Advice for public-speaking anxiety

intparent
Sun, 20 Feb 2011 13:07:49 +0000

I used to be the same way. Then a few years into my career, I was asked to speak on a professional topic that I was passionate about. This is something I could talk for HOURS about, and have a lot of in depth knowledge about. That was my first public speaking experience where I had no jitters. This was a revelation to me. Typically now I only accept public speaking responsibilities when I do have a very good grasp of the material AND something I think the audience needs to/should know.

I had taken a speech class in high school, but it hadn’t helped. Now I believe it is partly because I didn’t believe I had anything important to say to the class. I’m not sure Toastmasters would have been much help to me because I can’t see how they would care much about what I had ot say.

Of course, you can’t always control the topic/when you are asked to speak in public. But I do my best to do so… and let others do the talking if they are more knowledgable :)