Coping with Stuttering

If you  are plagued with stuttering I know how you feel but don't give up hope.

When I was younger I couldn't speak to anybody without stuttering like a machine gun even when speaking with somebody on the telephone. But through coaching  from my Mother who was professional actress  and through determination and practice I soon overcame this problem and can now make entertaining and persuasive presentations to audiences of all sizes, with only the occasional stutter.  This happens usually only when I am particularly stressed out or tired.

 There are no magic button in your brain to help you over come this problem but it can be beaten.
It is just like learning to ride that bicycle. When you were young and learning to ride  the first few times you  probably came home with bruised knees, legs and arms, but soon learned to ride like a pro.  And so it is with learning to overcome stuttering and speaking fluently

There are a number of things you can do to help you overcome this demond such as:

• Practice deep breathing exercises  to develop your lungs and breath control.
• Remember to relax and take deep breaths as you speak.
• Prepare well  and become engrossed in your subject. This  will get your mind off yourself making you more relaxed.
• Relax your jaw muscles when speaking  -- especially if you begin to stutter.
• Use shorter sentences.
• Practice problem words and phrases
• Remember to use visualization techniques just like athletes. Picture yourself making a fluent presentation with proper breathing and relaxation.

A Simple Truth To Help You Fight Stage Fright

There are various ways to combat stage fright, but  one thing you should remember and keep upermost inf your mind is a simple fact.

That fact cannot be better expressed than Jeffrey Gitomer in his book  Jeffrey Gitomer's Little Green Book of Getting Your Way : "Your audience wants to get to know you, to like you, to have confidence in you, to believe you, to trust you, to understand you, to learn from you, to smile or laugh, [with you] and to feel like you value them."

Keep that in mind -- always -- and you will have won at least 50 percent of our battle against stage fright. That is the simple truth that will help you to fight stage fright.

How Do You Know They're Listening?

How do you know if your audience is listening and how your presentation is going over?

One of the easiest ways,  depending on the nature ofy our presentation. is to ask questions. This can not only  make it more interesting for members of your audience as it gives them the opportunity to interact with you and express their ideas but also discover how your ideas are going over or if they  clearly understood   Just remember to make good use of  open-ended questions  that will result in more complete answers beyond "Yes" or "No'.

In addition to such  questions,  you can quckly detect  those who are  not really listening by becoming familiar  with the meaning  of body language which can tell you whether a person has shut you out or is listening only half  heartedly.

Two of the more obvious of course are the person who is sitting or standingly  with his arms crossed in front of his chest with a beligerent or defiant look on his or her face or is  pretending to be listening but  is actually spending of of the time looking away from you.

Becoming adept at  reading your audience and be an invaluable skill  whether you are speaking to  one person  person or an audience of 100 or more as it enables to capture the interest of such ones by changing  the style of your delivery though pausing, or changes in the tone or volume of your voice in addition to adding more  interesting, anecdotes, illustrations, or examples -- or using  questions designed to draw them into the discussion.

Two very good books on  body language  are   People Wataching by Desmond Morris  and reading people  Jo-Ellan Dimitkirus, Ph.D.

Chop Chop Those Sentences

Chop Chop those long sentences. At least once in a while.   Not all long sentences are bad of course, but in order to provide variety and make your presentation  more conversational when writing it go back over your copy as use  what Mike Masterson in  the online journal, Early to Rise  calls, "the breath test".

This breath test means simply reading over your copy out loud to see which ones you can read without taking a second breath.  Some of the ones you can't should be cut or broken up.

You can do this by  rewriting the longer sentence to create two shorter ones or use dashes or  ellipses to break the sentence into two parts.

Gabriele Rico in her book  Writing the Natural Way can help you develop the skill to write in with a natural, rich variety. This will help to bring more life to y our writing and oral presentations.

Keep A Clip File

Do you find yourself often looking for  great anecdotes or illustrations to use  in interest arousing introductions to your presentations or to clarify a important point?


Read  your local and international  newspapers regularly.  They often contain bits of information that you can use with a wide variety of topics.


Just rip out the page the information is on and fold it so it close to the standard 8 1/2 by 11 inch sheet of typing paper and pop into your filing cabinet under different topics.


This clip file can also be enriched with other possible illustsrations or anecdotes you gather from other sources such as magazines , books, radio and television programs, as well as pictures you take with your cell phone or digital camera and  your own observations and experiences.


