By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you foster more commitment to sharpening your public speaking skills. Reading time: 5:08

You are tasked to lead 12 entry level employees
in a leadership development workshop on public speaking.
More than half of the class fears
public speaking and the other half
would rather be anywhere else. What do you do?
Consider the following speech that one leader delivered to
reframe public speaking as a skill that breathes
life into you rather than scares you half to death.

If I were not an adult or even a child, I probably wouldn’t be standing and I certainly wouldn’t be speaking. I’d be on my hands and knees, screaming not speaking because I was a baby.

And I would be an infant in more ways than one since the word “Infant” comes from the Latin word meaning “unable to speak.”

But I am not an infant. I am able to speak. I am able to break through the sound barrier and soar higher and higher on the wings of speech. Growing from a baby, growing into a child, growing up to become a man.

Yes. Speech breathes life.

In the next few minutes I am going to share with you three specific examples of how speech breathes life –BREATHING life into a 6-year-old infant, BREATHING life into ordinary people who become extraordinary and memorable, and BREATHING life into depressed nation on the verge of world war. Continue reading →