Other speaking sins are so grave that when you commit them, your speech or presentation is certain to fail. This article reveals the seven deadly sins of public speaking.

Deadly Sin #1: Sloth

Sloth, or laziness, is committed by speakers who fail to prepare.

Speaking in public, whether formally or informally, is an essential activity that requires effort. Yet, the majority of people expend no effort to improve their effectiveness as a speaker. Tragically, they are content to drift from one frustrating presentation to the next.

You can avoid sloth in a number of ways:

• Enroll in a public speaking course
• Read public speaking books
• Read public speaking blogs
• Join Toastmasters or another local speaking club
• Study great speakers
• Hire a speaking coach

(By reading this article, you’re making the effort to improve. Sloth has no claim on you!)

Failing to prepare for life by improving your speaking skills leads to a chain of excuses, characterized by…

Deadly Sin #2: Envy

Envy is characterized by a false belief that great speakers are simply lucky to have been born with natural speaking skills.

You’ve heard the excuses from your colleagues, haven’t you?

• “She’s so lucky! She’s a natural speaker!”
• “Hmph! It’s so easy for him to speak in front of people.”
• “No, I couldn’t deliver the proposal. I’m not a speaker.”

People who are envious of the “natural” skills of others are more likely to apply misguided solutions when confronted by an unavoidable speaking situation:

• They steal stories and anecdotes from others rather than creating original ones
• They copy PowerPoint slides from others even if they don’t quite apply
• They mimic the oratorical style of others and lack authenticity

Because of bad habits like this, speakers suffer from lack of confidence. They know the stories, the slides, and the words are not their own. Nervousness results because they fear being exposed, and this nervousness leads to crazy behaviors like…

Deadly Sin #3: Lust

The lustful speaker attempts to calm their nerves by applying the common (yet terrible) advice to picture the audience naked!

Please don’t picture the audience naked, especially if I am in your audience.

In theory, picturing your audience naked makes them seem as vulnerable as you feel. It may provide a brief lighthearted moment to feed your teenaged appetite, but it won’t help you speak better.

More likely, it will cause an additional distraction and impede your efforts to connect with your audience. Consider this: how easy is it for you to communicate something meaningful to a room full of naked people? Can you inspire them? Impossible.

Nervous speakers who avoid this lustful deadly sin are, unfortunately, still prone to committing another deadly sin…

Deadly Sin #4: Gluttony

Gluttony is exhibited by speakers who believe that more is always better.

More slides, more bullets, more examples, more facts, more numbers, more details, more words — more of everything.

Packing all possible material into your presentation and then speeding through it is flawed, despite your best intentions to provide maximum value. More is (usually) not better. Cognitive research shows that people have a limited capacity to absorb information (see Kosslyn’s Clear and to the Point and Mayer’s Multimedia Learning). Overloading that capacity will reduce their ability to absorb anything at all! Quantity is no substitute for quality.

It is better to focus your presentation on your core message, select only the very best support material (facts, slides, anecdotes), and speak at a reasonable pace. Supplementary material, if necessary, belongs in a handout.

All of this gluttony — too many slides, too many stories, too many details — leads the speaker down a dark and dirty path towards…

Deadly Sin #5: Greed

Greed is the deadly sin of excess, and is committed by a speaker who goes over time.

Does this sound familiar?

• “Oh, is that clock correct? I’m only halfway through…”
• “I haven’t gotten to the good part yet…”
• “Are there any objections to cutting our lunch break in half so I can finish this?”

Speaking for more than your allotted time violates the contract you have with your audience, and that’s never good. People are busy and do not appreciate having their time wasted. Nobody will complain if you finish a few minutes early.

If you go over time, negative emotions begin to fill the room, making you more susceptible to experience…

Deadly Sin #6: Wrath

Wrath, or uncontrolled anger, is committed by a speaker who handles problems in the worst possible way.

As a speaker, you should always remain in control. No matter how bad your presentation is going, keep calm. Don’t let these frustrations provoke you:

• When you make a mistake (even a big one), resist the urge to draw more attention to it by cursing yourself in an attempt to draw pity.
• When an audience member is disrupting the room, resist the urge to “solve” it with sarcasm.
• When the room or venue logistics fail, don’t start blaming the organizers or anyone else. Instead, roll with in and move on.
• When an audience member is heckling you, do not take the bait.

