INTRODUCTION

Speaking to Win

Our destiny changes with our thoughts; we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do, when our habitual thoughts correspond with our desires.

—ORISON SWETT MARDEN

Your ability to speak to an audience is essential to your success. Speaking well can garner the respect and esteem of others, make you more valuable to your company, and get attention from people who can help you and open doors for you. Good speaking ability will also convince people that you are generally more talented and intelligent than others who do not speak as well.

What is your most valuable asset? Your mind. One of the most precious skills you have is your ability to think well and to express yourself clearly. This skill can help you earn more and get promoted faster as much as any other talent you can develop. After all, the only way you can demonstrate your mastery of a subject is by expressing your thoughts and ideas clearly aloud and in writing. When you speak well, people say, “He really knows what he’s talking about.”

The good news is that your mind is like a muscle. It grows stronger and more capable with use. Organizing your thoughts and words in advance makes you more alert and aware of what you are saying and how you are saying it. The act of planning, preparing, and delivering talks and presentations forces you to use your mind at a higher level, and it actually makes you smarter.

Eliminate Your Fear and Turbocharge Your Career

Some years ago, I gave a one-day seminar on executive effectiveness to a group of businesspeople. During the talk I emphasized the importance of being able to speak well and influence people in business.

At the end of the day, a somewhat shy businessman came up to me and told me that, as a result of my comments, he had decided that he was going to learn how to be a good speaker. He was tired of being ignored by his supervisors and passed over for promotions.

A year later, I received a letter from him telling me his story. He had immediately taken action on his resolution. He joined a local chapter of Toastmasters and began attending weekly meetings. At each meeting, each member was required to stand up and speak on some subject, and each person was given a grade at the end of the meeting.

Toastmasters uses the process of “systematic desensitization.” This means that if you do something over and over, you finally become desensitized to it. When you speak repeatedly in front of others, you eventually lose your fears and misgivings.

He also took a Dale Carnegie course for 14 weeks. At each session, he was required to speak in front of his peers. Within six months, he had given so many long and short presentations to friendly groups of peers that most of his fear and anxiety about speaking was gone. In its place was a growing confidence in his ability to express himself to an audience.

Doors Open for You

At about this point in his growth and development, there was a small emergency at his engineering firm. One of the partners had been scheduled to give a presentation to the members of a client company. But the partner was ill and unable to make the meeting. The businessman’s boss asked him if he would prepare and present the company’s proposal instead. He accepted the assignment.

He prepared thoroughly throughout the evening and the following morning. He then went to the client’s office, made an excellent presentation for the firm’s services, and got the business. When he returned to the office, his boss told him that the president of the prospective client had called and thanked him for sending someone to give such an excellent presentation of the firm’s services.

Within a few weeks, he was being sent out regularly to call on the firm’s prospects and clients. He was promoted, and then promoted again. Soon he was a member of senior management and on his way to becoming a partner. He told me that his whole life changed by making a decision to become a good speaker and following up that decision with specific actions.

Increase Your Self-Esteem

Becoming an excellent public speaker will help you in every part of your career. But there is an even more important reason to learn to speak well to an audience. Psychologists tell us that your level of self-esteem, or “how much you like yourself,” largely determines the quality of your inner and outer life.

The better and more persuasively you speak, the more you like yourself. The more you like yourself, the more optimistic and confident you are. The more you like yourself, the more positive and personable you are in your relationships with others. The more you like yourself, the healthier, happier, and more positive you become in everything you do.

Improve Your Self-Image

When you learn to speak effectively, your self-image improves as well. Your self-image is your “inner mirror.” It’s the way you see yourself and think about yourself prior to and during any event. The more positive your self-image, the more competent your performance. The very act of visualizing yourself performing at your best prior to any event or activity will improve your performance.

We are all highly sensitive to the thoughts, feelings, and especially the respect of others. Somerset Maugham wrote, “Everything we do in life is to earn the respect of others, or at the very least, not to lose their respect.” So when you speak well, your audience likes and respects you more. As a result, you like and respect yourself more as well. When you get positive feedback from others as the result of speaking well, your self-image improves. You see yourself and think about yourself in a more positive way. You develop a sense of personal power. You walk, talk, and act with greater confidence.

Excellent Speaking Is Learnable

Perhaps the best news about speaking to groups is that it is a learnable skill. Most people who are competent speakers today at one time could not lead silent prayer in a phone booth. Many people who appear confident and articulate in front of an audience were at one time terrified at the idea of standing up and speaking in public.

Your goal should be to be in the top 10 percent of communicators. And you should continually remind yourself that almost everyone who is in the top 10 percent today started in the bottom 10 percent. Everyone who is doing well was once doing poorly. As Harv Eker says, “Every master was once a disaster.”

You have probably heard it said that practice makes perfect. Some people go even further and say that perfect practice makes perfect. However, the truth is that imperfect practice makes perfect.

On your journey to mastering the art of speaking to an audience, you will make many small and large mistakes. You will often feel nervous and inadequate. You will say the wrong things and forget to say the right things. You will mumble and stumble and wonder if you will ever get it right.

Move out of Your Comfort Zone

But in order to achieve excellence in speaking or in any field, you must be willing to move out of your comfort zone and into your discomfort zone. You must be willing to feel clumsy and awkward during your growth and development if you are ever going to move to a higher level of competence.

You may remember the story of the famous Greek orator, Demosthenes, considered one of the finest speakers of antiquity. When he began, he was nervous, shy, and troubled by both a stutter and a speech impediment. But he was determined to be a good speaker. To overcome his difficulties, he put pebbles in his mouth and spoke loudly to the sea for hours every day. In time, he eliminated his stutter and overcame his speech impediment. His voice grew louder, stronger, and more confident. He became one of the greatest orators in history.

If you are a beginning speaker, this book will show you how to accelerate the process of speaking with competence, confidence, and clarity. If you are a more experienced speaker, this book will give you some of the most powerful techniques, tactics, and methods of great speakers in every area of business, politics, and personal life.

The Four Ds to Speaking Excellence

To become an outstanding speaker, you simply must have the four Ds.

1. Desire. First, you must have an intense, burning desire to speak well. If your desire is strong enough and you want to achieve speaking mastery long enough, nothing can stop you from reaching your goal. But desire is not enough.
2. Decision. You must make a decision this very day that you are going to make every effort, overcome any obstacle, and do whatever it takes to become excellent.
3. Discipline. You must have the discipline to plan, prepare, and deliver talks and presentations, over and over again, until you achieve mastery. There are no shortcuts to hard work in developing an essential skill.
4. Determination. Finally, you must have the determination to persist and persevere in spite of any short-term setback, obstacle, or embarrassment you may experience.

The Only Limit Is You

Our greatest enemies are always our own doubts and fears. But there are no limits to what you can do, be, or have except for the limits you place on yourself.

Over the years, I have delivered more than 4,000 presentations and spoken personally to more than 5,000,000 people in 46 countries. In the pages ahead, I will take you by the hand and show you, step by step, how to develop the courage, confidence, and competence to be a winning speaker in any situation.