Surveys have shown that speaking in front of an audience is one of the most common fears among people from all walks of life. Talking to many people over the years who harbor this fear, I’ve often heard them say, “I’m just not a good speaker.” Those words imply that they believe that the ability to speak in front of an audience is determined at birth.

As with almost any skill, that’s largely true. Natural ability is always useful. But natural ability is not what carries the day.

One of the best speakers I have heard in a long time is Michael Cloud, who is also a first class speechwriter. A couple of weeks after I heard him speak, Michael sent me a great article he wrote called “The 7 Deadly Sins of Public Speaking…and How to Avoid Them.”

I don’t have space to go through the seven sins here, but I can tell you that the first deadly sin he lists is lack of proper practice. He says that many speakers simply don’t practice enough. Others practice arrogantly and haphazardly, just going through the motions. And, incredible as it sounds, some speakers don’t practice at all.

Cloud goes on to say that many speakers just try to “wing it”. His attitude is, “Good enough is good enough.” During a subsequent phone conversation, he expanded on this point by telling me something that most people will find hard to believe: that the best natural speakers are often the worst performers.

How can this be? Because speakers with great natural talent often feel relaxed and in control in front of an audience. Which in turn makes many of them believe that they don’t need to practice.

I relate to this, because I fell into the trap of overconfidence early in my career. From a very young age, I recognized that I had the gift of speech and mistakenly believed that this ability was all it took to be a great speaker.

The end of this ridiculous miscalculation came during a performance in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. At that time, my second book, Looking for #1had just risen to number 1 on The New York Times best-seller list, and I was drunk on the wine of adulation. He was scheduled to give a speech to an audience of 3,000 people, all of whom I assumed to be disciples of Robert Ringer.

After a performance that would have made Johnny Carson envious, I went onstage and began to babble. I went through the whole lot…every sentence awash in “uhs”…repeating myself endlessly…and improvising “jokes” that only drew blank stares from the audience.

Being the perceptive young man that I was, after about 10 minutes I felt like I was in big trouble. When raw eggs and tomatoes fly at you from all directions, you begin to suspect that the audience isn’t really impressed with either your message or your delivery.

And when just about everyone in the room starts coughing nervously, it’s all you can do to resist yelling, “Mom! Come get me, quick!” (I will never forgive her for not coming to my rescue when I needed her most.)

Since that embarrassing fiasco, I have witnessed many high-profile people give speeches that ranged from mediocre to abysmal. In all cases, it has been obvious to me that the speaker was improvising with arrogance and/or ignorance.

With that said, here’s the painful truth about one of the best-kept secrets of great public speakers: They orchestrate their speeches down to the last detail. What I’m talking about here is tireless and continuous practice, not just of every word, but also of precise body language, facial expressions, voice inflection, and more.

In this regard, Zig Ziglar comes to mind. When Zig takes the stage, it’s like watching a great actor perform. othello. Years ago, I attended two Zig Ziglar speeches in the span of about six months, and not only was every word and sentence exactly the same, and delivered exactly the same way, but he even knelt at precisely the same moment. It was more dramatic than seeing Larry Parks sing “Mammy” on Johnson’s story.

So it’s no mystery why Zig Ziglar’s speeches have captivated audiences for decades. Clearly, he is a master craftsman who has orchestrated his performances to perfection.

Tony Robbins is another excellent example of high level orchestration. Love him or hate him, he is possibly the most dynamic and passionate speaker on the planet. When you look at Robbins, you get the feeling that the words spontaneously flow out of his mouth as fast as he can think, and that his thinking machine is always in fast forward.

But I noticed something interesting during a Robbins speech I attended in Hawaii a few years ago. He was explaining how important it is to display a high level of energy. To prove his point, he ran down the center aisle to the back of the room and then began to walk very slowly towards the stage.

