Views of the art of public speaking. Why do I have a fear of public speaking?

Interact with your audience

In our open step from our course on how to become a better presenter, experts explain how to interact with your audience effectively. They suggest that if you want audience members to shout out, make sure you tell them, but perhaps leave it until the last quarter of the session so there aren’t too many interruptions.

If you ask the audience questions, be prepared for jokey, irrelevant or inappropriate answers, and make sure you have the tools to deal with that. Finally, volunteers are a great way to include your audience – just make sure to choose someone who actually wants to join you.

General tips

We’ll finish off with some more general advice on how to be successful when public speaking. For more information, you can enrol on our course Presenting Your Work with Impact: Presentation Skills Training.

Be yourself

Audience members don’t want a perfect speaker with no flaws or mistakes. Instead, they respond well to honesty, and you showing your personality. Even though confidence is powerful, so is vulnerability, so don’t be scared to slip up. The audience don’t want you to fail, in fact, they will probably empathise with any mistakes you make.

Even if you haven’t seen many speeches or presentations by someone like you before, that doesn’t mean you don’t have something valuable to say.