10 questions that more experienced public speakers should ask themselves

Today’s blog post by Nick Morgan was about 10 questions that could guide people who are serious about public speaking as a way of connecting to the world. I often read Nick’s Public Words blog and he’s a great guy. He then challenged his readers to come up with other questions that would help speakers. Instead of getting on with my normal work I rose to the challenge. 

Nick said that he loved my questions and would add them to his personal list which was great.  Thanks to him for the idea. So here are my 10 questions

I. How are you serving the audience? Could you serve them even more? Have you imagined what it would be like to sit in your audience? You might change the shape of your presentation if you really think about the audience.

2. How does speaking feed you? How does it excite you? How could you really use this opportunity

3. How present are you? Can you allow some silences? Are you comfortable going off script and coming back to it? Can you respond to what is happening in the room?

4. Authenticity. Are you fully here as you or are you holding back something because its safer to do that? Are you be prepared to be vulnerable?

5. What would you do if you couldn’t fail as a speaker? And why don’t you do that anyway? En-couraging you to be bolder!

6.  How much do you know about the brain and our tendency as a species to over-react to threat, to over-think and over-judge the audience and ourselves? Its not just you that gets freaked out by blank faces! Human beings have fear. It's normal. Experienced speakers have changed their relationship to fear to a more positive one.

7. How good are you with eye contact with individuals in the audience? Connecting with the audience is really important.  Lack of eye contact is seen often as lack of confidence

8.  Do you have the courage to be imperfect? Can you handle making mistakes with ease? Recovering from mistakes without feeling off-balance is an important part of your growth as a speaker.

9. How well do you know yourself? What do you stand up for? What do you value? What makes you passionate/angry/celebrate? 

10. Have you collected your stories? What are the turning points in your life? What did you learn from them? What's your biggest mistake?