Ask HN: How to Speak Confidently?

They have a whole process including things like counting your "umms" and "aahs" and "likes" and other verbal fillers. A good group gives you constructive criticism from others who have gone through the process themselves. I learned to pace myself better and to slow down. The speaking skills I had developed in presenting to technical audiences were not as useful for non-technical presentations and Toastmasters helped me improve there.

#2 is the biggest thing that helped me as I started out presenting earlier on in my career. Along with this, I'd add:

* Keep any slides simple. If you find yourself reading a complete sentence from a slide, you probably have too much text on the slide. The slides aren't there to tell you what to say, they're there to remind you the correct order in which you're organizing your thoughts. If you read from a slide, everyone will know that you're reading from a slide, and it looks silly and makes the crowd disengage. They'll just start reading the slides themselves and ignore you.

* Try to practice forcing yourself not to fill dead space with "um" or "uh". It feels awkward to silently pause for a thought, but you will sound smarter and more prepared if you pause than if you use a filler. It seems counterintuitive, but it works.

I've learned to speak confidently, but something I'm struggling with is having an opinion on the spot about something.

Something that really helps me is coming prepared (including asking for expected outcome of meeting and an agenda - it's not too much to ask for - beforehand) and making sure the meeting sticks to the agenda. By doing so, I can prepare beforehand with notes, and I also make sure that we stick to what I've prepped for. Hope this helps!

Three tips I can give.

1. Don't be afraid of slowing down a conversation especially about engineering. For example, if someone asks you a question about an edge case you may not have considered that's fine. Take a moment to process and then respond. If you immediately blurt out a half understood response I find that usually just ends up digging a deeper hole. When you're answering a question it's your turn to speak, you can take as long as you, reasonably, want to. You can also be upfront about what you know and don't know, noone is the field has a full understanding of everything all the time.

2. I approach conversations like this on a slider. The less you know the more time you should spend listening. Its fine not to give an uninformed opinion, but avoid just not paying attention. Listening in general is underrated and should be most of what you do especially if you're a newer engineer.

3. Most people don't remember 90% of the convos they're a part of. Think about all the presentations/group convos you've been in. Do you remember every detail? Messing up in a conversation isn't the end of the world. Written communication is much harder.

As someone with formerly severe social anxiety (more like moderate/mild now), I can definitely relate to the structured/directed conversations being vastly easier.

When I do a presentation I don't feel much anxiety but unstructured conversation is still a nightmare. Especially considering I enjoy darker humor so I feel like I'm constantly on edge so that I don't accidentally say something offensive.