I wrote this for a large room of people I’m about to meet. I wanted to share it with you.

“You have within you the makings of a lively, confident and well received public speaker…” That was the first line of our advertisement for this workshop, and you recognized it as something that applied to you.

Welcome.

What does it mean to be a successful public speaker? By whose standards? Why are we speaking? What are we trying to accomplish? What value are we trying to create? How would we know whether we were successful?

Most people who are not naturally thrilled to stand alone and address a sea of blank faces would define success as “I just want to get through this. Tell me how to make my point on stage, or off the cuff, and not throw up.”

Fair enough. We’ll go over some techniques; you might want to participate or you might not, either way is fine. We’ll give constructive feedback. We’re all friends here. You will leave with new skills and, I hope, the confidence and resources to stick with it and find ways to practice.

Here is an alternative definition of successful speaking, Try it out. See how it feels: You can sweat and stammer and fumble, and still be a successful public speaker. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to show up. With very few exceptions, your audience will give you the benefit of the doubt. They’re rooting for you.

If you participate in the least in this workshop, if you stand up and say hello, you are a public speaker. You graduate. The rest is refinement, is practice, is meeting your own goals at higher and higher levels for fun and profit.

Yeah.

No, wait, there was a third one. Fun, profit … Oh! And the value you get to create with an audience. You, as a person, as the center of attention, are off the hook. You’re not the center of attention; you can let that go. Your message is the center of attention, and you control your message, or shortly will.

You get to decide what to say. You get to say it. Your audience is lucky to have you there, because they get to hear your message. They get to take it home and think about it, and try it on for size and put it to work. Your job is to go out there and have fun.

Let’s start practicing.

John Snyder is a Toastmasters International competent communicator with degrees in journalism and organizational communication. For individual speech consultation or to meet your needs in business and marketing writing, visit AdvanceTheStory.com.