The best communication advice I’ve ever received is that I’m entitled only to my fair share of speaking time. If I speak with another person, I can speak only 50% of the time. If I’m in a group setting with five people, I’m entitled to only 20% of the speaking time and so on.

This has nothing to do with manners, common courtesy, or being nice to people. It’s being pragmatic. If you want to influence people, land a client, date, bed, or wed someone, or just make friends with people, simply give them their time to express themselves. Violate this rule, and you’ll risk aggravating people and losing them altogether.

You might say, “but not everybody likes to speak. What’s wrong with me filling up the empty space?” Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. If that’s the case, the best thing to do is to speak your fair share and then shut up the rest of the time, even if the other party doesn’t utter a single word.

When they said, “Speech is silver. Silence is golden,” they meant golden for you, not for the other party. Silence is beautiful, especially in the noisy world that we’re living in right now. Believe it or not, some people enjoy silence, especially in the company of their loved ones. They feel in peace. I’ve learned that from a beautiful woman. She said “people are silent in the company of people they feel comfortable with.” I still remember that evening after so many years.

Let’s say, you’re not comfortable with silence. You’re too excited about your partner. What are you going to do? The second best thing you can do is to engage them by asking them open ended questions. Questions that can’t be answered with a simple yes or no. Questions that start with “tell me, explain me, describe me”, and with question pronouns.

Advanced Communication Tip

Now that we’ve got the basics covered, here’s an advanced tip. Do this and you’ll gain the respect of your associates. If you’re engaged in a group conversation and one person doesn’t speak at all, assume the role of the leader, and engage them in the conversation by asking them a question. It can be as simple as “what do you think about this?” They will love you for doing that and you’ll gain the respect of the rest.

If you really think, you’re brilliant and the rest of the world has to listen to what you have to say, start your YouTube channel, your podcast, or your blog, and see what the world really thinks of you.

There are seven billion people on this planet. It’s up to you to show that you’re amazing. If you’re anything short of that, people will ditch you instantly, and move on to the next person to do business with, to start a relationship, and to make friends with.

How come some people enjoy public speaking so much, while it scares the hell out of the rest? How come some people look for opportunities to get in front of an audience, while others do whatever they can to avoid it. The answer is simple, public speaking is scary and exciting at the same time, like the thrill rides in an amusement park. Once you get past the anxiety, excitement is all you’re left with. In this post, I’m going to explain you how to get past your anxiety, so that you’ll not only speak confidently, but actually enjoy it and look forward for your next speech.

The Critical Skill for Your Career and Social Life

Public speaking is crucial for your career. You can’t get past the entry level positions without public speaking skills, no matter how intelligent you are or how hard you work. Once in a while, we come across a person with no apparent intelligence or talent who has a great career or business. We wonder how they did it. They are the people who are willing to do the things that others avoid. Public speaking is one of those things.

In every social gathering, someone has to take the lead and make an introductory speech. You could be that person and take a big burden off the shoulders of your peers. That will gain you the respect and the goodwill of your peers. It will give you a big sense of satisfaction. Thanks to your improved profile, career and business opportunities and quality relationships will flow to you. Moreover, you will approach every social situation with confidence. You will able to express your knowledge, ideas, and opinions in every social setting. As a result, your overall quality of life will improve dramatically.

You can do it.

What separates the winners from the losers is their mindset. Successful people have the growth mindset. They aren’t bothered with where they are today. What matters is where they want to be in the future. They pay the price to get there. This price can be countless hours of work, the embarrassment of public failure over and over, being subject to criticism, or downright humiliation. They don’t give up. They stick with it, until they succeed. If you want to succeed in public speaking and in life in general, you need to adopt the fundamental principle of personal development.

Set a specific goal.

The first step is to set a goal. Make it a big one. The greater your goal, the more motivated and inspired you’re going to feel and the harder you’re going to work. Would you like to address your colleagues and customers in a company event? Would you like to organize your own workshop? Would you like to speak in a prestigious event like TED? Would you like to speak in front of a stadium filled with people?

• What is the event?
• What is the size of the audience?
• Who’s going to be your audience?
• Set a deadline. When do you want to have accomplished this goal?

When you set that goal, print it on a piece of paper and post it somewhere where you can see every day.

