"Facing the Fear" My Experience with Public Speaking

Public Speaking is one of the very difficult skills to master. But if mastered properly, it can help you a lot in many ways. It will help you to develop your personality. It will help you to create your brand and propel yourself. This is very important for a BA in the industry than any other person in a scrum team. So today I will be elaborating on one of the very important soft skills, the skill of Public Speaking. This time will be taking you on a tour of my own story of facing the fear of public speaking. Overcoming it with 1st personal experience articulated in today's edition of The Classy Business Analyst.

"Fear is a tricky word. When you are just about to face it, it doubles twofold on you. When faced it gets easy on you. When conquered it does wonders in you. Public speaking brings different kinds of emotions to the surface with fear. Such as anxiety, panic, unease, nervousness, and worry. I personally faced all these emotions at the start. And how to overcome them is a story. Step by step facing fear on different scales, most of the best speakers in the world have their own stories. This would be mine I'm sharing with you."

First Attempt...

The setting is noon. The place is a village called Heiyanthuduwa. It's 10 years old me, on a stage of the village temple, in full silence, completely blanked at the annual speaking competition. The loudspeaker stationed at the small mountain where the temple is built on, is the ideal spot to transmit the sound to the full circumference of the village. The loudspeaker only announced my name that noon, then what the whole village heard was silence. The serenity ruled for a few minutes in utter silence. Apart for a distant dog bark, the gathered crowd did not made any sound. But anticipating. Anticipating a response from the little boy mentally struggling a thousand battles on the stage. I stepped down from the stage and went out of the hall without raising my head. Inside, filled with frustration, anger, and regret about myself. My grandfather being a principal and a stardom speaker known by everyone in the village, made me feel as if I had let down my hereditary as well. I even couldn't open my mouth to say "Thank you" before leaving the stage.

It all started from there, the day I failed. From that day out of utter disappointment on myself, I thought to fight back. And next year participated again in the same competition and came in 1st place. It's just the beginning of taking myself through the journey of "Facing the Fear".

So next year and year after that and after that, I went with full determination to win and came in 1st. So how did I do it? What did I do to change the setback of the beginning, below is for the learning.

1. I byhearted all the 8 topics which is in the context of the competition, and which we should randomly pick on the stage. These speeches are 5 minutes long. So to start, I knew the heading of all topics in hand. Then started the hard way. I wrote down all the speeches and memorized them.
2. How to memorize 8 different topics? it is a simple act of practicing. I practiced each and every evening after coming home from school, and making it a habit to go to the temple, find a serene spot without people, and keep on practicing speaking.
3. Used a high-pitched voice. This is why a place without any person is needed. First, you need to build confidence in yourself. This skill is all about confidence. And how you conquer the crowd with your confidence. What is better than a fearless voice to show your confidence. So I crafted my pitch from the practice level itself.
4. In these serene sessions, after spending somewhat time to mastering the content and the pitch, I started using variations. Started magnifying and reduced pitch to propel ideas. Used to express myself by extending my arms. Watched me in front of a mirror and added the expressive elements of public speaking to my speech. Practiced and practiced that arm expressions came naturally.
5. Then it's about trial and feedback. Did some trials in front of the team and got feedback. After that improved my speech with their comments.

Now the groundwork had been done. Ready for the Speech? Sure. So then comes the delivery. On the day of the competition, it is about putting all the hard work into one powerful delivery. No matter how hard you had practiced and confident about, at the moment nerves going to return to you. So do to all the speakers. Even for the best.

This is how I overcame it,

1. Being present early at the location and getting used to the ambiance.
2. Visualizing myself acing the speech from my mind.
3. When the contest started and I got the topic, I wrote the main points on a paper. This helped me to continue my speech even if I get stuck at any point. Just needed a quick look at the underline points on the paper. This also assisted in organizing the thoughts.
4. Maintained eye contact with the judge board and the audience.
5. When you are talking about a point, in your mind have the clarity of what the next sentence would be. Always keep that in practice. This will assist you more if your speech is not a narration, as it assisted me in these early stages.
6. Understand the mood of your audience. This is very important to how effective your delivery will be. Our speech should be powerful, if not what is the use of getting ready and following all the above steps. Read your crowd and use the tone you practiced and get their attention. Use the arm movements you practiced and seamlessly mix it with the tone to keep their attention on your performance. You should center yourself on the stage to sway the masses. That should be your utmost goal as a public speaker on the stage.

So this helped me each year to grab 1st place at the Speaking competition in my village. Even though this is a very smaller scale when compared with the world outside, I believed it was your root that can mold you. Then comes the outside world. Where your future lies with all your dreams and ambitions.

Professional Setting...

When I stepped into the industry the public speaking sphere itself is different. There are no competitions but expressing your selves. This can be through motivational speech, knowledge sharing, or hosting events. People do it at their project level, then the company level, community level, and going all the way to Ted level speeches.

