Looking at public speaking using a performance-based model means that we can take inspiration from actors. What are the tools and techniques that actors have that can be translated to public speakers? While the content of a speech is important, equally important are the performative elements of the delivery.

In their training to become actors, aspiring performers work every day on strengthening their bodies, voice, and mind. We call this “instrument work” because, like a musician’s instrument, the actor’s body is a medium through which words of a play, like the notes of music, are expressed. Just as a piano works well when it’s tuned, an actor should be a well-tuned instrument.

What does an actor want from their body, voice, and mind so that they become a nicely tuned instrument to play? They want to be confident, focused, physically relaxed, vocally nimble, mindful, energetic but controlled, open to the moment, and free of distracting or negative thoughts.

All of these are qualities that serve the public speaker as well. Additionally, they are all skills that can be learned! In the sections that follow, we will examine various physical and psychological tools that actors use to “tune” their instruments. We’ll discuss stage fright, clearing the mind of negative thoughts, strengthening the body and voice, focus, commitment, and enhancing confidence.

Overcoming Stage Fright

Public speaking anxiety is perfectly common for anyone new to speaking in front of an audience. But we should remember that public speaking anxiety does not only apply to new speakers. Even professional actors, who may have years of experience performing nightly for hundreds of spectators, deal with nerves. Your favorite actor has probably felt various forms of anxiety before performing, such as sweaty palms, shaky voice, dry mouth, etc.

Actors feel nervous for the same reasons a public speaker does. An actor might feel conspicuous and inspected. They may feel nervous about an unfamiliar audience. Perhaps they remember past failures. An actor might feel they haven’t prepared enough. In the theatre world, we call this anxiety about public performance stage fright or performance anxiety. Anxiety about being in the public eye produces not only physical sensations but mental symptoms as well. In reaction to fear, the mind might generate negative self-talk. Such fear sometimes makes it hard for us to think. We lose concentration and focus. Our confidence drains away. It shuts down our awareness and can leave us mentally and physically frozen—we literally “go cold.”

Fortunately, there are tools we can use to overcome all these symptoms. During their training, actors learn how to prepare themselves physically and mentally. A list of the most important of these tools includes:

• Banishing negative thoughts
• Encouraging positivity
• Releasing physical tension
• Freeing voice and speech
• Finding focus and commitment
• Enhancing confidence

In the sections that follow, you’ll learn about how these tools can be applied to fear of public speaking.

Banishing Negative Thoughts

It’s hard to stand in front of a room of people, often strangers, and feel like you’re being judged or undergoing evaluation. It’s easy to jump to negative thoughts, such as “I’m doing a terrible job” or “They all hate me.” Professional actors face this dilemma too. Fortunately, there is a branch of psychology that can help with this kind of thinking. It’s called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT. It was founded in the 1960s by a psychologist named Dr. Aaron Beck. Because it’s focused on practical changes to harmful thinking patterns, it has become the foundation for many types of mental health therapies. When dealing with negative thoughts, one crucial thing you can do is take a cognitive approach to negative thinking and manage those unreasonable and non-productive thoughts.

The Cognitive Approach

Cognitive Psychology teaches us that negative thoughts about ourselves share some common errors. These include:

• Overgeneralization (“Everybody hates my speech”);
• Jumping to conclusions (“The teacher looks bored; she doesn’t like my topic”);
• Shoulds and musts (“The speech must be perfect!”);
• Magnification or catastrophizing (“This is the worst experience of my life”);
• Emotional reasoning (“I feel so nervous, I must be doing a terrible job”); and
• Labeling oneself (“I’m not a good public speaker”).

Do these thoughts sound familiar? They probably do because everyone experiences them to one degree or another.

As a public speaker, you could have non-productive thoughts before a speech (“I haven’t prepared enough. This is a terrible topic, why did I choose it? Everyone else’s speeches are more interesting. I’ve never felt so nervous in my life. This is a stupid assignment, it’s not worth the effort.”), during a speech (“The audience looks bored. Listen to how I’m fumbling these words! They noticed I messed up. I shouldn’t have said that. I look ridiculous. I’m really messing this up. I just want to get this over with! I wish I could disappear.”), and after a speech (“That was terrible. People didn’t applaud. I never want to do this again.”).

These thoughts are understandable. It’s natural to feel anxious. An effective method to combat them is by taking a cognitive approach to defeat them. Take for example the thought, “this is the worst experience of my life!” and think:

“But is it really? Okay, public speaking might make me feel nervous, and it might not be my thing, but is this really the worst experience? That sounds like an exaggeration.”

