I was able to make it out to see you at your Vancouver speaking event last year, and my partner and I really enjoyed it. Thanks for the wonderful time and the hug and signed book afterwards!

What really struck me, other than what you were speaking about obviously, was how comfortable you seemed standing in front of a crowd of strangers and just talking like it was a normal thing. Which maybe it is for you at this point, but I’ve always found speaking in public, even in front of friends and family, to be really difficult.

How did you learn to do that? Any tricks you can share with someone who’s not looking to do it professionally, but maybe just get more comfortable with it?

S.

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Hey S-

Public speaking has not always been my thing; and I have a lot of growing left to do in that regard, but I’m far better at it now than I was when I started doing it semi-professionally, back in 2010.

That said, there are a few things I can point out that may help you get more comfortable with the act of public speaking, whatever the specific circumstances.

The first thing to keep in mind is that public speaking is a highly terrifying act, and that’s true in the superficial sense but also on a deeply biological level.

Standing in front of a bunch of strangers, unprotected, under threat of perceived social harm if you make a mistake, is an absurd thing to do—especially if you’re a human being’s primitive brain: the portion that regulates things like our adrenal system, sweat glands, breathing, and the like.

Recognizing that this is a highly unusual behavior that our body doesn’t want us to do can help, because it can remind you that it’s okay if you’re nervous, it’s normal to feel weird about it.

I feel pretty comfortable with public speaking most of the time, now, a decade in, but it took me years to get to this point. And I know other professional speakers who have been doing it even longer than me and who still freak out or vomit or nearly hyperventilate every single time, right before going on stage.

The trick is to acknowledge this, accept it as being part of the gig, and to figure out a way to do your job anyway.

That’s the second main point I want to make: if you can tell yourself that this is just a thing you do, this is normal for you, it seems to help calm the jitters, or at the very least can help you ignore them so you can focus on the talk you’re trying to deliver.

For a while, I actually said those words to myself out loud before going out on stage: “This is what you do.” There’s something strangely calming about vocalizing that reality, and normalizing what can otherwise (maybe rightfully) seem like a truly abnormal behavior.

Another speaking-related realization I wish I’d had earlier in my career: practice helps a whole lot.

When I first started giving talks, I decided that I didn’t need to practice: I could just wing it and generally get where I needed to be, covering the right topics, stringing together words that mostly made sense together.

While it was true that I could technically speak to a crowd of people, forming whole sentences and vaguely covering the proper topic, after several mediocre showings I realized that it was probably prudent to invest some time and effort on preparation.

After I started practicing for my presentations, not only did the talks themselves get better, I also got more comfortable on stage—the practice helped me become more confident in the words I used and the concepts about which I spoke. All of this took more work, but it allowed me to focus on and enjoy the delivery, rather than worrying that I would get stuck or would fumble a particularly vital point.

Today, I typically plan to run through longer talks at least a dozen times—ideally twice that—and shorter ones maybe five to ten times. Though sometimes shorter talks are trickier to get just right, so it may be that you end up needing twenty or more run-throughs to get that ten-minute talk where it needs to be; that’s okay. Over-preparing a little is far better than under-preparing and assuming it’ll go fine.

It does help, once you have everyone’s attention, to be comfortable extemporizing so you can participate in panels and Q&A sessions, but also because it’s a skill that translates well to everyday conversation.

That goes both ways, though: one of the better ways to hone your improvisational skills is to just talk to people, be actively engaged in the conversation, and treat each opportunity to speak as a chance to refine your use of language. Think through which words you use, how you construct your sentences, the rhythm of what you’re saying, how you pull together a cohesive message, and whether or not you’re communicating what you want to communicate in the optimal way.

This sounds like a lot, but it gets easier with practice, and after a little while it won’t take any effort at all to do this in every interaction, including those where you’re the center of attention, presenting a more formal talk.

Regarding the creation of your talk:

You can work up some kind of presentation, like a slide show, to display alongside your talk. If this is your preferred route, you can use each new slide as a trigger, talking about what’s on that slide before moving on to the next slide, and thus, the next topic.

Keep in mind: you’re presenting a talk, so you don’t want to fill your slides with words, or people will be distracted. Use the slides as visual aids, and potentially as memory triggers for yourself, for the different segments of your talk, but don’t just show the words you’re about to say to the audience; that’s generally fairly agonizing for everyone involved.

You can also rote-memorize your talk, so that word-for-word, you speak precisely the same sentences over and over again. This is possible even for longer talks, and in some cases it’s the most prudent path to take—especially if you have components that need to be presented in a very specific way, and if you’ll be giving precisely the same talk over and over again to many different audiences.

My usual preferred method is to start by writing my talk out like an essay, and then, from that, to create bullet points with key concepts I want to hit in a particular order.

From there, I figure out how I naturally address these topics, borrowing from the written essay when necessary, but generally allowing myself to use natural language rather than exactly what’s on the page—which can sometimes sound weird, translated to the spoken word.

This allows me to present the right things in the right order, even early on, before I’ve memorized anything more than the bullet points, and ensures that I can get where I need to go, say what I want to say, without visual accessories.

It also helps me evolve the talk over time, since I use similar, but slightly different words each time I present it. This approach allows me to stumble upon in-the-moment adjustments and innovations that I otherwise wouldn’t have come up with, because I’m not reciting memorized sentences: I’m explaining familiar concepts to an audience in a memorized order.

That said, there’s no right or wrong way to give a talk.

What I would suggest is that you try out several different methods to see what works for you and for your purposes—your intended outcomes and audiences—and then hone your skills and make tweaks, over time.

A few last focused, tactical bits of advice:

Record videos of yourself presenting so you can see how your movements and gestures align or clash with the words you use. Pay close attention to your use of filler words like “uh” and “so” and “uhm,” which we tend to chuck into our sentences when we’re feeling uncomfortable and want to avoid silence. Embrace silence, turn forgetful moments, inhales, and breaks between paragraphs into dramatic pauses; linger on those pauses, even when it’s internally uncomfortable to do so.

If you’ll be using a mic for a particular talk, be sure to say hello to the folks running the sound system at the event. Almost always there’ll be tricks to the specific mic and speaker setup you’ll be using, but it’s unlikely you’ll know what those idiosyncrasies are unless you ask the people who know, directly. Also: they tend to be friendly and knowledgable people.

If you can, step onto the stage or into the presentation area where you’ll be speaking at some point before your talk. It seems like a small thing, but I find getting out there beforehand, taking a deep breath, and familiarizing myself with the view, the lighting, the size of the space, helps me feel more comfortable, later, when it’s time to present.

If you flub your words or trip or otherwise mess up, just keep moving forward. People tend not focus on those little mistakes unless you do, and most will probably forget it happened by the time you’ve finished. Correct yourself if necessary, and move on.

And finally, remember that people in the audience will, in general, be rooting for you. They’re on your side. They want you to succeed, and they are there, listening to you, because you’re sharing something valuable with them.

Remember that, embrace the at times immense discomfort, and you can’t help but get better, little by little, over time.