About three years ago this thread would have been about public speaking skills, but now it’s not. The reason being that public speaking is all about overcoming your fear of speaking in front of an audience, and I have figured out how to do that.
However, one problem still remains. With my fears out of the way, my speaking skills are still average. I can talk in front of a crowd and look confident, but I can’t do it really well.
My problem lies in organizing information in my head while speaking. I feel that unless I memorize an answer word for word I won’t be able to organize it clearly once I start talking. There doesn’t seem to be enough time to organize or structure my response on a complicated subject if I don’t have time to write it out.
What works for me personally is to compose a list of the key points I want to speak about and work from that. I don’t try to write out everything I want to say word-for-word because then I focus too much on reading the speech rather than speaking it. And if I was trying to speak completely off the cuff, I’d be thinking too much about remembering all the things I wanted to say. But when I have the list of the points I want to make, I don’t worry about the specific words or the general content and can focus on conveying the message.
My husband may have a problem similar to yours. He spends a lot of time formulating what he is going to say in his head before saying it since he is scared to sound like a fool.
What has helped him (though it is an ongoing process) is to just let himself blurt things out. Bad grammar happens sometimes as do inaccurate word choices but that all gets better with practice.
Even with blurting, he is able to get his point across.
Alcohol really helps in this regard. Try taking a shot or two before each speaking engagement. Sounds like a silly idea but I know it helps some people. I’m not saying to get completely ****faced of course… just enough to loosen you up a little.