As he walked, his shoulders slumped and he spoke very slowly in an effort to comically demonstrate what a low-energy person looks and sounds like. In perfect sync with his impression of Step’n Fetchit, a sound like the pounding of a horse’s hooves on a cobbled street could be heard throughout the room.

I looked around to see where the sound was coming from, and lo and behold, the audio technician was providing the special effects. I later found out that Robbins brings his own soundman with him to every speaking gig, which is as far away as one can go from improvising. Again, there’s no mystery why he’s a world-class speaker: incredibly detailed orchestration.

Instead, I remember a famous NFL quarterback telling me years ago, when he was in the national spotlight, that he did a lot of public speaking in the offseason. I asked him how much time he spent practicing, and he replied, “Geez, I don’t practice. I don’t believe in giving canned speeches. I look best when I’m spontaneous. I just get up and talk about whatever’s on my mind.”

There is a term to describe this kind of attitude: ignorant arrogance. As you may have guessed, after he finished his career, this guy completely disappeared from the speaking circuit. So much to just get up and talk about whatever is on your mind.

But orchestration is not limited to public speaking. On the contrary, it is one of the keys to success in all professions.

In the early eighties, I saw Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme perform at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. At the time, they were at the top of the entertainment ladder and put on a great show. What I enjoyed most about their act was their humorous improvisations and their spontaneous banter with each other. They were muting lines, clowning around and laughing out loud on stage.

In fact, I enjoyed her performance so much that I went back the next night to see her again. Surprise! Every line that she had thought was spontaneous was repeated word for word the second time, right down to their facial expressions, the way they laughed, their body language and their timing. They silenced exactly the same lines and burst out in precisely the same way and at the same times as the night before.

There was no spontaneity at all. Zippo. The entire act was orchestrated from start to finish. It was truly perfected to the nth degree.

I later told a good friend of mine who had been a Bob Hope producer for many years what I had witnessed in Las Vegas. His response: “Welcome to the world.”

My friend assured me that everything in show business is orchestrated, especially the lines you perceive as improvised. He went on to explain, “You know those spontaneous moments on variety shows when the performers are roaring with laughter in front of the audience? Everything is orchestrated: every laugh, every grimace, every fall.” She emphasized that professionals don’t go in front of cameras until they have every word and gesture well recorded.

That brings me to my last example of orchestration, Tom Brady. You may recall that I wrote a previous article about the star quarterback of the New England Patriots, based on his interview with Steve Croft on 60 minutes. At one point, Brady was talking about how many hours each day he spends studying game movies, prompting Croft to ask him rhetorically, “So everything is orchestrated?”

To which Brady replied, “It’s all orchestrated. You don’t just go out there and improvise it.” So sports, public speaking, show business, just about any profession you can think of, have at least one thing in common: orchestration is a major key to greatness.

So why don’t more people invest a great deal of time and effort into orchestration? Aside from laziness, I think one of the main reasons is that they think the orchestration is somehow dishonest. Pure nonsense, of course. The person who organizes everything in advance simply cares enough about her work to strive for perfection. Orchestration is nothing more than precisely practicing what you’re going to do or say… and that’s a good thing.

The same applies to reality shows like The newbie. When big bad Donald Trump tells the future executive, “You’re fired!” and he brings her to tears, unlucky viewers want to believe that this corporate version of professional wrestling is real. They love to share the “pain” of the future executive.

And when the teary-eyed object of Trump’s cruelty shows up on Oprah to tell the world how the other actors (uh, job hopefuls) beat her from behind to get Donald’s job, it’s enough to make a sober adult becomes physically ill. .

But then unless you think Survivor Y The Bachelor they are real i guess you get it by now The newbie It’s a great orchestration. Rest assured, each of the dozen hairs on Trump’s head is perfectly set in place before the cameras start rolling.

What’s good enough for DT is good enough for you and me. To parody the words of a now-deceased legal wizard who managed to free OJ through shameless diversionary tactics and a dose of grade school poetry, “If you long to be great, you must orchestrate.”