What makes me apprehensive about public speaking? Everything about it. I'm a private person and I hate being in the spot light. I am the furthest thing from being a narcissist. So, that's one thing. Another is the fear of not sounding articulate. I sometimes doubt myself when it comes to speaking on intellectual issues when I'm around people a lot smarter than I am. I guess I always assume everyone else around me is smarter and that they're are thinking my presentation is wrong or inaccurate. Sounds like a real confidence porblem doesn't it? Even though it sounds like it, I don't suffer from a lack of self esteem. It's just a lack of confidence.
After reading some of the information in the book, one of my many issues might just be with poor planning. You see, when I get up in front of people to speak, it's usually a last minute "can you do this now" sort of thing. Then, when I get up in front of people, I speak in an unorganized manner on something I wasn't prepared to do. Add that to me now having a negative attitude beacuse someone else's bad planning has now fallen on me to take care of it for them. One example recently was, "Hey, can you guys go to a high school and speak at a job's fair right now? The other person said they were not prepared and that you would do a better job anyway". 30 minutes later, I'm on stage ata big high school auditorium with a microphone in my hand. That was not a good morning. high School kids are a tough crowd.
I say "uh" a lot too and when I catch myself doing that, internally I start to fell like I'm blowing it. That only leads to me getting distracted and off point because I start to think about how I must be messing up .
So hopefully, at the end of this class, these issues can be resolved. In the meantime, be patient with me. I'll try not to bore you.
FD
Hello, I'm not an expert in public speaking, but
ReplyDeleteI see that if you want to get a good result, you need to be prepared, to spend a real time to make an outline of your speech. If speaker doesn't have any goal of his speech he will never reach the aim. As for me I like exprompt, but even if it's an exprompt I know something about my topic, you know, very often note can distract speaker from his speech, but if he really know what he wants to say, he will never forget his speech, because everything goes out his heart and mind and it's I call a fire speech. I'm just thinking about your personality that you are private person, is it possible to change something in yourself and become public. You know, even if we can not change our personality, I belive that we can be very proficient and efficient in public speaking. You have everything what you need, you know language, you have experience in this life, you are smart. Probably you need to have your strong opinion and your own point of view and if you have it just express what you think, because you believe in this. At the same time we need to be very flexible to be ready admit that we did something wrong or said something wrong. Thank you for your post, it helped me to think about it more, who I am and can I defend my position
Reading the story about the impromptu high school speech made me cringe. It really wasn't that long ago that I was sitting on those bleachers, listening to speakers come in with some legitimate purpose and hearing them completely dismissed by the apathetic crowd. High school really is one of the toughest crowds, but man that takes some guts.
ReplyDeleteI also wanted to respond to the part about questioning your ability to articulate intellectual points. I have this same insecurity because I really do try to present myself as an intellectual and I worry that if I mispronounce a word or something, I'd compromise my speech's logos. When I start getting worried about that kind of stuff, however, I turn to Earnest Hemingway. He knew how to tell a story without the application of high diction, but man he could connect to people and he could really rouse some serious thought and emotion out of his audience. Brevity, not complexity, is the answer. Or at least that's how I've come to understand it. You'll do great!