Immersion

My favorite skill development technique is immersion. Immerse yourself with public speaking. Read, listen to, and watch every resource on public speaking. Prepare several speeches and practice them. Invite family, friends, and colleagues and give speeches to them. Then go out to the field and give a speech every day for the next thirty days. Imagine where your public speaking skills will be at the end of those thirty days. Once you get over your initial timidity, make sure you give public speeches regularly, so that your newly acquired skills don’t atrophy.

Graduated Exposure

There are several factors that affect your anxiety level in a public speaking engagement.

• How important is the event? Is it critical for your career or education? Is it just a birthday party speech?
• Who is the audience? How well do you know them? Are you doing a PhD defense in front of your jury and a group of critical academicians? Or are they just your family and friends?
• How big is the audience? Are you speaking in a convention hall in front of thousands of people? Are you speaking in a meeting room with a few people?
• What is the setting? Are you going to speak on a stage with spotlights on you? Are you going to speak in front of a room?

The idea here is to start with the least intimidating setting and build your way up to the most intimidating. This is called graduated exposure and you can learn more about it in my post about overcoming shyness. This requires hard work, but it’s definitely worth the effort. You cannot skip the easy speaking assignments and then expect to be fully confident when the stakes are high. Do the work.

Get out of your comfort zone and stay there!

As you see by now, improving your public speaking skills requires some courage. It requires you to get out of your comfort zone regularly and risk public failure. You need to be OK with that. Make piece with failure. It is OK to fail. As a matter of fact, failure is your best friend. Every time you fail, you learn something new and you stretch your comfort zone a little. The next time, you face a similar challenge, you’ll be much more confident.

Courage is not the absence of fear. It is feeling the fear and doing it anyway, as the title of a book suggests. The good news is that once you build courage and confidence, you can apply those qualities in every area of your life. They are universal qualities.

Join a Public Speaking Club

Toastmasters is a public speaking club with branches all over the world. They have a very friendly atmosphere, because all the members are there to improve their public speaking skills, just like you. Most of them have been where you are right now. They understand what it means to have public performance anxiety. Moreover, their membership fees are very affordable. You can join them whatever your current level is.

Toastmasters clubs usually meet twice per month. The meetings include prepared speeches, table topics, and evaluations. Table topics are improvised speeches. If you choose to participate, you receive a topic from the organizer and you make an impromptu speech between one to two minutes.

If you want to experience a Toastmasters meeting, contact your local club. They welcome guests to their meetings. As a member of a Toastmaster club, you are welcome as a guest in other clubs. When you get used to speaking in your club, it’s time to make speeches in other clubs to get out of your comfort zone. Toastmasters always provides you with challenges.

I certainly recommend that you participate in their speech contests. This is a great exercise to get out of your comfort zone and speak in front of greater audiences. The speech contests are conducted on different levels. The winners of each level proceed to the next level, until they compete in the world championship. Don’t worry, if you can’t proceed to the next level. Ask your fellow members for side events where you can give speeches. If there aren’t any, organize one.

Ditch the drugs and alcohol.

Last but not least, a word of caution. Do not rely on alcohol or drugs to overcome your public performance anxiety. You have the power inside to face any challenge. Even if you fail, you’ll walk away much stronger. If you’re inclined to take that path, read my post on overcoming shyness and see what happened to me when I did that.

You create your reality.

If you think that there will be critical people in your audience, you’ll be intimidated and perform poorly, this is exactly what will happen. If you think that there will be friendly people in your audience, you’ll be energized, and have fun delivering your speech, this is exactly what will happen as well.

Summary

• Adopt the growth mindset
• Set a goal
• Immerse yourself in theory and practice
• Get out of your comfort zone regularly. Stretch yourself a little more every time.
• Join Toastmasters and participate in their events
• Stay away from drugs and alcohol
• Imagine a positive outcome
• Enjoy your stage time!

Recommended Reading

If you want to learn more about how to deal with fear in general, I recommend the book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway.

Throughout my life I was a shy guy. In my early twenties, I acted like a cool guy in order to hide my shyness. I didn’t speak much and didn’t get involved a lot. Acting cool was my cover to hide my shyness. I didn’t want people to see that I was nervous in social situations. I never spoke up or participated in social life. Deep down, I wanted to speak up and participate. I wanted to enjoy a cheerful social life.

We want you!

Shyness can come across as coldness, even arrogance. If you are shy, remember that there are people who want you to speak up and get involved. People want and need your social contribution. By holding yourself back, you are denying them your social contribution. Moreover, you are also denying yourself the rewards of an active social life: a better career, better relationships, and an overall improvement in the quality of your life.