Getting angry — whether at yourself, someone in the audience, or some other factor — is one of the worst things you can do. Your audience will feel uncomfortable and your credibility will be diminished considerably.

Finally, the first six speaker sins are all symptoms of the deadliest speaking sin of them all…

Deadly Sin #7: Pride

Pride is committed by a speaker who believes that public speaking is about them.

It’s not.

• It’s never about you.
• It’s never about your impressive accolades in your introduction.
• It’s never about your dazzling delivery where you channel Churchill.
• It’s never about your sumptuous slides which prominently feature your company logo beside dazzling 3-D pie charts.

Public speaking is always about the audience and the message you want to convey. Failing to put the audience first will kill any presentation. You need to perform audience analysis to discover how best to structure your presentation and deliver the message.

Avoid this sin by starting to analyze your presentation from the audience’s perspective. Amazingly, most of the other speaking sins will go away.

• You’ll recognize that you need to prepare. (Sloth)
• You will realize that you are uniquely capable of delivering your message to this audience. (Envy)
• You will trim all of the fluff to deliver a message which is focused and easy-to-understand. (Gluttony)
• You will respect the time your audience has given you. (Greed)
• You won’t saddle your audience with your problems. (Wrath)

As for Lust when speaking, well… that’s just silly.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Public Speaking

1. Sloth: failing to prepare for your speech or presentation
2. Envy: believing that great speakers are born with their skills
3. Lust: quelling your nerves by picturing the audience naked
4. Gluttony: believing that more words/slides/facts/numbers is always better
5. Greed: speaking over your allotted time
6. Wrath: rigidly reacting to problems and losing your cool
7. Pride: placing yourself ahead of the audience

How many of these speaking sins are committed in presentations you attend?

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Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

Are you facing an important interview?

Would you like to go to your interview totally prepared and feeling like a well-toned athlete ready to win the championship?

Being interviewed for a job or by the media can generate the same tension and anxiety as public speaking does for many people.

In this article, you will learn to take on interviewing like an athlete preparing for the championship. You will understand how to prepare yourself to be transparent for interviews so that you can share yourself, your ideas and your expertise authentically.

Think about the word interview. Break it into syllables: in-ter-view. To be interviewed means to let someone see in to you, and that will feel vulnerable. So, like an athlete, you must prepare, not only to answer questions, but to open yourself to be transparent and to manage the physical tensions and emotional anxieties that happen when you are being evaluated or questioned.

I will outline nine steps for conquering your nerves and communicating clearly that I have both taught my clients who were preparing to interview and used successfully myself.

These steps will be divided into three sections

1. Changing the way you think about the interview process
2. Preparing to share your experience and expertise
3. Handling the bodily-felt tension and anxiety

How to Think about the Interview

1. Be there to help.

Don’t think about an interview as an audition or test. Thinking so puts you in the position of being judged, which will trigger tension and anxiety. Instead, think about your interview as an opportunity to help the interviewer.

Remember that the interviewer need help. He is looking for someone to hire because his company needs someone to help them be successful. So, think in terms of helping the interviewer find out how you can help his company. If you are being interviewed by the media, think about helping the reporter and his listeners understand something that you know about.

2. Detach from the outcome.

Let go of it having to be a certain way. Evaluate your expectations and really look at what you think needs to happen in the interview. Anytime you have to have it be a certain way, you will be stressed.

So, evaluate what you are pressing to have happen and then let it go. Be willing for it not to happen the way you want it. This puts you in neutral energy where you can feel open to more possibilities. Turn your results over to a higher power and ask that the outcome be for the highest good of all concerned.

Prepare to Answer Questions

3. Determine likely interview questions.

List on paper the questions that your interviewer will most likely ask you to answer. Be sure to include the really hard interview questions that you are afraid to answer. And also include, “Tell me about yourself.”

4. Write and practice your answers.

For each of the questions, write your answers on paper.

