Speaking Makes You Sweat? Tips to Boost Your Confidence and Competence

The ability to speak comfortably in front of a group can be one of the most valuable skills in your professional toolkit

By Rodger Dean Duncan

Skill with public speaking is not a luxury. It’s a must for any professional who wants to succeed in the marketplace of ideas.

So, you have no plans for delivering a TED Talk? Okay. But there’s a good chance you have (or will have) lots of opportunities to speak in less visible settings like employee meetings or at community functions. In today’s competitive world, your professional toolkit should include public speaking competence.

Michael Chad Hoeppner can help. He’s a speech coach whose clients have ranged from Columbia University MBA students to prominent attorneys, professional athletes, and executives in multiple industries. Hoeppner’s new book is Don’t Say Um: How to Communicate Effectively to Live a Better Life.

Of all the challenges facing inexperienced and/or ineffective speakers, which two or three are the most common?

Hoeppner says the first and biggest challenge kick starts all the others: speakers believe they should communicate in a minimized way to come across as “professional.” This is so common that he calls it “the mode.” There’s academic mode, legal mode, finance mode, and more. But, he says, they’re all essentially the same: a more limited—and ultimately boring—version of oneself.

“This one crucial error then has multiple knock-on effects,” he says. “Speakers use: less vocal variety (and speak more monotonously); less enunciation (and mumble); less breath (and become metronomic); less gestural freedom (and become static). But the root of all these challenges is the initial misconception that ‘professional’ equals ‘less.’ I don’t mean this in the vein of the popular ‘bring your whole self to work’ adage. I literally mean that speakers should use more breath, more vocal variety, more gestures, more facial expressions, etc. when they speak—not because I generically recommend using more, but because in real life people use more when they’re not trying to ‘be professional.’”

Why are some people clear-thinking and reasonably articulate in everyday conversation but much less so when giving a speech or presentation before an audience?