I'm a subject matter expert at work and have to present monthly to a large group (60-100 people). Occasionally, I hold brown bag events to share knowledge. Because I'm an expert on the topic at hand, I do quite relatively well in the area of nerves. The more I plan for a speech, the worse I get so I usually put a slide deck together, forget about it and sorta shoot from the hip. I like the teaching aspect of it because I enjoy it when others learn. I've been described as being passionate and the feedback I get is positive. The times I have presented to the management team have gone well. Although I did lose my train of thought once and there was about 5 seconds of me trying to remember my next point. Awkward. I'm not going to impress anyone with my speaking skills, but I impress myself, which in this area is all I can expect.

In high school, a teacher thought Speech class would be good for me. I respected him because I thought we had a sincere relationship so I agreed to take the class. I was horrified weekly when I had to get up in front of everyone. I actually performed worse by the end of the semester. I received a B that semester, probably because the teacher felt bad for talking me into taking the class. I didn't care about the topics and felt I wasn't knowledgable enough to be speaking on them. I received a poor grade in Government because our hippy teacher would be mad that I wouldn't share my opinion on politics in class. He wanted us to be passionate. Often, my reply was along the lines of "We're kids. What do we know?" I thought everyone sounded like a parrot of their parents and popular opinion. That wasn't going to be me. But, I grew up and formed my own logical opinions based on limited reading. And, I'm open on most topics. I digress...

Because we're extroverted thinkers, I think we can use that to our advantage when speaking publically. Also, being confident in the topic goes a long way. If you want to improve or practice, I would recommend holding a brown bag event at work/school and give a class on something you're knowledgable about. You just have to put up some flyers or email an annoucement, reserve a space or room and let people know they can bring their lunch to the event.