Here’s another example of cognitive correction: You have the negative thought “they noticed I messed up!” You might address this by saying to yourself

“Am I sure they noticed? Sounds like emotional reasoning. The audience doesn’t have the speech memorized like I do, so how do they know if I skipped a word? Anyway, so what if I messed up? Nobody’s perfect.”

Learning to combat negative thoughts by shining the light of logic on them is a great skill to learn.  It’s like a muscle and the more you do it, the better you will get at it.

As an exercise, write down a list of a few negative thoughts that you typically have before, during, or after giving a speech. Try writing down at least three. For each thought, see if you can identify the category of cognitive error and then write a reasoned response to that negative self-talk.

For example:

Negative thought: “Everybody hates my speech!”

Cognitive Error: Overgeneralization, Exaggeration

Reasonable Correction: Can I really know what everybody is thinking? That doesn’t make sense. Maybe one person seems uninterested in my speech, but that doesn’t mean everyone feels the same. Also, “Hate” is a very strong word. It’s not possible that the entire audience is feeling so strongly about my speech. For reasons that may have nothing to do with me, an audience member seems to disagree with my topic. There is no need to imagine that everyone is feeling that way.

If you keep up a regular practice of writing down negative thoughts and correcting them with reasoned thinking, you’ll find that these thoughts will appear less often and have less power over you. This cognitive approach can ensure that you have as many positive thoughts as possible while you’re performing a speech.

Encouraging Positivity

Another way to take a proactive approach to banishing negative thinking is positivity. Psychological studies, particularly with sports psychology, have demonstrated the benefits to overall performance as well as self-confidence by using positive self-talk. It’s most effective to speak positive affirmations aloud. First, it’s helpful to think about any time in the past you have felt nervous about something (other than public speaking), and you did something about it. What did you do? Did you close your eyes and count to ten? Did you play your favorite piece of music and dance around? We all have our own unique, individual ways to deal with nerves and focus on the task at hand.

Visualization

Visualization is another helpful tool in banishing negative thoughts. The process of visualization asks you to imagine a desired result that you hope to achieve in the future. Similar to what you might know as “manifesting,” visualization asks you to use all five senses in directing your subconscious towards a desired goal and believing that it will come true. Engaging in various visualization exercises, where you imagine yourself giving the perfect speech, and you see and hear yourself overcoming your fears, can be a productive daily tool in fighting negative thinking.

Releasing Physical Tension

We constantly move through life with some level of excess physical tension. It affects the way we hold our bodies, the way we move, and the way we breathe. We may experience more tension at some times of the day than others. Finding healthy ways to reduce physical tension is important for everyone, but for actors and public speakers, relaxing is essential because we face additional tension brought on by excitement, anticipation, and fear.

Relaxation

You can think of relaxation as having two ways to practice: regular and immediate. Regular relaxation practice is something you do on a regular basis to release the physical stress of everyday living. Some of those practices are yoga, running, fitness classes, and stretching. One popular technique is called the “Body Scan Meditation.” This involves putting your attention on various parts of your body and using your breath to send relaxing energy to those areas. Playing team sports is also a good way to release tension; when combined with stretching, sports lead to a healthier and more relaxed physical state.

Immediate relaxation practice, in contrast, is what performers and public speakers do to address that strong physical tension brought on by excitement, anticipation, and fear. This is the tension that tightens our muscles and makes breathing shallow. It may raise our heart rate or make us sweat. We need relaxation techniques to cope with these tensions. An actor will usually give themselves an hour before a show for this work and then refresh this relaxation just minutes before going on stage. For a public speaker, finding time to work on relaxation is similar. You might loosen up in the morning of a day you’re going to speak, and then refresh your relaxation just before getting up to speak. Here is a simple 7-Minute warm-up you can try:

Warming up the body means two things: (a) being relaxed, and (b) being energetic. We all know what relaxation feels like: our breathing is free, our muscles are loose, our minds wandering. But for public speaking, it’s not enough to be relaxed. You might be relaxed when you’re watching television on your couch, but would you be ready to speak?

Likewise, it’s not enough just to feel energetic: muscles engaged, breathing hard, highly focused on one thing. You might have lots of energy if you were running away from danger. Is that how you want to feel as a speaker? Being a performer means having relaxed energy. It might feel like what you feel when dancing or playing your favorite non-competitive sport. Your muscles are loose but not tired. Your breathing is fluid and engaged. Your mind is focused but still open to what’s around you. Getting into that physical state is a goal for any performer.