Then, practice them aloud until you can share your answers fluidly. You may be tempted to skip the practice, but don’t. Vocal expression is different from the thought process. You must speak your answers out loud for fluid expression.

5. Decide how to sell yourself.

Next, list on paper the important points that you want to communicate to the interviewer about your background, abilities, qualities, experience and expertise.

6. Illustrate key points with stories.

For each important point you want to make, write down the things you want to share and an example (story) that backs up the point.

For instance, if you say you managed a team effectively, tell a story about a challenging situation that happened that proves you managed the team well. Then, practice sharing your points and stories aloud until you can speak them fluidly.

Handling Tension and Anxiety

7. Warm up your body.

Before you go to your interview, do enough physical exercise so that your body is loose and flowing. Make sure you stretch fully and that you elevate your heart rate so that blood is pumping.

Most people don’t realize how much physical tension impairs their ability to communicate freely. Actors and athletes know the power of warming up. You should too.

8. Ground yourself in your body.

Get out of your head and into your body. Learn to relax your mental attention down into your body all the way to your feet.

Imagine you melt energy out of your head and let it flow down through your body until you fill your entire body. Grounding clears your head and creates a sense of physical strength and emotional safety. You can think on your feet when you are in you feet, and you can speak from your heart when you have attention in your heart area. This is the most effective antidote to performance and presentation anxiety I know.

9. Breathe.

Really. Breathe. After you ground yourself, take deep breaths, fast breaths, and slow breaths until you relax. Breathing helps your brain oxygenate and relaxes your body. Focus on breathing for 10 minutes an hour before your interview.

When you have finished these steps, you will feel ready to interview. Instead of feeling dread, you will be eager to get to the interview so you can share yourself. You will feel like an athlete who is ready to take on the current world champion.

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Sandra Zimmer is a former actress who is now a professional presentation coach. She works with professionals who are struggling to communicate in front of others. Her specialties are transforming fear of public speaking, telling authentically persuasive stories, speaking voice and accent reduction for foreign-born professionals. Visit Sandra's blog: Speaking Freely

Thus, it is fitting that the first Toastmaster speech project is titled The Ice Breaker.

This article of the Toastmasters Speech Series examines the primary goals of this project, provides tips and techniques, and links to numerous sample speeches.

Why is This Speech Important?

The Ice Breaker speech has three aims:

1. Introduce yourself.
   Your ice breaker speech topic is you – something about your life, your job, your hobbies, your unique interests, your family, or any combination of these. You are an absolute authority on this topic, and everyone in the audience will learn something about you.
2. Begin to conquer the fear of speaking in front of a group.
   It is nervewracking when speaking in front of a new group. If you feel this nervousness, remember that a Toastmaster audience is always supportive and understanding. Nobody is grading you, and nobody will mind if you stumble through 99 “Um”s and “Ah”s. If you get up, say something, and sit down, you have succeeded in this project.
3. Provide a “base line” of your current strengths and weaknesses.
   Some new members have no public speaking experience, while others have years of presentations behind them. No matter where you fit into this spectrum, your goal is to improve from your starting point. This first speech helps club members gauge your current strengths so that they can make specific recommendations to help you improve.

Tips and Techniques

The Competent Communicator manual has a wealth of helpful advice. You can download a PDF version here: Toastmasters Speech 1 – Ice Breaker (PDF).

Here are a few other things which may help you:

