Why is public speaking so difficult? And scary?

Baby talk: before we’ve really learned how to speak, we’re taught to read. Speaking is for babies

Public speaking is just speaking.

And speaking is easy. Right?

Everybody speaks. Everybody knows how to, from infancy.

So why do we find speaking so difficult?

Professionals, especially those in leadership or management roles, speak all the time.

Sometimes, speaking IS the job. A CEO I once worked with told me that as she went higher up the corporate ladder, she spent less and less time 'doing' and more time speaking - about what to do and how to do it.

Why do so many high-status, high-stakes jobs require you to be an excellent speaker?

Okay, you need to be good at other things too. I work with barristers, surgeons, military officers, politicians, CEOs, consultants, engineers, scientists - and they're all exceptionally good at the work they do.

These roles demand a variety of skills, knowledge and talents.

What they have in common is that they all demand excellent ‘communication skills’.

That should be the easy part though, yes? We've all known how to speak since we were toddlers.

Learning to speak - part 1

ABCs: can’t even ask to go potty yet, and she’s already learning her alphabet. Maybe she can text her daddy for the potty

Think about it: you spent your infancy learning to speak. The people who raised you loved teaching you to speak. Say 'mama'! Say 'dada'!

Your 'first word' is a cause for celebration!

You spend every day of young life hearing these things called 'words' coming out of the mouths of the people who look after you and love you. And THEN: you discover that you can make not just one, but lots of them come out of your mouth too!

These sounds turn out to be the quickest and most reliable way to make things happen: we use them to get what we want, avoid what we don't want, tell people how we feel, and we get in less trouble for using them than for communicating in other ways, like with fists, or screams, or by throwing stuff.

It takes a couple of years to figure out how to make most of the same sounds as the lovely people who smile at you when you say 'mama!' or 'dada!'

Then a couple more years to learn how to put strings of words in different orders so that you can say what you're thinking a bit more cleverly.

After five years of daily work, you're just getting the hang of speaking…

And then you go to school.

 And at school, you learn that speaking is just something you do because you can't READ yet.

Seen and not heard: adults find children’s voices annoying, so we give kids things to do to shut them up. Get that child writing!

Speaking is for babies

We’re taught that READING is what words are really about. Squiggles on a page. Or on a screen.

If you didn't grow up speaking English, this is usually the point where you start learning it. But on the page. On the screen. Grammar, syntax, vocabulary: in writing, mostly. Because this is how grown-ups 'communicate': words on a screen, words on a page.

Words in your mouth, words out loud? That's for babies.

Reading doesn’t come as naturally as speech. Research shows that the way we learn to read is very different to how we learn to speak. You can’t teach a child to read just by surrounding her with signs and letters. Whereas babies who are spoken to all the time learn to ‘serve and return’ - to give back what they get in the way of sounds and speech.

'Words' vs sounds; 'communicating' vs speaking

Communication skills: look at that finely-tuned communication in action

Then for the next 15 years, basically until you leave university, it's all about reading and writing.

Until you get a job - and discover that you could really do with some more help with speaking!

We discover there's this thing called 'communication skills' that we really need in the modern world.

Which for most people means writing.

And we think 'well my writing is excellent, my dissertation/thesis got a high grade, my reports and articles and client communications are all solid and effective.

'But speaking - why do meetings and presentations and seminars make me feel so clumsy and stupid?'

Most professional activities, especially the jobs that can't easily be done by AI, aren't just about 'communicating'.

They require you to be good at speaking.

And that just so happens to be the thing that your education prepared you least for.

So when people come to me, we are essentially  rediscovering, and relearning, how to speak.

(Re)learning to speak: building on your existing skills

The good news is that relearning how to speak, with me, is much quicker than learning how to speak. It won't take another five to twelve years. (Unless you don't practise as I recommend you do).

Because we're building on your existing skills, which you have spent years honing and developing… but probably in a trial-&-error kind of way.

If we work on accent reduction or English pronunciation, there will perhaps be a bit of 'new' stuff: physical habits involving your speaking muscles, that your first language never needed you to have.

Example: putting your tongue tip between your teeth to make a 'th' sound. That seems to be one that almost all forms of speech except English just manage without. Everyone wrestles with the 'th' sound.

But more generally, you might be surprised to hear that although I'm a public speaking and accent reduction coach, I am not, in fact, a teacher.

I will not be teaching you anything you don't already know.

I will not be getting you to do things that you don't already do - sometimes.

Maybe without realising you're doing them.

You already have good instincts for how to speak well. You would not have come this far in your career if you didn't. Even if you're right at the beginning of your career.

If you're a young professional, or a student, with little experience, and still in or just emerging from the world of school and university where your speaking skills were treated as mostly irrelevant compared to your written communication - you still have all the basic skills to be a good speaker.

You started working on them from the moment you managed 'mama' or 'dada'.

I am just going to help you rediscover those skills and deploy them consciously, and deliberately, when it matters.

We cover the essentials of this way of working in a free 1-hour online taster session, where you can work one-to-one with me, or one of my colleagues: Sophie, Nathalie or Sonya.

 So yes, of course speaking is difficult - it took you years to learn how to do it. It's not your fault, but you then spent years learning how to do other things. And now that you've got to grips with the writing, the thinking, the arguing, the diagnosing, the teaching, the advocating, the selling, the leading… lets get back to the speaking.

Book a free taster session with us, and we'll show you how to get started.