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Why Most Public Speaking Advice is Absolute Garbage - A Real Talk Guide
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Twenty-three years of watching executives butcher presentations has taught me something that'll save you years of embarrassment: most public speaking advice is complete rubbish.
I'm talking about the "imagine your audience in underwear" nonsense that's been recycling through corporate training rooms since the 1980s. The "just be confident!" platitudes that make about as much sense as telling someone with a broken leg to "just walk it off."
Let me tell you what actually works. And what doesn't.
The Fear Factor Nobody Talks About
Here's what they don't tell you in those glossy presentation skills workshops: fear of public speaking isn't just nervousness. It's your brain's survival mechanism going haywire because it thinks you're about to be eaten by a sabre-tooth tiger.
Your amygdala doesn't care that you're presenting quarterly figures to the Melbourne office. It sees a bunch of faces staring at you and screams "DANGER! DANGER!" like that robot from Lost in Space.
The stats are brutal. According to my completely unscientific but absolutely accurate observations, about 78% of people would rather have root canal surgery than give a presentation. The other 22% are either lying or sociopaths.
But here's the thing that changed everything for me: I used to be one of those people who'd rather eat glass than speak publicly.
My Epic Failure at the Brisbane Convention Centre
Picture this: 2008, Brisbane Convention Centre, 400 delegates, and me standing there like a deer in headlights talking about "synergistic paradigm shifts" - whatever the hell that means. I was so nervous I actually forgot my own name during the introduction.
The PowerPoint wouldn't work. I was sweating through a $300 shirt. And somewhere around slide 15, I just... stopped. Looked at the audience and said, "You know what? This is terrifying, and I have no idea what I'm doing."
Best. Presentation. Of. My. Career.
The feedback forms were incredible. People loved the honesty. They connected with the vulnerability. One bloke from Qantas even offered me a consulting gig on the spot.
That's when I realised most public speaking training gets it completely backwards.
The Problem with Traditional Advice
Let's dissect some of the worst advice that's still floating around corporate Australia:
"Picture your audience naked" - Mate, if you're trying to concentrate on quarterly revenue targets while imagining your CFO without clothes, you've got bigger problems than public speaking anxiety.
"Just be yourself" - Brilliant. Really helpful. It's like telling someone having a panic attack to "just relax." If I could just be myself, I wouldn't be hyperventilating into a paper bag behind the podium.
"Know your material inside out" - This one's actually dangerous. Over-preparing can make you sound like a robot reading from a teleprompter. I've seen executives rehearse presentations so much they lose all natural inflection.
The real kicker? Most of this advice assumes the problem is in your head. It's not. The problem is that we're teaching people to fight their biology instead of working with it.
What Actually Works (From Someone Who's Been There)
After nearly two decades of trial and error, here's what I've learned:
1. Embrace the Shake
Your hands are going to shake. Your voice might quiver. That's normal human biology, not a character flaw. The secret isn't eliminating nerves - it's handling office politics and learning to work with them.
I tell my clients: "Your nerves aren't the enemy. They're proof you care about doing a good job."
2. Start Small, Think Big
Everyone wants to be Steve Jobs giving the iPhone keynote. But Steve didn't start there. He probably started talking to five people in a garage somewhere in California.
Start with your team meetings. Volunteer to present the monthly update. Practice on your dog if you have to - they're great listeners and terrible at heckling.
3. The 30-Second Rule
Here's something I learned from a mate who does stand-up comedy in Melbourne (yes, voluntarily): if you can survive the first 30 seconds without dying, you're golden.
That initial terror? It peaks around the 20-second mark and then starts to fade. Your body realises the audience isn't actually a pack of wolves, and your heart rate begins to normalise.
So I teach people to just aim for 30 seconds. Don't worry about the whole presentation. Just get through half a minute.
The Australian Approach
We Aussies have a natural advantage in public speaking that most of us completely waste: we're generally pretty good at being authentic and down-to-earth.
Yet somehow, the moment we step in front of a microphone, we turn into corporate robots spouting management speak. "Leveraging synergies to optimise stakeholder engagement outcomes."
Mate, just say "we're trying to work better together."
I've worked with executives from Sydney to Perth, and the ones who nail presentations are those who sound like they're having a conversation at the pub, not delivering a TED talk.
The Bunnings Test
I call it the Bunnings Test: if you wouldn't say it while chatting to someone in the power tools aisle at Bunnings, don't say it in your presentation.
Instead of: "We need to ideate innovative solutions to maximise customer satisfaction metrics."
Try: "We need to figure out how to make our customers happier."
See? Same meaning, half the pretension.
The Technical Stuff That Actually Matters
Forget everything you've heard about "power poses" and "commanding the stage." Here's what really works:
Breathing matters more than posture. Deep belly breathing activates your parasympathetic nervous system. It's like having a biological off switch for panic.
Eye contact is overrated. Look just above people's heads. They can't tell the difference, and you won't get distracted by someone checking their phone in the third row.
Pauses are your friend. The silence that feels like an eternity to you feels like a natural breath to the audience. Use them.
The Confession
Here's something I've never admitted publicly: I still get nervous before big presentations. Last month, before speaking to 200 people at a leadership conference in Adelaide, I had to do breathing exercises in the bathroom like some kind of yoga-practicing fugitive.
The difference is that now I know the nerves don't mean I'm not ready. They mean I'm human.
And that's actually what audiences connect with - the humanity, not the perfection.
What They Don't Teach You in Business School
Public speaking isn't about being perfect. It's about being useful.
Your audience doesn't want to watch you perform flawlessly. They want information, insights, or inspiration that helps them do their job better or understand something new.
I've seen technically perfect presentations that put people to sleep, and I've seen stress management training sessions where the facilitator stumbled through half their slides but had the room engaged because they genuinely cared about helping people.
Guess which ones got better evaluations?
The Reality Check
Most people in your audience are probably thinking about their next meeting, their lunch plans, or whether they remembered to pick up milk on the way home. They're not sitting there with clipboards rating your performance like Olympic judges.
This isn't particularly flattering for your ego, but it's incredibly liberating for your nerves.
Bottom Line
Stop trying to be a perfect presenter. Start trying to be a useful human being who happens to be standing in front of other human beings, sharing something worth hearing.
The fear never completely goes away - anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. But it becomes manageable, and eventually, it might even become part of what makes you good at it.
After all, the best presentations I've ever seen weren't flawless performances. They were genuine conversations between real people about things that actually mattered.
And if that doesn't work, there's always email.
Need help dealing with difficult behaviours in workplace presentations? That's a whole other article for another day.