Now these are things that work for me…so I can’t say they’ll work for everyone. It should go without saying, but these are all “within reason”, because at some point it would just be incompetence. And it also might be ill-advised to take public speaking advice from a comic for teaching classes or lecturing. And also, my actual public speaking experience has been limited to being a TA for one class and giving one hands-on/interactive lecture. Oh and, I’m really bad at shutting up & I love talking, & I always have, & I’ve always enjoyed attention. So, do take all of this with a grain of salt. My previous experiences weren’t as high-stakes as some public speaking engagements, so thank goodness I’ve been able to work on this in some lower-stakes arenas.
The hardest thing is that successful public speaking usually involves a pretty engaged audience, though, which is highly unpredictable, so good luck!
- Roll with the punches. You might have a disengaged audience, one difficult audience member, someone who interrupts you a lot or is terrible at whispering. You might run into technical issues. You might be close to losing your voice. I think all of these lessons point to this idea. I’m not an expert on this — I struggle heavily to “roll with the punches”, though I’m arguably much worse at this in my personal life because things seem to matter less there. Anyway.
- Learn how to “laugh at yourself”. In a dignified manner, of course — make sure to include a very confident, entertained, and sheepish…