• Ask for Help
  If you have a mentor, don’t hesitate to ask them for help. If you don’t, feel free to ask any other club member. Perhaps they can share what they spoke about for their Icebreaker. Perhaps they can help you select a topic. Perhaps you can practice it privately before the meeting. All other members have gone through the Ice Breaker before, and can provide words of encouragement.
• Practice Helps
  You don’t need to practice the speech 35 times, and you don’t need to have it memorized. However, your nervousness will be reduced considerably if you give it a couple of practice runs out loud (even if your only audience is you).
• Timing
  The recommended time for the Ice Breaker speech is four to six minutes. It may seem like a long time, but in later projects, you’ll start wishing you had much more time to deliver your message. Don’t worry too much about going under or over time. Just aim for somewhere in that range.
• Notes
  There are no rules on the use of notes. If you need notes, use them. If you don’t need notes, don’t. Either way, don’t worry about it. It’s okay if you read your ice breaker from a script (just try to look up once in a while), if you refer to cue cards, or if you talk without notes.
• Don’t Expect to be Winston Churchill
  This is your first challenge. Nobody expects you to be a world-class orator. Just do your best. Once you have established your “base line”, then you can aim to raise your skill level in future projects.
• Speak Up and Slow Down
  Two common effects of nervousness are mumbling words and racing through the speech. Try to avoid these, but don’t worry if you can’t help it.
• Humour Reduces Your Nervousness
  If you are comfortable incorporating humour into your ice breaker, go for it. The laughs from the audience will reduce your nervousness. An easy way to do this is to make a self-depracating joke at the start. (If nobody laughs, don’t worry about that either… it’s something to work on later.)
• Apologizing
  You may feel an urge to apologize to your audience (e.g. for uttering too many “Um”s, for losing your place, etc.). There is no need to do so! Often, the audience doesn’t notice the little glitches, and it is much better for you to ignore them too.

Topic Ideas for Your Ice Breaker Speech

Although your broad topic is yourself, there are numerous angles to take, and several ways to organize your speech.

Don’t worry too much about the organization of the speech; later speech projects (especially #2 and #3) encourage you to focus more on that. However, having said that, one of these ideas may help you overcome writer’s block.

Idea #1: Chronological

For many people, a series of chronological snapshots of their life is the easiest to write and deliver.

Example: Ravi Singal takes this approach with his Ice Breaker: Why Me? Try Me!

Example: Oleg Kagan starts at birth in his Ice Breaker speech.

Idea #2: Topical

Discuss a series of elements of your life to provide a “sampling” of your life. For example, you could open up by talking about your family, then discuss your career, and conclude with your hobbies.

Example: Bob Cain addresses his love of travel, then photography, and then his career/education in his Ice Breaker speech. (video)

Idea #3: Common Thread

Select a common thread that runs through your life, and share brief stories where this common element appears. It might be a signature phrase, a philosophy that guides you, or even something obscure like peanut butter. (i.e. imagine stories through your life where peanut butter played a role)

My own Ice Breaker speech followed this general structure. It was titled “Andrew of All Trades – Master of None” and touched on several examples where I have breadth, but not depth of knowledge.

Example: Steph Corwin provides a great example with her Ice Breaker titled Swimming Through Life.

Idea #4: One Key Event

Focus on one critical event which took your life in a completely different direction.

Example: Tanya Huang talks about moving continents in Made in Taiwan, Calibrated in Canada.

Idea #5: How I Got Here…

A combination of #1 and #4, explain the series of decisions or events that brought you “here”, where “here” might be the place you currently live, the job you currently have, the life you lead, or the decision to join Toastmasters.

Example: Tracy Buxton does this wonderfully in her Ice Breaker titled I used to be June Cleaver, but I’m not sure who I am now.

Example: Jill Williamson also demonstrates this approach in the aptly titled How I Came To Be Here. (video)

More Examples of The Ice Breaker

Here are a few more sample written and video speeches which may provide inspiration for you.

Written Speech Examples

• Words Have Power by Monkey Sri
• My Enduring Purpose by Benjamin
• Life is Like a Box of Chocolates by Kevin Chester Kuo
• Interest-aholic by Didier Thizy
• When I close my eyes by Shalabieh
• My Name is Shay by Seamus McInerney
• End Quote by Anna Min
• I am Not Who I Thought I Was by Michael Harris

Video Speech Examples

• 5 Years by Betsy Dewey
• No, I was Not Named After a Charlie’s Angel by Farah Ulat
• Life is a Beautiful Dance by Sharon Burt
• Loves to Hear Herself Talk by Stephanie Bryant
• Inspiration of My 9-11 Inspiration Video by Alex Johnson
• Who Am I? The Reluctant Speaker by Paul Clausell

Next in the Toastmasters Speech Series

The next article in this series examines Speech 2: Organize Your Speech.

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Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.