Everybody is a little shy.

Even great public speakers become overwhelmed when they have to address a stadium full of people. Important conversations, business or political negotiations, and addressing a potential life partner make even the most confident people nervous. That’s why the society rewards the people who dare to go out of their comfort zones and act in these difficult social situations, no matter how overwhelmed they are.

Courage and Practice

Everybody has different confidence levels in different social situations and everybody can improve their confidence levels in every social situation, including you. If you want to succeed in any area of your life, including your social life, you need to adopt the growth mindset. Improving your social skills requires courage and practice.

Set Big Goals!

If you want to make a quantum leap, think big and shoot for the stars. For example, set yourself the goal that you’re going to speak in front of a stadium filled with people and huge spot lights directed towards you. It doesn’t matter how unrealistic this goal might sound to you. The bigger your goals are, the more motivated you’re going to feel, and the faster you’re going to make improvements.

Visualization

Visualization is one of the easiest exercises to overcome shyness. Visualize yourself in social situations that are outside of your comfort zone. Visualize yourself handling the situation at the hand courageously and confidently and succeeding at it. Then go out to the field and actually get involved in the situation that you’ve visualized about. The more you visualize, the more confident you’re going to feel in the real life.

Graduated Exposure

Courage is not the lack of fear. On the contrary, if you had no fear, you wouldn’t need any courage. Courage is feeling the fear, and doing it anyway. The key word here is graduated exposure. That means going out of your comfort zone repeatedly, so that you extend your comfort zone every time a little. You stretch yourself every time, but not to the extend where you panic. You need to feel some fear, but shouldn’t be frozen in panic. The more and the farther you go out of your comfort zone, the more and the faster you’re going to improve your confidence levels in social situations.

1. Make a list of activities that are out of your comfort zone, the longer the list, the better.
2. Sort your list from the easiest to the most difficult.
3. Visualize yourself doing the easiest activity.
4. Go out to the field and do the easiest activity.
5. Repeat the steps 3 and 4 with the next activity in your list.
6. Add new activities to your list constantly.

You can use your imagination to come up with your own original or derived exercises. My favorites are joining a club and traveling.

Join a Club

My favorite club is Toastmasters International, which is a public speaking club. It is very affordable, friendly, and accessible to people with different communication skill levels. I am a member of two clubs and participate in their speech contests. This way I am exposed to different audiences frequently. These activities are completely out of my comfort zone, but I am enjoying them. The idea here is to make friends with stress, take a deep breath, and turn your fear into excitement. Think about it as a trip to the thrill rides in an amusement park.

Traveling

My second favorite activity is to get out of my comfort zone when traveling. In vacation destinations, everybody is more relaxed and want to have fun. They are more open to social interactions with strangers. You can practice your social skills with people who offer service in restaurants, shopping malls, etc. For example, if you enjoy the service in a restaurant, take a minute to tell the staff members that you appreciated their service, and what you like the most. You could even find a job that requires a lot of social skills, such as becoming a sales person.

Stay Away From Drugs and Alcohol

Whatever you do, do not rely on drugs or alcohol. That’s a recipe for disaster. If you really want to improve your social skills, approach each situation completely sober. Using prescribed medicine isn’t my favorite either.

Once, I received a prescribed medicine to take my nervousness under control. I did well in a few presentations. However, one day, I was asked to do a speech without any prior notice. No preparation, no opportunity to take my medication. I was nervous, but I did OK. Most of my colleagues didn’t even notice that I was nervous. On that day, I figured out that if I had to succeed, I had to rely on my internal resources, my internal power. I didn’t need anything external. The same is true for you and everybody on this planet.

One Last Word

You can learn a lot about shyness and anxiety from books and articles, but the only way to overcome it is to go out of your comfort zone regularly and practice your skills in challenging social situations over and over. The books and articles provide only guidance. It’s up to you to do the work and apply those ideas in real life!

Bonus Tips

• Imagine, everybody out there will be friendly, because they are!
• Find yourself a hyper-social buddy and hang out with them. Model them, learn from them. Make this a competition. Try to be even more social than them.

Recommended Reading

In the book Goodbye to Shy, Leil Lowndes offers 85 ideas and exercises to overcome shyness. You can include these ideas in your activity list above.