January 19, 2011
“All of you here have one hundred thousand bad drawings in you. The sooner you get rid of them, the better it will be for everyone.”
Chuck Jones
If you want to get better at public speaking, my advice to you is this: give a bad speech.
In order to be good at ANYTHING, you have to be willing to be really bad at it for a while. This goes for drawing, as the quote above explains, and it also goes for learning to speak well. The good news is that you probably don’t have to give one hundred thousand bad speeches before you start to get better.
The point here is that you need to be okay with the idea of failing a few times in order to improve. Inability to accept the idea of failure may be the main reason many people are afraid to start learning to speak. But if it’s worth doing well, it’s worth doing poorly at first.
The key to this is to find venues for giving speeches in which the stakes aren’t high. If you avoid giving a speech until the boss asks you give a pitch in front of the board of directors, you’re setting yourself up for a stressful first speech. But if you’ve given several speeches in a more comfortable environment, like a Toastmasters meeting, then you’ll have more confidence in your skills and will be more comfortable stepping up to a bigger venue.
Now is not the time to realize you need to work on your speaking skills.
When did Noah build the boat? Before the storm. Start giving bad speeches now before the stakes are too high. Be willing to fail a few times and push through the mediocre until eventually you become great.
Image by Chris_Carter_ via Flickr
