Introvert to Stage Lover | A Journey of exploring Public-Speaking

Greetings All,

It's being a while that I haven't written anything and a few days back, got a ping on LinkedIn from a student who was interested to know my journey of becoming Speaker (haven't achieved that stage of becoming :p ). So thought of putting it in a form an article with some tips and learnings from my experience from "An Introvert to a Stage Lover".

I still remember that 1st chance of coming on stage, it was reciting my speech on "Air Pollution: A need of Attention" when I was in my 7th Grade. It was my 1st moment where I stepped out from my comfort zone from standing in a queue at our School Assembly to standing on the podium to showcase myself in front of 100+ students. It was a complete attack on my brain and shivering of my legs with murmuring some words to make myself comfortable. However, nothing worked and I left the stage in-between making myself as an example of being afraid about stage-speaking.

After my 12th Grade, when I joined my undergrad school, on my 2nd Day, there was an orientation session arranged to motivate us for our career path ahead and there we had one of the eminent public speakers Manoj Ambike. Near to the end of his session, he asked one question to everyone in the auditorium i.e.,

"Who will be more happy > A Student who scored 90% or 60% who has just passed in his/her 12th Grade and why?"

To that instant, everyone in the room shouted > 90% Student as he/she will be happy to top the school and to achieve admission in Top College!! And I was unaware what's going on as I was late and sitting in the last chair. To my surprise, I raised my hand to answer something opposite what other spoke about > I still remember that moment when Manoj Sir came near to me from the front-stage with the mic. His steps were slow enough to increase my heart beat and put me into spotlight in front of 500+ Students.

Can you guess what I would have mentioned on the mic? If you think I said 60%, Yes, you guessed it right, I answered: "Sir, 60% scored student would be more happy than 90% as he/she has got chance to score better". After I stopped, those claps which surrounded across me, gave me the seed of Public-Speaking!!

With that, my journey started by giving talks, sessions and organizing activities for spreading the knowledge and learning from others via numerous platforms including IEEE, Young India Challenge, Weekly-based New-Tech Talks (Our College based activity) and many more to list down.

In this way, I kickstarted my journey from becoming Introvert to Stage Lover. Having said that, I am still open to learn many new things daily and experimenting in my upcoming next talk from my calendar.

So what's for you here? Below are some of the tips & best practices you can use for ensuring to eliminate your complete fear of Public-Speaking:

How to come out from comfort zone of not speaking in public?

There's no exact formula for doing this however below saying from my 1st Year Professor always motivates me daily to speak in public:

"Ramneek, if you get a chance to grab the mic and speak on stage, never-ever leave that opportunity! Because creating your own opportunity is the 1st learning you have to get expertise on."

Just believe in yourself and step ahead (If you have watched an ad on Indian TVs for Mountain Dew (A product of PepsiCo): It says "Dhar ke aage jeet hai" (There's always a win ahead of fear). So go ahead and take the opportunity if that's knocking on your door.

How to represent yourself in front of others?

An important aspect of becoming speaker is to take care about the information you're going to display in public through the organizer's publicity sources (maybe Social Media, Email Invitations etc.). This may include your name, title, content on the poster, questions being asked by registrants in the registration form etc.

Remind yourself that "You can only build your brand and no one else". So be sure, that you're building it in a right and an authentic way.

How to prepare for your presentation?

From my experience so far, I have learnt below parts which may form your presentation in a well and sequential way so that your audience may remember what you talked about:

1st Structure: Problem | Solution | Benefit

2nd Structure: What? | So What? | Now What?

If you want to explore further on this, my memorable video is of Matt Abrahams from Stanford GSB Lecture Series > Think Fast, Talk Smart: Communication Techniques.

How to present yourself on a stage?

The moment for what we have prepared so far i.e., presenting yourself on the Day of Event/Workshop etc. I have followed below things so strictly to myself as it's very important that make your body language so memorable and expressive:

1. Don't ever stand behind a podium: It shows that you're not open to the audience and want to finish lecture as quickly as possible.
2. Don't ever stand right in center and stick there: Stickness in presentation on a spot sometimes reflects that you're not confident and not able to move to present yourself openly and don't want to cover the ownership of the session.
3. When QA > Stand near to the Front Stage: This is one of the good expressions you should always follow. If someone asking some question, go near to them in the same direction where the person from the audince stood up on the stage, it shows your interest in learning & that you're listening them by giving respect.
4. Use your hands wisely: There will be an unconscious moment when you don't know where your hands are going in the air when you're talking. So, keep yourself aware about your hands gestures you're using to convey a message in a representable manner.
5. Do some interactive activities: This always being my favorite part as we interact with our audience through a game activity, learning activity or making them stand to do some exercises for stretching etc. However, be open and respectful to your audience in the way they like to listen you (Place/Venue where you're giving talk really depends upon this factor).

What to do after the Presentation?

Be open to any query and answer gracefully depending upon the organization you're representing. Many times with me, it has happened > Participants come to me and share some gratitude letter or gifts. This is the moment when maximum of us disagree and don't accept that. So far, I have observed for not accepting what your audience is thanking you for gives a disrespectful expression to them. Hence, be open and humble to thank them in return and open to network to learn more things from each one of them.

You don't need to prepare much about public-speaking, it's just a way of conversing with people!!

With that, Apologies, if you think this piece of writing was so lengthy to read, but I strongly believe you must have learnt something today and if not, maybe you can make me learn new aspects of presentation-making/giving/public-speaking in the comment box below. Looking forward to hearing your feedback/remarks.

Thanks for spending your few minutes with me!