When They Throw Tomatoes – Make Pizza!

By Margaret Gill 

The dread of having tomatoes thrown from an angry, aggressive audience is often what stops many people from breaking through their fear of public speaking.

Why would any sane person put themselves through the terror of speaking to an audience, if it’s only going to result in you coming off stage looking like an extra from the battle scene of Braveheart?

Learning to speak in public helps you to enhance your ability to speak in all areas of your business.  Plus being seen in public is the easiest and fastest way to grow your business and demonstrate your credibility as an expert in your field. 

Fear Happens!

Fear stops most people from speaking in public.  Therefore the majority of your audience are going to give you greater than average leeway when you do speak publicly; because they know how hard it is to get up on stage in the first place.

The reality is that negative fear resides between our ears and fear of an angry audience is a negative reaction to something that might happen. 

Fear stands for

False
Emotions
Appearing
Real

So logic would tell you, if it’s not real, hasn’t occurred yet or might happen, perhaps you shouldn’t be frightened of it.  But our humanness kicks in and conjures up all these unreal scenarios that stop us getting our message out to the world.

So what needs to happen for us to get over this irrational fear?

I have five suggestions here to ensure you will never have to master the skill of ducking over ripe tomatoes:

1.  Know the difference between the two types of fear - good fear and bad fear

“Good” fear is the fight or flight instinct.  It is when you “know” something is just not right for you and it comes from the “gut” or solar plexus area.  Good fear can save your life and stop you entering a dangerous situation.  Good fear also warns you to be cautious or prepared.  No one should ever hit the stage unprepared, so most certainly listen to “good” fear.

“Bad” fear resides in the space between your ears.  It is generated by the monkey voice in your head that says “you are not good enough to speak to a crowd”, “why would they want to listen to you” and when it can’t think of anything else to say it reverts to “you are a big fat loser”.  This bad fear will halt your forward progress.

If you learn to recognise the two fears and listen to one and ignore the other, then the problem goes away. Trick is that most people are listening to the wrong fear.

The attitude the audience see in you is really important.  If the audience sniff the air and smell “bad” fear, you will be in trouble from the start.  So make an effort to understand the two different types of fear and decide to embrace the “good” fear. 

Audiences are generally wimps!

It would be rare for you to be challenged from the audience for the same reason most people don’t get up on a stage – they are afraid of opening their mouth in public.  It’s often difficult to get people from the audience to ask questions, let alone stand up and challenge you.  So in the early days, so long as you start with small safe audiences that want what you have, you really can’t go wrong.

2.  Have a clear and concise message

When you have figured out WHO you work with and WHAT problem you solve for them you have the recipe for your speaking success. 

If you consistently adhere to the WHO and the WHAT rule, you will automatically start to develop a clear and concise message.  Just think about this for a moment.  If you have a problem and there is someone on the stage that has the answer to your problem, then you are going to be all ears – right?  If they are talking about a problem your specific group of peers, colleagues or friends have, then you are going to be even more comfortable listening to the talk.  So as a speaker why wouldn’t you talk to more of the types of groups that have the problem you solve?

I believe the key to a highly successful speaking event is to find groups of people who want and need the information you already have.

3. Don’t be tempted into unknown territory

I once spoke to a Rotary group and bombed in a most spectacular manner.  In hindsight, I know why.  They weren’t interested in my message.  I was speaking about coaching and I was straight out of coach school and brimming with enthusiasm for coaching but I didn’t have a clear message.  The audience were polite but I knew I hadn’t impacted them.  I’m planning to go back to Rotary soon to speak about the Community Café I have set up with a few colleagues and I’m sure I’ll have a much better experience because I will be speaking to them about an event that supports community and Rotary are about supporting community.

When you speak on topics that meet a need in the audience there is cohesion between the speaker and the audience.  The more effort you make to match your talk to their needs, the more successful you will be.

4.  Always speak from the heart and with integrity

I once saw a lady speak about compost.  She wasn’t the world’s greatest speaker but she didn’t break any rules.  She was speaking at a flower show to an audience who were interested in growing healthy plants.  She was so excited about her product and spoke with such passion about how the compost was made that I went out and bought a big bag of her compost the next day.  

If you can be totally authentic in what you do and if your message is full of useful information, then people will always want to hear it.   If you put a lot of yourself into the talk it also helps.  The woman at the compost talk spoke about her father in law and how he made massive mountains of compost and how he just loved compost.  She let us into the heart and soul of her family.  There was no doubt that this compost was made with love and that’s why I wanted to put it on my plants.  Her message was brimming with integrity, incredibly strong and compelling, but I’d like to bet she never had one single lesson in doing public speaking in her life, but she got her message out and sold product because she understood the three golden rules.

5.  Always adhere to the three golden rules

There are three golden rules in any public speaking event

1. Give value

2. GIVE value

3. GIVE VALUE

Don’t ever break the three golden rules!  Even if you speak badly but manage to give the audience great value, something to think about or useful information to take away, by the time they leave they will love you.

Going in with the expectation that they will love you because you have prepared well and are giving them great value will give you 95% of what is necessary to deliver a successful talk.

If for some reason you miss the mark, then scoop up those tomatoes, cut them up, make pizza and swear to have another go because practice makes perfect.  The more you speak in public the better you will become and the more you will love it!

-oOo-

Margaret Gill of Abundant Private Practices is a business coach and mentor to health and wellbeing practitioners.  Her Full Practice Building System has helped many passionate natural therapists get more clients, help more people and grow the natural therapy practice they deserve and desire.

margaret@margaretgill.com

www.Abundant-Private-Practices.com

This article orginally appeared on Samantha Richardson's fabulous Empowering Women Website

© 2007 Margaret Gill