It can be a rich sourced of information that might also spark idea for your presentations as well.

Developing A Plesant, Clear Voice

When seeking to develop your speaking skills it is good to keep in mind how a clear, pleasent voice is created. 

It all begins with the air that your  lungs, acting like a bellows, push up through your windpipe into your larnyx or voice box.


Sounds begin to be formed as the air flows into the larnyx and hit the vocal cords -- two tiny folds of muscle on either sides of the larnyx.  In your normal breathing the air flows over these folds without making a sound. But when you speak muscles tighten these folds causing them to vibrate creating sounds.

As you continue to tighten these folds the cords vibrate  even more creating higher toned sounds and as you relax these cords the tone  deepens.

The sound wave created in the larnyx continue on through your throat it enters the upper throat or pharnyx and then the your mouth and  nasal cavity

There the miracle of speech is completed as the basic tones are refined and reinforced and then turned into understandable words by your tongue, jaw, teeth, and lips which break up the sound words to create speech.

So if you want to protect and develop a clear, plesant voice it is essential that you protect these powerful yet delicate parts of your throat and mouth by avoiding smoking and excessive consumption of alcohol and practice good oral hygiene.

Make Affective Use Use of Presentation Aids

Props or other aids can help you to make your presentations memorable and easy to remember, but there are a few things you should never forget such as:

• Make the content of the Power Point or similar programs  support the main points you want to make in your presentation  and not the other way around. Use them just like quotations or other evidence in print material.
• Make sure they are top quality and you have rehearsed your presenttaion with them to eliminate any glitches in the softwear or your use of the program.

Show Them The Benefit

A  brief telephone presentation I was making to a client this evening about starting an on-line security guard training course  resulted in the type of question that you will have to answer quickly when making speeches or presentations.


His first question to me was , "How would the school benefit?" And that is probably one of the first things that would flash into the mind of any audience whether it consists of one person or a hundred: "How do I or we benefit from all this?"


When working on your presentation imitate  professional Direct Mail or Direct Response Marketers who  before they do anything focus on  finding  out as much as they  can about their  audience. 


Before writing anything they  can create a mental picture of the individual or individuals who make up their audience  -- and  what interests, problems,  or anxieties they have  and then tailor their presentation to show  how their  ideas, services, or products can help these people.


 Just like direct-response writers and presenters you are selling ideas, ideas, opinions, services, and products when making oral presentations and just like them, and my client on the telephone, you must quickly show how they can benefit from listening to you and following your suggestions.


 Beyond the initial intriguing quote, or anecdote, or illustration this is what will retain the interest of your audience more than anything else-- providing that you back up your claims up with the needed proof and supporting ideas.

Keep Your Audience Iterested

Unless you keep your audience, whether it is one person or a hundred, engaged in what you're saying you might as well shut up.


Some persons are natural story tellers and as long as they have intriguing content have little trouble holding on to the audience's attention. Others might have more difficulty, but David Lavin , president of the Lavin Agency -- a very successful North American speaker's agency, outlines two ways anybody can do this more easily in the November 2009 edition of The Report on Business published monthly by The Globe and Mail  newspaper in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.


In this short feature he urges speakers to get straight to the meat or core of their presentation, eliminating as much of the preamble as possible.


He also warns that asking questions during your presentation can cut into the flow of your presentation, disruption your audience's attention.  This is a bit of a controversial point because asking questions can be also be a very good way, depending on your audience of course, to create an excellent dialog between you and them.


You could get around this by asking rhetorical questions to focus attention on the most critical or important parts of your presentation  and then having a question and answer session  after you have concluded to correct any  misconceptions some persons might have   as well to test how your ideas have been received by the audience.


If you do this, however, make it clear at the beginning of the question and answer period just how much time will be devoted to this.


This tactic could also create the opportunity for you to make future presentations on this topic.

What Are the Benefits?

Of course, if you are going to retain the interest of your audience beyond that first few seconds of that captivating introduction or charismatic image you are going to have to quickly answer the question: "What is in it for me?.  You are going to have to say something the will rip their attention away from that intriguing newspaper  or magazine article, movie, video, CD, or  Web site -- in addition to personal anxieties or interests.. In this information age it is not easy.

