Fail Fast, Speak Better: A Path to Public Speaking Success

Fail Fast to Succeed Sooner – this is a piece of advice worth remembering if you want to improve in any area, and it’s doubly important when it comes to enhancing your public speaking skills.

Public speaking, like any other complex skill, isn’t something you master overnight. To become truly proficient, you need to study, prepare, and be willing to fail—frequently. I’m not suggesting you sabotage the most important presentation of your life by filling it with mistakes. What I’m suggesting is that you arrive at those high-stakes moments—the ones that can shape your career or business—after having had the chance to make mistakes in more controlled and safe environments, so you can perform your best when it truly counts.

To make mistakes, you need to step out of your comfort zone—the place where you feel confident and secure. But leaving that zone is hard because it hurts. It hurts our ego because in unfamiliar situations, we tend to feel awkward, less skilled, and more vulnerable.

So, we often protect ourselves by staying within the familiar, where we don’t feel clumsy or exposed. But staying in that comfort zone slows down progress. We gravitate towards "safety" because it feels comfortable, but growth is much slower and less effective there.

There are, however, middle ground options between lounging on your metaphorical couch and diving headfirst into a lion’s den. Let’s look at two strategies that push you just beyond your comfort zone and can dramatically accelerate your progress in public speaking.

1. Buy Your Colleagues Lunch and Get Their Feedback

Offer lunch to 10 or 12 colleagues and, during a break, practice your speech in front of them. Don’t just invite your close friends or the coworkers you feel most comfortable with.

Challenge yourself by inviting people you don’t know well. Putting yourself in a slightly uncomfortable position will simulate the same emotions—fear, anxiety, excitement—that come with delivering an important presentation. The difference is, in this setting, you can afford to make mistakes and, more importantly, get constructive feedback to improve and be fully prepared when it matters most.

2. Ask a Friend or Colleague to Be Brutally Honest

Present to a friend or colleague and ask them to critique you as if they were your toughest critic. This way, you’ll get harsh but honest feedback. You’ll know exactly where you need to improve, without sugar-coating. Receiving negative feedback isn’t fun, but it’s the kind that drives the most improvement.

In both scenarios, listen carefully to the feedback and focus on correcting one or two specific things. Don’t overwhelm yourself by trying to fix everything at once. Focus on two key elements that seem most important.

Once you’ve improved those, move on to the next areas. Seek brutal feedback again or offer another lunch session for feedback. By stepping out of your comfort zone and testing yourself in new and slightly uncomfortable situations, you’ll see your public speaking skills skyrocket beyond what you thought possible.