www.PublicSpeakKing.com

Five CyclicStepsDo this and continuously growas a speaker

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1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Step #1 - Ask Why

Step #2 - Write

Step #3 - Internalize

Step #4 - Deliver

Step #5 - Get Feedback

Table of Contents-

Do you feel nervous when someone asks you to give a presentation?

I suppose many of us do.

The primary need is to crush this anxiety. And that’s exactly what the firststep is going to do.

The first step is asking the magical three letter word ‘WHY.’

The habit of asking WHY you are asked to give a presentation is fundamentalto overcome your anxiety.

It’ll help you find the purpose of your talk.

Step #1 - Ask Why-

Let me give a practical scenario. In most of the cases, someone will invite youto speak and be the stakeholder for the presentation. The person is called thepresentation planner.

Even if your boss is asking you to take a session for the team or unit, he isplaying the role of a presentation planner. The presentation planner is yourally.

The more WHYs you ask the planner, the easier it is for you.

Get into the habit of interviewing the presentation planner. For example, ask,“Jim, why do we need this presentation?” He might give you some pointers.

Let’s say he says, “We need to empower our staff to handle the pressure ofreleasing the new product within one month”.

The presentation planner could be anyone – a priest in your church, orprincipal of a school, or a social activist running an orphanage. Sometimes,you might not get a direct answer for your WHY.

In that case, use your common sense and find the possible reasons. Supposethe priest asks you to talk to young children at church and he does not givespecific answers for your WHY, the possible reason could be that the priestwants the children to get inspired and do better in life.

Answering the WHY will help you with clarity about your presentation. Now,let’s move onto the next step.

Are you someone who is thinking that you are a natural speaker?

Well, you could be a natural speaker.

You might as well give a good presentation without writing down yourthoughts. However, if you don’t write down the presentation, you would notbe able to give a clear presentation.

That brings us to the second Step, which is ‘Write Your Presentation’.

Since you have a journal (Remember the first secret!), sort through the filesto find relevant content that can be used for your talk.

The goal of writing is not for reading it out or memorizing. The goal ofwriting is for improvising the content.

If you put your thoughts on paper and look at it after few days, I am sure,you’ll wonder “Oh. That does not make sense.” Then, you’ll re-write theportion that did not make sense.

I can tell you this. You cannot write the 10 th version the first time and to get

to the 10th version, you need to start writing the first version!

Step #2 - Write-

Lincoln’s Gettysburg address is still being talked even after a century. Onemain reason is that it was written and re-written multiple times. Now, that wecovered the two steps, which is ‘Why’, ‘Write’, let’s see the third step.

Have you ever forgot some content in middle of a talk and rolled your eyes?

This is what happened during my 3rd grade. It was such a horrible experiencebecause I forgot my talk.

How about having a step to sort this problem?

The third step is to internalizing your presentation.

Internalizing is the process where you start drilling the content, as manytimes as possible till you no longer have to think about the words.

You can do this even when you are doing regular mundane activities – drivingyour car, watching television, taking shower, etc. I mean drill the speech tillthe content becomes part of you.

If someone wakes you up in middle of your sleep and ask you to talk aboutyour presentation, you should talk.

We are not talking about storing it in memory. We are talking about storing itin your muscles.

Step #3 - Internalize-

Your aim is to take your speech to MUSCLE MEMORY.

Once the content is free flowing, your body language, voice modulation willalso improve drastically. I talk more about how to use body language andvoice modulation in the flagship course ‘how to become a Public SpeakingRockstar’. Now, let's see the next step.

Step 4 is to Deliver the presentation.

I’ll share one secret sauce when you are delivering your presentation.

When you are “live” before the audience, do you get concerned about whatthe audience will think about your body language, or dressing, or looks?

These things matter to a certain extent but they are not worth your attentionwhen you are up there, giving a talk. This is easier said than done.

As a speaker, you can be classified at three levels.

First level, you are only concerned about you. You think: “Am I going todeliver without making any mistakes”, “Am I dressed properly”, etc.

You can get flustered if there are any disturbances such as PowerPoint do notwork, or power shuts down, etc.

Step #4 - Deliver-

Second level, you are concerned about your content. You think: “Is thelistener getting what I am saying” or “Is my message good enough forthem”. You get flustered if the audience is loosing interest in your messageor talk.

Third level, whatever the situation, you will be cool. You are only concernedabout making a difference in your listener’s life. The secret sauce: HavingGENUINE CARE in your heart while talking to your audience.

I have seen this umpteen number of times: Irrespective of the mistakes,nervousness, style, etc. the one who cares, wins.

Have you filled a customer satisfaction form in a restaurant? Why do they dothat?

They want to get better. They want to know what was good, what was bad.

You know this. Can we use this concept for our presentations? Absolutely.Get feedback from your audience. That doesn’t mean that you willbombard them with a long list of questions.

Just ask them few simple questions such as: “If I could ask you one key thingyou learnt from my presentation – What would it be?” or “Did you feel thatsomething could be done differently?”

You can even take print of few key questions and hand it over. This puts lesspressure on your audience who want to give constructive feedback.

Step #5 - Get Feedback-

Feedback is a great tool. However, you should not get overwhelmed ifsomeone gives you a critical feedback.

I’ll tell you a secret to process feedback. If an expert gives you feedback, 99%of the time, the feedback will help you even if it is critical. However, if aregular listener gives you feedback, check if it makes sense. If not, getfeedback from more people and see the pattern. 1 person can be wrong but10 people cannot be wrong (most of the cases).

Let me give my example. My roots are from India, which makes me a non-native speaker. Back in 2013, I was competing in a speech contest in NewEngland area, USA.Even though I had a strong script, I was not sure how totake the speech to the next level. I delivered it to various audiences and gotlot of feedback. I would have gone crazy if I had implemented all thefeedback.

However, there was one feedback that was constantly repeated. My voicewas unintelligible. Intelligible is how clearly the audience understood yourwords.

The next level of contest was among the best speakers in the New Englandarea so I paid $200 an hour to get voice coaching from an expert. I never paidso much money for an hour’s worth of time to anybody. Boy, she was harsh.

But you know what? She pointed out the things that I had been doingincorrectly for a long time. I feel, that was probably one reason because ofwhich, I could finish among the top three speakers in spite of being a non-native speaker in that contest.

Feedback is an essential ingredient to keep growing as a speaker.

If you do the five steps, you'll keep growing as a speaker.

In a few days, I'll share the next video where you'll get an opportunity tocheck out details about our flagship program where I'll take through detailedsteps on how you can rock in public speaking.