In my experience, when I tell people I  deliver training in  public speaking  every single person  has a story to tell about how they feel about it - and most are negative. There is very little middle ground on this. 

The question I ask though is not how you feel about it but would you benefit from some training. The reason I ask is that I don’t mind speaking in public ( which is a pretty good job for someone who trains in it ) in fact I really like it. But that does not  mean that I do not benefit from further training.

I have spent the past 2 days working with my Speakersbank colleagues from Manchester, Cumbria, Scotland and London. We were going through the same programme we deliver to our clients. Naturally we have more experience than most of our clients in speaking in front of a group but we still  all gained a great deal from the programme.

A crucial, very important , aspect of this programme is the feedback from the others. I was challenged to put together a 5 minute presentation in 5 minutes . I used the opportunity to start preparing a presentation I am due to give in a few weeks. The feedback I got on the content and the structure of the presentation and my delivery was invaluable and will allow me to tweak what I did intuitively into something more professional.

The point I am making is that no matter how badly you feel about giving presentations or speaking in public nobody starts from absolutely nothing. You might only have spoken out in a school classroom setting, or to a few colleagues at work but you have done it.  Now might be a good time to build on that?

Please share your own stories about public speaking experiences.

…..and if you are interested in finding out more about what we do get in touch

jackie@consultcameron.com