Finding what you have to say and the courage to say it.

By Jill Szoo Wilson
Writer | Theatre Artist | Educator

“Why would anyone listen to me, anyway?”

I’ve heard some version of this question from public speaking students for years. Sometimes they say it outright. More often, they reveal it in other ways.

They choose the safest possible topic. They apologize before they begin. They bury a good idea beneath research because citing twelve other people feels less frightening than trusting a single thought of their own. They stand at the front of the room already worried about two things:

1. They will make a fool of themselves.
2. No one will care what they have to say.

In other words, they give up on being heard before they’ve said anything at all.

College students certainly do this, but they hardly have the market cornered.

We hesitate before speaking in a meeting. We type something and delete it. We soften an opinion until nobody could possibly object to it, including ourselves. We wait for someone with more authority, more education, more confidence, more followers, or a better title to say the thing first.

Meanwhile, underneath all that editing sits a very human question:

Why would anyone listen to me?

My answer usually begins with another question.

What are you passionate about?

For me, this is where public speaking begins.

Have you ever watched someone speak about something they genuinely love? Her face seems to brighten from within, as if a quiet flame has been lit behind her eyes. A smile gathers at the corners of her mouth. Her breath settles. The person who was monitoring every word a moment ago suddenly fully embodies the moment and has somewhere to go.

Attention turns outward.

There is something she wants you to understand.

That shift matters because good communication begins long before anyone starts worrying about gestures, eye contact, PowerPoint slides, or what on earth to do with their hands.

First, you need something to say.

Then comes the harder question:

What message do you have inside of you that is uniquely yours?

“I don’t know” is a perfectly good answer.

In fact, I love that answer.

It means we have something to figure out.

Who Are You Right Now?

College students live in a particularly interesting space between who they have been and who they hope to become.

Most can tell you a little something about both.

They know who they were in their parents’ homes, high schools, churches, clubs, and teams. Many can also tell you what they want to become: a nurse, a teacher, an engineer, an artist, a social worker.

Ask who they are right now, though, and the answer gets harder.

A student who wants to become a science teacher may point to the teacher who first made science exciting, the classes she has taken, and the degree she plans to earn. Those are important pieces of her story.

But they still leave another question:

What belongs to you?

What have you noticed?

What do you care about enough to keep thinking about?

What have you learned that someone else might need?

What do you see because of the particular life you’ve lived?

You don’t have to be forty-five before you have something worth saying. You don’t need the degree, the promotion, the book contract, or twenty years of hindsight before your observations count.

You are already living a life.

Pay attention to it.

Start With What Pulls You In

There is probably something you return to without being told.

Maybe you read about it long after you should have gone to bed. Maybe you bring it up at dinner. Maybe your family knows not to mention it unless they have forty-five minutes available.

Pay attention to that.

You don’t need to be the world’s leading expert. You need enough curiosity to stay with a subject long enough to understand it better.

Then put it into words.

Write the subject in the middle of a page. Circle it. Add the questions you have, the things you already know, the experiences that connect you to it, and the parts you still want to understand.

Somewhere in there is usually the beginning of something worth saying.

Then Look Across the Room

Finding something you care about is only the beginning.

Now somebody else has to care.

This is where I ask students to stop thinking about “the audience” as a mysterious collective organism sitting in judgment and remember that an audience is made of individual people.

What does your subject have to do with their lives?

Maybe it affects their money (financial impact). Their health (physiological impact). Their families (relational impact). Their neighborhood (local impact). Something they are seeing in the news (recency impact).

A problem they have not encountered yet but probably will.

Sometimes the connection is simpler: you know something interesting, and you can make another person curious about it too.

You don’t have to manufacture importance. You’re looking for the point where something you care about intersects with the life of the person listening.

That is the moment a topic becomes a message.

Give Them Something They Can Follow

Once you know what you want to say and why it matters to the people listening, give it some shape.

Begin somewhere interesting.

Tell us what you’re talking about and why you’re the right person to talk about it.

Give us a handful of ideas we can actually remember.

Then end.

Public speaking can become unnecessarily complicated very quickly. At its heart, public speaking is one human being asking other human beings to follow an idea for a few minutes.

The clearer the path, the easier it is to come with you.

And Then Speak

You may still be afraid.

Your hands may shake. Your mouth may go dry. Your voice may sound strange in your own ears. If so:

Do it afraid.

I have watched students walk to the front of a classroom convinced that nobody wanted to hear from them and begin talking about foster care, sports injuries, immigration, music, mental health, a grandparent, a political issue, a childhood experience, or something they had quietly been thinking about for years.

Then something happens.

People look up.

They listen.

The speaker has stopped trying to convince everyone that she belongs at the front of the room and started telling them something she genuinely wants them to understand.

That is a much more interesting person to listen to.

So Why Would Anyone Listen to You?

Maybe some people won’t.

You do not need everyone.

You need something you care enough about to examine closely. You need to understand why it might matter to another person. And then you need enough courage to put what you’ve discovered into words.

There are already plenty of people talking.

That is hardly an argument for your silence.

The world still needs people who notice things. People who ask good questions. People who think carefully before they speak and then have the courage to speak clearly. People who bring the view from where they are standing because nobody else is standing in precisely the same place.

So what are you passionate about?

What have you noticed?

What keeps bothering you?

What have you learned the hard way?

What could you explain to someone sitting across the table from you?

What do you understand now that you wish someone had told you five years ago?

Start there.

And if you are still wondering why anyone would listen to you, come sit with me.

Tell me what you have to say.

I’ll listen.