Freeing Voice and Speech

The voice is the most important part of a speaker’s instrument. The particular sound of each person’s voice and speech is unique and a product of genetics, but at the same time it’s shaped by culture. It’s culture that creates regional accents. It’s also culture that influences volume, the pace and tone of voice. Unfortunately, because voice and speech are cultural, they can also be used to negatively stereotype people. The ethics of public speaking teaches us to guard against using judgements about voice and speech to demean, dismiss, or discriminate against anyone.

A Relaxed Voice

In its natural state, the voice is free and open. Think about how much children love to scream and how natural and amazingly loud they are when they do so! Children remind us that the human voice is beautiful and unique to each person. As we get older, however, our voices tend to lose that natural state. Like our bodies, it takes on tension. The stress of life makes our breathing shallower, our throats tighter, our sound less flexible, and our lips and tongue stiffer. We become less comfortable about making sound and speaking clearly.

Actors are aware that in order for their performance to be effective they need to have a voice and speech that is relaxed, responsive, able to be heard, and easily understood by the audience. This is achieved for the voice through proper posture, breath support, and a focus on projection. Clear speech is achieved by developing better articulation of the lips and tongue.

Consider doing daily breathing exercises, regularly massaging your throat and vocal cords, humming and lip trills, and fun tongue twisters to repeat to yourself in order to strengthen your voice and speech over time. Here is a practical video for working on both voice and speech:

Vocal Variety

In everyday speech, we typically have no problem with vocal variety. We increase our volume to get attention. We speak more quietly if we don’t want to be overheard. We use pauses for dramatic effect and speed up when we are excited. The pitch of our voice rises and lowers naturally. When in front of an audience, however, many people lose this vocal variety. Out of fear, or habit, they become monotone. Monotone means speech that is one pitch, one pace, one volume, pausing rhythmically, without change.

Volume, Pitch, Rate, Pauses

Volume refers to the relative softness or loudness of your voice. If you speak too softly (“too little” volume), your audience will struggle to hear and understand you and may give up trying to listen. If you speak with “too much” volume, your audience may feel that you are yelling at them, or at least feel uncomfortable with you shouting. The volume you use should fit the size of the audience and the room.

Pitch is the relative highness or lowness of your voice, and like everything, you can have too much or too little (with regard to variation of it). Too much pitch variation occurs when people “sing” their speeches, and their voices oscillate between very high pitched and very low pitched. More common is too little variation in pitch.

How quickly or slowly you say the words of your speech is the rate. Too little rate (i.e., speaking too slowly) will make it sound like you may not fully know your speech or what you are talking about, and will ultimately cost you some credibility with your audience. It may also result in the audience being bored and losing focus on what you are saying.

The common misconception for public speaking students is that pausing during your speech is bad, but that isn’t necessarily true. You pause in normal conversations, so you shouldn’t be afraid of pausing while speaking. This is especially true if you are making a particularly important point or want your statement to have a more powerful impact: you will want to give the audience a moment to digest what you have said.

What can you do to gain vocal variety? Reading texts aloud and practicing shifts in pitch, pace, and volume is the best way to break the monotone habit.

Vocalized Pauses

Monotone isn’t the only speech habit to break. Performers need to be aware of habitual behaviors that are distracting or in some way detract from their overall performance. One of the most common habits is called vocalized pauses or fillers.

At various points during your speech, you may find yourself in need of a moment to collect your thoughts or prepare for the next section of your speech. At those moments, you’ll be pausing and many of us fill in those pauses with sounds so that it appears that we haven’t actually paused. These are known as vocalized pauses, or sometimes fillers.

Everyone uses vocalized pauses to some degree, but not everyone’s pauses are problematic. This obviously becomes an issue when the vocalized pauses become distracting due to their overuse. We have little doubt that you can remember a time when you were speaking to someone who said the word “like” after every three words and you became focused on it. The most common vocalized pause in English is “uh,” but then there are others. Can you think of any?

The bad news here is that there is no quick fix for getting rid of your vocalized pauses. They are so ingrained into all our speech patterns that getting rid of them is a challenge. However, there is a two-step process you can employ to begin eliminating them. First, you need to identify what your particular vocalized pause habit is. Do you say “um,” “well,” or “now” before each sentence? Do you finish each thought with, “you know?” Do you use “like” before every adjective (as in “he was like so unhappy”)?

After figuring out what your vocalized pause is, the second step is to try carefully and meticulously to catch yourself when you say it.