Capture Their Interest

Listen to or reader any advice from experienced speakers and one of  the things they will advise you about is the absolute necessity to capture the interest of your audience. This, of course,  is not always easy. In his book  How to Connect in business in 90 seconds or less, author, Nicholas Boothman, reminded readers that you have, at most, 90 seconds to connect with your audience, whether it is one person or hundreds -- after that you are toast in that presentation.  While he seems to have in mind the need to make people receptive to you and your ideas rather than the content of your presentation -- basically the need to have an attractive  or charismatic personality in connecting with your audience.  there is also the matter of content; we will be talking about both in the time ahead.

Capture Their Interest

Create Genuine Enthusiam for Your Topic

Enthusiasm for your topic is one of the keys that will enable you to convince and motivate your audience to follow your suggestions but it cannot be faked. As one pundit said: "You must be a product of your product or service." And that that goes for your advice as well.

You must be a living example , in other words, of the benefits of using that product or service or following a particular philosophy or belief.

To put in another way you must have and show complete belief in whatever it is that you're talking about.. It cannot be faked. Your audience detect that almost immediately.

Overcome Stage Fright with Practice and Visualization

Are you terrified at the thought of giving a presentation before a live audience? If so you are far from alone as even professionals with many presentations under their belt and veteran actors and acresses. The difference is that know how to overcome this.

Properly controlled such nervousness caused by an extra dump of adrenalin into your system can even stimulate you to give an extraordinarly moving and persuasive presentation. Some speakers control this nervousness through a little, usually unoticeable, ritual of wrist and ankle shaking to keep their bodies loose and flexible. Others go for a walk outside or around the building to keep their body relaxed. Nearly all practice deep breathing prior to the start of their presentation to flood their brain with oxygen so they can think more clearly. You can do all of these things too.

But the most important keys of all are to know the key points of your presentation so well you can deliver it with few or no notes at all and then visualizing yourself standing before an audience and delivering that presentation, bringing out those key points arguments, illustrations, and examples as well as responding to any questions from the audience. Picture yourself interacting with different persons in your audience.

Athletes use such visualization as they practice jumps, hurdles, and other movements before the day of the competition. And the most successful are often those who make extensive use of this technique.

You can use it too before your presentation. Then any paralizing fear of speaking in front of an audience will fade away.

Discover Your Audience and Objective With Clustering and Mind Mapping

As they say before you begin any writing or communcations project you should first know your audience and what you want to accomplish before you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. And that is true. You have to know both if you want to succeed.

And the best way to accomplish both is make use of Clustering and Mind Mapping -- as illustrated by both Gabriele Rico, Ph.D. in her books such as Writing the Natural Way and Web site www.gabriele rico.com and Tony Buzan the creator of Mind Mapping in his many books on the sucject and his Web site www.buzanworld.com

Both Clustering and Mind Mapping(r) are excelent ways to explore both your intended audience and what you want to say. or write.

With clustering you write your central topic in the centre of of a piece of paper ( the bigger the better) and letter ideas radiate out from it in balloons connected by spokes or arms in free association style.

Mind Mapping is similar but instead of the balloons you create main ideas on branch-like arms radiatin out from a central image like the branches on a tree. You try to create the main and supporting ideas as vividly as possible through the use of images to create or illustsrate the main and supporting ideas.

Both of these techniques or invaluable invisible collaborators during all stages of your idea generation, researching, writing, editing and presentation journey. Make good use of them

Visualize Your Way To Success

Being called to deliver a public speech can be a terrifying thing ( I know this from personal experience when I was much younger and I used to go to extremes to avoid having to speak to people I had met on an earlier occasion -- forget about giving a talk before any audience.) But as Dale Carnegie and other professinal speakers say: This fear can be overcome -- if you can just visualize yourself up there making a successful presentation. And of course, just like a swinner or other athlete, you not only study and learn the principles of effective presentations but also practice them regularly.

It is all really just like learning to ride a bicycle. At first you fall off and get a few bruises as you master the techniques and rules and then you get steadily better and get to love the challenge and rewards of your efforts.

Athletes use such visualization before competing in the Olympics and other events. And it does work. Since my younger years when younger years when I used to do such things as cross over the street to avoid having to speak with new acquaintances and stuttered like a machine gun I have gone on to give hundreds of public presentations from readings to talks up to an hour long and participate in live skits in front of audiences of hundreds of persons over the years. And I have found visualization and other techniques invaluable in helping me accomplish this.

Now, in this blog I would like to share some of the things I have learned with others in the possibility that they might helps others in their public speaking roles.