest you lose your train of thought and panic. If it should happen just try to pause for a while and compose your thoughts.
Avoid trying to be perfect or be number one. The key to overcoming your fear is not against others but convincing yourself that you are doing a good job and you are good at it. Try to avoid focusing on what mistakes could happen, but on what you think you can do to better improve your performance.
Surely, these are things you may be able to do on your own without having to spend countless amounts of money, just as long as you know that reducing stagefright is the best way to overcome your fear of public speaking.
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Join Toastmasters and find a club that you like to practise your speeches in a friendly environment. You are welcome to visit our Kampong Ubi Toastmasters Club if you are living in Singapore.
“World Champion Speaker Reveals his #1 Key to Overcoming Fear Eliminating the Negative Self-Talk, and & Delivering a Clear Message…Even If This is Your Very First Speech.”
