Confessions of a Master of Ceremonies What are your worries about public speaking? Ready for some confessions on the topic? Please read on. 1. How do you handle unexpected events? Quick thinking, a cool head and humor will work for all manner of unexpected events ranging from last minute program changes to drunken hecklers. The trick is to anticipate what could possibly go wrong and then have a contingency plan to handle it. At corporate events, common problems are speakers not showing up and people talking far longer than they should. If you are an MC, agree in advance on the kind of time warnings you will employ for people who speak into extra time and then be ruthless but humorous in implementing your rules. If you are speaker, carry a stopwatch to time your address. And what about hecklers? When a group of the groom’s friends threatened to disrupt a wedding I was hosting earlier this year, I arranged for them to be treated like VIPs (we served them food first and invited them to have the honor of joining the couple after the first dance). It worked and we had a hassle-free wedding reception from then onwards. But I still had the private security chaps on standby. Just in case we had to carry out some evictions if Plan A failed. 2. You’re too shy to speak! You cannot know everything. That’s impossible. However you, like everybody else on earth, have at least one thing you know a great deal about. If you haven’t yet discovered it, look for it. And when you find it, I guarantee that you can stand up and speak about it to a room full of strangers. Without notes. Even if all your family and friends usually describe you as a shy, self-conscious introvert. Why? Because when that happens, you’ll be talking about an experience you’ve had, a skill you practice or person you know. You’ll have all the illustrations you’ll need to drive home your points and drive away any fears of running out of things to say. You’ll know the subject inside out. So where is the room for shyness? Often, when I ask someone why they are shy, they respond, “But I don’t know what to say!” Which suggests to me that the cure for shyness is this: know what to say and then say what you know. I’ve seen many ‘shy’ people transform into confident speakers with literally their first speech to know that this is true. And it can work for you!
Posted on: Sat, 06 Jul 2013 06:38:22 +0000
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