Try the “uh game.” Name six things in a named category (items in a refrigerator, pro-football teams, makes of cars, etc.) in twenty seconds without saying a vocalized pause word or phrase. This is a good way to practice focusing on the content and not saying a vocalized pause.

Finding Focus and Commitment

President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) said:

“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

In performance as in life, the most powerful tool you can have is how much you care. For an actor, caring means being 100% committed to the performance and the character. For a public speaker, caring means being 100% committed to the act of communicating with your audience. How do we get in touch with our commitment? What does commitment look like? What gets in the way of being committed to communication?

Getting in Touch with Your Commitment

The secret to caring is to learn about being intentional. Advocates of intentional living, such as the author John C. Maxwell and others, emphasize the value of identifying the purpose in everything we do. This helps steer us away from a life that is on “auto-pilot” and leads us towards a life that is grounded in meaningful action.

You may be surprised to learn that one of the most important techniques for an actor is exactly the same thing: intention. Theatre mirrors life. In life, regardless of who a person is or what circumstances they find themselves in, they usually want something. Sometimes this is the pursuit of a basic need, like food, water, or shelter. At other times, a person may be pursuing material possessions or wealth. Even those people who don’t crave material items crave happiness, health, love, knowledge, or self-awareness. This desire or goal to change our circumstances and obtain something we lack is called an intention, objective, or goal. When an actor starts playing a character, the first thing they do is work to understand the one thing the character wants most. When they find that and they fully commit to it, they can truly begin to perform the role.

It’s no different for public speaking. If you want to find your way to the commitment to communicate with your audience, start by becoming intentional. Choose to present this speech. Choose to share your ideas and your knowledge. Choose to respect your audience by preparing the best speech you can. Choose to deliver your speech in a way that allows your audience to follow and enjoy.

Sounds easy, but what gets in the way of commitment to speaking? That’s right: fear. We think if we withhold our effort, pretend not to care too much, be casual, then we are protecting ourselves from failure. But the opposite is true. To succeed you need to commit.

It’s crucial for a public speaker to have a clear sense of their objective. What do you hope the audience will feel by the end of your speech? What do you hope they’ve learned? What actions would you like the audience to take after the speech is over? If a speaker doesn’t know the answers to these questions, and if they are not focused on creating a speech that uses content and delivery to clearly address these questions, then a speech can easily feel aimless, ineffective, and even a waste of time. Remember, the audience will not care about what you know, unless they know you care.

Achieve Your Objective with Tactics

The actions and behaviors we utilize in service of obtaining our objectives are called tactics.

In theatre, we watch characters use various tactics to achieve their objectives. For example, if Sam’s objective is to seduce Robert, then Sam’s tactics would be anything and everything that they are willing to do in order for Robert to be seduced. This could include complimenting, teasing, smiling, and touching him.

Your objective as a public speaker is to deliver an effective and engaging speech. This could also be thought of as a super-objective because it’s the overarching desire of any speech regardless of the speech context. Within a specific speech, you’ll have a particular objective such as to inform the audience about a concept, persuade the audience of an idea, or to entertain. These objectives map onto the three types of speeches: informative, persuasive, and special occasion. You will learn more about these types of speeches further on.

Tactics to Fulfill Your Intention

Intention is what you want. How you go about getting what you want are called tactics.

Like most things in life, some people will have a natural ability to express themselves through public speaking. However, it’s also a skill that can be taught and developed. Regardless of your initial level of proficiency, with practice, everybody can improve their public speaking. Whether you’re a novice or an experienced speaker, there is always more to learn. There are two major ways to help you grow your skills and reach your super-objective of delivering effective and engaging speeches: 1) Practice giving speeches; and 2) Listen to other speeches. Both these activities provide an opportunity to consider how specific tactics are being employed and how they affect the speech overall.

The more you give public speeches, the more confident and competent you’ll become. A public speaking class is great for building this foundation. You can seek out occasions outside of class where you can practice your public speaking. Being in a public speaking class, you’ll also have the opportunity to listen to your classmates’ speeches. Additionally, you can try to attend lectures or other events with speakers at school or in your local community. Furthermore, you can find thousands of videos of public speakers online reflecting every topic, speaking style, and ability level. While great examples of quality speeches may inspire you, any speech can be instructive. Being able to critique a speech helps you to hone in on the qualities that make a speech effective. Learning to recognize these qualities in other speeches will help you to analyze your own strengths and weaknesses.

