My Approach To Public Speaking

I’ve spent a lot of my time recently presenting various pieces at work and a colleague approached me and asked me how I go about preparing for my presentations. My approach to presentations has evolved over time as I’ve learned about myself what works and what doesn’t.

For most of my life up to my late twenties, the idea of presenting anything to a group of people was one of the most terrifying things I could imagine. If you had asked my parents when I was young that one day I would spend a chunk of my time presenting to people when I’m grown up, they’d have laughed at you.

All of my presentations would follow a similar theme of preparation: I would spend weeks in the run up to those presentations procrastinating and agonising over what I was going to say down to the smallest details. Sleepless nights would follow and I would end up planning what on earth I could do to get out of presenting whatever assignment or work related thing it is. Come the moment of the presentation the nerves would hit overdrive and I would proceed to word vomit everything I needed to say. Afterwards I would spend the next week cringing at every minor detail I messed up or sections I forgot to cover in the right amount of detail.

This experience is definitely not unique, public speaking is one of the most common fears that people have. The difference here being that I would continuously volunteer or find opportunities to present things to people. I knew that I needed to become comfortable with presenting and public speaking, and while I wouldn’t say it’s easy now, it’s definitely tolerable. By stepping out of my comfort zone and gaining this experience, I’ve managed to build up a process that works for me to handle public speaking.

Step One: Write The Script

I would love to be able to say that my approach to public speaking is just wing it and hope for the best, as that’s typically my approach to other aspects of my life. The reality is that I spend hours upon hours preparing my presentations. The first step of that is writing a script of what you want to say. To start with I really focus on what my key messages need to be and creating an outline around them. I start with getting a few key words onto the page then fleshing them out and then putting them in a rough order.

Once I’ve got that outline I then start adding the meat to the bones - At this point it’s really just about getting that content onto the page without worrying too much about how it flows, that refinement comes later.

Step Two: Speak and Refine

Once I’ve got all the content down I then attempt to present with what I’ve got written down. I’m not too bothered by how long it takes or how clunky it feels at this point, as I’m just trying to figure out whether the structure and content makes sense. I often find once I start speaking what I’ve written down for the first time I discover a key point I missed during the first step. I build in those missing points and run through a few more times.

Once I’ve run through it a few times I then note down in my script where things felt clunky. Maybe the sentence structure didn’t feel quite right or maybe I keep tripping over certain words. I make those adjustments and run through the presentation again and again until I’ve ironed all those issues out.  At this point I should have a script that reads and speaks well and I can start the process of memorisation.

Step Three: Memorisation

This is usually the longest part of the process and requires some work over a number of days or weeks depending on the length of the presentation. For me it's important to keep the presentation regularly flowing through my mind to help the memorisation, especially if it's a longer piece. Therefore I will spend a little bit of time every day stepping through it to the point it feels really natural, to the point I could deliver it while lying in bed or having breakfast.

Assuming you’re using some form of slides with your presentation, I always relate each point on my slide to a part of what I am memorising. Each bullet point on my slide will have a short paragraph and key point memorised against it to talk through.

If I’m presenting without slides, which admittedly is quite uncommon these days, I would just spend more time rehearsing my presentation as it’s unlikely I’ll have any cues in the moment to rely on.

Presentation Time

Preparing for a presentation doesn’t just include writing and memorising what you want to say, but should also include familiarising yourself with the environment you’re going to be presenting in. This part is critical for me and non-negotiable if I’m presenting something in person. I’ve had experiences where I was well prepared but crashed and burned because I felt uncomfortable and nervous about the surroundings I found myself in.

Prior to every presentation I make sure I spend some time in the room I am going to be presenting in and familiarise myself with the stage. I think about whereabouts specifically I want to stand on that stage and how I will move about the stage. If there’s steps to get up to the stage then I make sure I go up and down those steps a few times. My feet always feel like lead right before I go up on stage and one of my biggest fears is tripping on a step on the way up to the stage... Spacial recognition isn’t my strong point!

If it’s a bigger room and I am using a mic i make sure to spend some time holding it just to get used to the feeling. My goal here is to simulate the experience as closely as I can so that it feels as natural as possible in the moment. The first time I ever used a mic when presenting it threw me off as I wasn’t used to my own voice being so loud. Consequently I lost my train of thought and it all ended up a bit of an awkward mess.

Now if I’m presenting remotely via Teams or Zoom this is all a little easier to manage.

From time to time you're going to realise you have missed a part or made a mistake. Don't worry about it or dwell on it, just move on. The audience doesn't know that you've missed something or made a mistake, and even if they do, they won't care. Move on and keep going.

Nerve Management

Managing my nerves in the moment was something that’s taken me quite a lot of time to control. As I mentioned at the start, when it was my time to start speaking I would just word vomit and rush through my presentation.

The key to managing my nerves is to focus on my breathing and really slowing it down. Starting fifteen minutes prior to my presentation, I will consciously focus on breathing in and out and I will continue this for the first minute or so of my presentation. I have found that this really helps slow down the pace that I am speaking at. My preference is to always stand when I am presenting regardless of whether it’s in person or via Teams/Zoom. This is because I find it easier to breathe when standing rather than sitting. I think in the past when I have presented remotely I would end up in a scrunched up posture that didn’t really help me breathe properly. Standing up allows me to move more freely and helps use up some of that nervous energy.

Once I get through my first 30 seconds presenting I find my rhythm and the nerves dissipate. I've found that focusing on delivering my presentation as if it were a conversation between myself and a friend or colleague also helps dissipate those nerves. Speaking conversationally is inherently relaxing.

It Takes Time

Delivering presentations to people is one of those things that takes a lot of practice and refinement to do well, at least it did for me. I’m not a natural and my presentations are definitely not perfect but with time and experience they have improved substantially. I have went out of my way to put myself into situations that meant I would need to present something. Ten years ago I struggled to present to 3 people yet nowadays i am presenting to 50+ people at a time, which still blows my mind. There’s no better teacher than experience when it comes to presenting.

Tom