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How can I learn to speak confidently to large groups of people?

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Host:How can I learn to speak comfortably to large groups of people?

Sean McArdle: Like anything else, public speaking is something you must practice and I believe that you should start a practice in a place where you feel safe. Most of us feel safe looking ourselves in the mirror. I don t suggest you do it first thing in the morning, but after you are feeling good and you have been up for a while, you take your public speech, you walk over to the mirror and you begin to deliver it confidently. You begin to deliver it confidently; you begin to deliver it happily.

You begin to develop the physiology of somebody who is pleased with what they are saying and positive about the way they are saying it. Now, you are talking to somebody who really believes in you -- you. Now, we are ready to expand. Next time we might want to practice in front of the dog or the bird and then a time after that in front of our family or our children or our spouse and do you hear is that if we practice something in advance, we are not as nervous when we actually go to do that thing in particular.

Too many people do not speak too often; they will practice it all in advance. They just make notes or write a speech and try to read from it and they believe that they have spoken publicly and that was the best they could do. I say no, if you want to be great, you must rehearse.

So, put your speech together, rehearse it on your own with a mirror. You might even want to rehearse it with a video camera then overtime you can critic yourself and have others critic you, so that when you make the speech to the group intended for, you actually come across as very confident.

Expert: Sean McArdle

Sean McArdle is a master motivator and speaker in the areas of sales, negotiation, strategic planning and personal development. His distinctions about what makes for a successful career and life come directly from his own experiences. His stories will take you on a personal journey from living under a bridge at 25 to negotiating some of the largest printing contracts in the publishing industry at 28. Since 1992, More »