Just practice incessantly and understand that silence is a tool. In HS, I did debate and speech competitions, and my favorite was extemporaneous speaking. Ther

Just practice incessantly and understand that silence is a tool. In HS, I did debate and speech competitions, and my favorite was extemporaneous speaking. There'd be a few rules around each round, but the gist of it was you'd pluck a topic from a broad range from a hat, and you had 5 minutes to go back to your desk, and do anything you wanted to prepare to deliver a speech on it -- you could glance at materials that you brought (magazines, newspaper clippings, etc) and write down up to 10 words on a little index card. Then you just walked into a room and delivered your speech to a judge who had absolutely no context about what you were going to speak on. After enough of this, the biggest change I noticed was just the feeling of confidence, and believing that yes, in fact, I could do it. The other unexpected lesson I learned is the power of silence. Even the best of speakers will, at any given time, not have the right words or phrases come to them immediately. The REALLY good ones allow themselves the gift of silence when that happens. One example which immediately comes to mind is the steve jobs q&a where the guy says he doesn't know what he's talking about. While he is thinking about how to respond, the complete silence that steve allows himself, the sip of water, is just so powerful. You are watching him incessantly, and are sure to be hanging on to every other word he says. I'd contrast this with Elon Musk who, despite brilliant, is not a very compelling speaker at all, at oftentimes will mumble his way through to an answer instead of pausing before offering a full coherent thought.