Developing confidence in Public Speaking

There are not actual rules regarding the confidence built up on how to speak before public. The innate or real potential is within the particular human being but some rules can really be helpful and i tried to collect and summarized below...

FIRST- GET THE FACTS ABOUT FEAR OF SPEAKING IN PUBLIC

Fact No. One: You are not unique in your dear of speaking in public. Surveys in colleges indicate that 80-90% of all students enrolled in speech classes suffer from stage fright at the beginning of the course.

Fact No. Two: A certain amount of stage fright is useful!!. Its nature's way of preparing us to meet unusual and unexpected challenges in our life. So, when you notice pulse beating faster and your respiration speeding up, don't become alarmed. Your body, ever alert to external stimuli, is getting ready to go into action.. If these physiological preparations are held within limits, you will be capable of thinking faster,talking more fluently and generally speaking with greater intensity than under normal circumstances.

Fact No.Three: Many professional speakers have assured that they never completely lose all stage fright!!.. It is almost always present just before they speak, and it may persist through the first few sentences of their talk or speech. This is price these men and women pay for being like race horses and not like draft horses. Speakers who say they are "cool as a cucumber" at all times are usually as thick-skinned as a cucumber and about as inspiring as a cucumber.

Fact No.Four: The main cause of your fear of public speaking is simply that you are unaccustomed to speak in public!!!. "Fear is misbegotten of ignorance and uncertainty," says Professor Robinson in THE MIND IN THE MAKING . For most people, public speaking is an unknown quantity, and consequently one fright with known quantity, and consequently one fraught with anxiety and fear factors. For the beginner, it is a complex series of strange situations, more involved than, say, learning to play tennis on drive a car. To make this fearful situation simple and easy: practice, practice, practice. You will find, as thousands upon thousands have, that public speaking can be made a joy instead of an agony merely by getting a record of successful speaking experiences behind you.
The story of how Albert Edward Wiggam, the prominent lecturer and popular psychologist, overcame his fear, can be an inspiration to all. He tells how terror-struck he was at the thought of standing up in high school and delivering a five-minute declamation.
"As the day approached, he writes, "I became positively ill. Whenever the dreadful thought occurred to me, my whole had would flush with blood and my cheeks would burn so painfully that i would go behind the school building and press them against the cold brick wall to try to reduce their surging blushes".
" On one occasion, I carefully memorized a declamation beginning,'Adam and Jefferson are no more.' When I faced the audience, my head was swimming so I scarcely knew where i was. I managed to gasp out the opening sentence, stating that ' Adams and Jefferson have passed away.' I couldn't say another word, so i bowed....and walked solemnly back to my seat amid great applause. The president got up and said,'Well Edward, we are shocked to hear the sad news, but we will do our best to bear up under the circumstances. During the uproarious laughter that followed, death would, surely have been a welcome relief. I was ill for days afterward.
"Certainly the last thing on earth i ever expected to become was a public speaker." A year after he left college, Albert Wiggam was in Denver. One day he read a pamphlet explaining the proposals of the Free Silverites; he became so incensed over what he considered the errors and hollow promises of Bryan and his followers, that he pawned his watch for enough money to get back to his native Indiana. Once there, he offered his services to speak on the subject of sound money. Many services to speak on the subject of sound money. Many of his old school friends were in the audience and i managed somehow to live through the introduction; and encouraged by even this tiny success, i went to talking for what i thought was about fifteen minutes. To my amazement, i discovered i had been talking an hour and a half!.
"As a result, within the next few years, i was the most surprised person in the world to find myself making my living as a professional public speaker.
" I knew at first hand what William James meant by the habit of success."
Yes, Albert Edward learned that one of the surest ways of overcoming the devastating fear of speaking before groups is to get a record of successful experiences behind you.
You should expect a certain amount of fear as a natural adjunct of your desire to speak in public, and you should learn to depend on a limited amount of stage fright to help make you give a better talk..

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Angry men get ahead at work, angry women don’t: STUDY

A MAN who gets angry at work may well be admired for it, but a women who shows anger in the workplace is liable to be seen as ‘out of control’ and incompetent, according to new studies.
What’s more, the finding may have implications for Hillary Clinton as she attempts to become the first female president, according to its author VICTORIA BRESCOLL, a post doctoral scholar at Yale University.
Her research paper “When can angry women get ahead?” noted that Clinton was described last year by a leading Republican as “too angry to be elected president” .
Previous research has indicated that anger can communicate that an individual, feels entitled to dominate others, and therefore perhaps is. But in a paper to be delivered at a weekend conference, Brescoll said such studies focused on men.
“As senator Clinton’s experience suggests, however, for a professional women anger expression may lead to a decrease rather than an increase in her status”, Brescoll wrote.
She conducted three tests in which men and women recruited randomly watched videos of a job interview and were asked to rate the applicant’s status and assign them a salary.
In the first, the scripts were identical except where the candidate described feeling either angry or sad about losing an account due to a colleague’s late arrival at a meeting.
Participants conferred the most status on the man who said he was angry, the second most one the women who said she was sad, slightly less on the man who said he was sad, and least of all by a sizable margin on the women who said she was angry.
The average salary assigned to the angry man almost $38000 compared to about $23500 for the angry women and in the region of $30000 for the other two candidates.
In the second experiment, the script was similar except that the job applicant also described his/her current occupation as a trainee or a senior executive.
“Participants rated angry female CRO as significantly less competent than all of the other targets, including even the angry female trainee,”
Brescoll wrote >She said they viewed angry females as significantly more “out of control”.
That impacted salaries. Unemotional women were assigned on average $55384 compared to $32902 for the angry ones. Male executive candidates were assigned more than trainees, regardless of anger, with an average $73643.
A third experiment tested whether a good reason for anger made any difference. The script was changed so that some angry candidates explained that the co-worker who arrived late had lied beforehand, indicating he had directions to the meeting.
Sure enough, the angry women with a good reason to be angry were awarded much higher salary than the angry women who provided no excuse, though it was still less than the men.

“It’s an attitude that is no conscious,” Brescoll said.” People are hardly aware of it.”
Brescoll said the findings revealed a “difficult paradox” for professional women-while anger can serve as a powerful tool to achieve status at work, women may have to behave calmly in order to be seen as rational.

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