From the 1st workplace onwards I got the opportunity for public speaking. The golden rule as I had stated in my previous editions is to Accept all the challenges that comes your way, mostly at the beginning of your career. Opportunities came in the face of project presentations, inductions, farewells, company-level presentations, and events. Accepted all and delivered in the spotlight. The confidence I built through previous experience helped me a lot. So after that I tried delivering speeches without scripts or pre-planning to constantly challenge myself. What I found as the core secret for public speaking from all of these is that, it is nonother than Confidence.

So confidence is the key ingredient for the recipe. When you had done pre-planning to build up confidence in your scope of a perfect speech, before a presentation, that means you are ready. A very well noticed truth about most of the public speakers is that they are scared before a speech. Even if not scared the nervousness is there. but it is the confidence in them that made them deliver and make us see the public speaker in them.

Later on I conducted Public Speaking forums and skill development gatherings at my previous workplaces to build confidence in employees. This session was called "Mind your Language" and took a Toastmaster type approach.

Below are some snapshots along the way,

Conducting a Hackathon for 48 hours straight with the Skill Development Team of Unicorn Solutions with Live footage through social media.

Conducting an event at the Graton's Ark yacht for Unicorn employees and shareholders who arrived from Norway.

Most latest session on the list, co-hosting the IT All Hands Gathering at Allianz Lanka.

As a Business Analyst...

As a Business Analyst, the skill of public speaking is very important for the reasons mentioned at the beginning. As said, It is all about branding yourself. A confident outgoing personality is very smooth for your clients rather than any other. As what we had discussed on soft skills in the previous edition, a BA cannot be an introvert, but an extrovert with an outgoing personality.?

Public speaking helps you a lot in your work related activities as well. Below are few examples,

1. Pitching products — Producing a compelling pitch needs much confidence in yourself and the product. A BA equipped with the skill to propel himself can propel a product also to a viable client.?The skill of public speaking materialize in such.
2. Client Demos - Demos can be conducted for business users and C Level. In all situations of product demos, good speaking skills with confidence is the key to success.
3. Presentations - Power point presentations are a regular for a professional, more you go up in your career ladder, many the presentations that will come your way. This will be the moment which we put in simple terms, "The Chance" to impress your seniors. So acing a presentation!, Good speakers does that.
4. Knowledge Sharing -Knowledge sharing sessions, KTs and Tech talks are all there for you to communicate what you know to an interested crowd. This skill is all about taking what's inside your head and putting it inside the heads of your audience with minimum effort to yourself and them. This comes with practice and good public speaking skills.

Likewise there are also many other areas that you can apply your public speaking skills as a BA, not constrained to above four points. The skill of Public speaking comes to the larger area and scope of Communication soft skill. And links like a web with most of the activities that we does in our day today work.

After all these years of "Facing my fear", What I learned...

In Public speaking, charm your audience is the success to be a good public speaker. Talk to the audience as you are in a conversation with their mind even without them knowing. When at the start what I learned is that I need to pitch my voice to show confidence. Even now when I'm having butterflies at a speech, I starts with a high tone, to go all in. That is to build confidence within me when doubts come to mind. But now reflecting back on all my experiences, it is not always about pitch.

Like the pitch and tone, what I learned is "a pause" is also powerful while you are speaking. And learned that reducing your pace of talking, can convey the message easily to your audience. So talk slowly when you need to tell something complex. Smile at your audience while your speech is ongoing. Likewise you can enchant your audience with your presence on stage. A good example on charming your audience while speaking will be Kasturi Chellaraja, the Group CEO of Hemas Holdings.

Another, Bring the X factor to your speech. Try to combine your other soft skills such as critical thinking and creative thinking to your speech. Give them something unique and had not being in the cards. Then blend it with the ambience with your personality. Deliver.

Keep the cool factor in your speech. To talk to their hearts, do not be too cheesy. Some people goes on with talking sentimental speeches to convey emotions to their crowd. Know that, even without being cheesy you can talk to their hearts. That's where again creativity comes. So combine creativity and be cool on the stage. By looking at so many stardom speakers and experiencing it myself, what I found out is that even when a good narration is given, without cheesy words, without cheesy quotes but with beautiful delivery and some creativity, you still can talk to their hearts.

Baseline BE CONFIDENT...

After all these typing and taking you through my journey so far, I believe that there is another journey ahead for me with much larger crowds and much larger situations that I need to face my fear in. Anyhow today, when looking back into "Facing the Fear", my journey had came to a clarity. I found my happiness. A happiness I found which was a fear at the very beginning. A happiness which is there in Public Speaking that satisfy my soul and mind.

Hope this message will be helpful in YOUR journey of Facing the Fear...