Whether you’re addressing a huge auditorium or just speaking up in a meeting, most of us are at least a little uncomfortable with public speaking. If you need a quick confidence boost, just imagine yourself as the audience’s equal.
Image: hxdbzxy (Shutterstock).
Geoffrey James at Inc. shares this tip:
If you’re speaking with a CEO, imagine yourself as a CEO. If you’re speaking to engineers, imagine yourself as an engineer. Find and focus on the commonalities between yourself and your audience. If you’re not a supplicant you won’t sound like one.
This is all about confidence. We’re more comfortable talking to our friends than we are to CEOs. You can’t pretend to know anything about engineering if you’re talking to engineers, but you can put yourself in a frame of mind where they are peers or friends, not “different.” Even if it’s all in your head, it should help you talk to your audience more comfortably, as friends, rather than speaker to listener.
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