Speaking Success in a Cruel World

Define what 'success' in public speaking means to you

Jeannette here again with just a quick reminder about public speaking success.

When you're starting our on your public speaking career - at whatever level you want that to be - you must be the person who decides whether or not you're succeeding. Please don't judge yourself against some of the best and most experienced speakers in the world, before you've had a chance to acquire their opportunities. Even people like Tom Antion had to start somewhere.

What are your standards?

Make a list now of the criteria, the standards, by which you'll judge or evaluate your own success. As always, be kind to yourself. Remember that your audience is most unlikely to judge you even half as harshly as you judge yourself. If you doubt that that's true, recall the last time you listened to someone give a lecture or another type of public presentation. Even if s/he stumbled over a few words, or made some errors with presentation of slides, I'd guess that you still went away with some information you found useful. If you're half as wonderful as you should be, you probably felt a degree of empathy with the less-than-stellar-performer. It's rare that as an audience member, you feel you've completely wasted your time, listening to a dreadful speaker.

Except of course at far too many of our Universities and Colleges! Just when one should be exemplary in public presentation, many of our lecturers let the team down.

That's a tangent of mine: I've lobbied for years to require University lecturers to at least have to undergo some public speaking skills training. Even if they don't have to qualify as teachers. A lost cause perhaps.

Getting back to you, and your public speaking success, remember that it is a journey, a gradual development of skills and confidence. So when you write out your standards, maybe one of them could be as simple as:

• I was better prepared than in my last presenation because I started my prep earlier and asked for help. Or...
• I arrived in plenty of time to check the microphone and all other equipment, so I could relax about that.

For now, to your public speaking success. Please consider signing up for my free e-course simply by clicking this little link --->>> Public Speaking Success