Some of the tactics, or qualities that lead to a successful speech include:

Delivery

• Engaging physicality (eye contact, posture, body language, intentional gestures)
• Clear diction at an appropriate pace and volume
• Vocal variety (using different tones, pitches, and tempos)
• Avoiding vocalized pauses (umms and ahhs)
• Use of visual aids when appropriate
• Well-rehearsed and familiar with the performance (delivery and text)

Content

• Interesting and context appropriate topic
• Well-structured with a clear thesis and purpose
• Transitions and signposting
• Effective use of language
• Supported by research where applicable
• Fits within expectations for length, style, and formality
• Ethical

We will discuss each of these tactics in more depth throughout this book.

Concentration

Next, there’s concentration. Concentration is necessary for a public speaker. A speech works best when the speech stays on topic: rambling or an otherwise unfocused speaker is a recipe for disaster. In order to stay committed to the scene, actors must concentrate on what is happening on stage and must react honestly to anything that occurs during the performance, even if something happens that was not rehearsed. Acting is reacting, and the best actors are the best listeners. Actors use various warm-up methods to make sure they are focused and concentrating on the task at hand before entering onstage.

Enhancing Confidence

The same way that public speaking is a skill that can be learned, so is confidence. One way to do that is to through attention to status. When people talk about status, they are often referring to the socio-economic position of someone or something. People with high paying jobs and in positions of authority are considered to be of higher status. Having higher status gives you increased agency to create change or maintain the current situation according to what best suits your individual needs and desires. However, in theatre and in public speaking, status takes on a related but specialized meaning. Status in performance refers to the way an individual moves through space and how they interact with their environment. One of the most useful tools an actor has, and public speakers can learn, is the ability to manipulate status.

Status for Public Speakers

We think of status as existing on a scale from 1-10, with one being cowering in a corner and ten being assuming you’re a god. Most people have a habitual status level of five. Those who are more outspoken and enjoy being the center of attention may be closer to an eight. Those who are very introverted may be closer to a three. While all people have a base status that they typically exhibit, status is also a tool that can be changed based on context.

In any interaction with another person, you can raise or lower your own status. By exuding confidence, taking up more space, and asserting your value you raise your own status. Becoming insular or subjugating yourself to others lowers your status. Additionally, you can raise or lower the status of the other person. Complimenting or exhibiting deference towards someone are examples of raising their status. Talking down to or physically dominating someone lowers their status. Any of these can be an effective tactic for pursuing your objective under the right circumstance.

When you give a speech it’s useful to assume a status of 8-10. For some people this may feel uncomfortable and think that they don’t deserve to take such a high level of status. However, part of what makes status such an effective tool is that it’s changeable to reflect your current situation. Just for the duration of your speech and within the confines of the speech occasion, it’s okay to give yourself permission to be a status ten. You don’t have to take on a character, but you want to project yourself as the most confident and competent version of yourself. Actors know that emotions can’t always be easily created just by will. However, putting your body in the position it assumes when you’re feeling a particular emotion can help produce that emotion. When you combine physicality with intentional mental thought you can create a desired emotion. The same works for confidence. The phrase “fake it ‘til you make it” is often used to describe learning to achieve a new skill. This concept works because pretending to do or feel a certain way, leads to actually doing that thing. By standing up straight, holding your head high, and telling yourself you feel confident, eventually, you’ll just be confident.

Power Posing

In a famous TED Talk from 2012, social psychologist Amy Cuddy explains how body position can shape our confidence ^[1]:

Conclusion

To tune your delivery instrument, it can be helpful to regularly observe how others around you use move and speak. You don’t necessarily have to observe someone giving a speech—even just in daily conversation, or walking on the street, notice how people hold themselves. What kind of physicality makes someone seem confident and credible? How can a person sound compelling when speaking in everyday conversation? If you regularly pay attention to the people around you and notice how you respond to the way others move and speak, soon you’ll learn a lot about how you might want to use your own body and voice when standing in front of an audience.

Something to Think About

A great way to achieve that type of physical confidence is to feel grounded and comfortable in your own body. One exercise to improve your sense of space is to be intentional about noticing how you move through space in your daily life. Do you walk quickly or slowly? Do you naturally talk with your hands? Do you move in straight lines or more indirect patterns? How big is your circle of focus? There are four dimensions of movement: weight, time, direction, and level. What do you notice about your dimensions of movement? By becoming more aware of the way you move around a space, the more you’re likely to feel comfortable standing (and taking space) on a stage when speaking in front of an audience.