(FORTUNE Magazine) – Looking for an easy way to reduce even a strong, self-confident manager to a nail-biting mass of insecurities? Just ask him to give a speech to an unfamiliar audience. If he can't get out of accepting, he'll probably devote several sweaty hours to writing out his remarks or, if he is senior enough, delegate the awful task of composition to some underling. When the hour of execution arrives, he will stride manfully to the podium, assume a quasi-fetal stance, and proceed to read his text word by droning word. Not for nothing does pop research indicate that the average American fears speaking before a group more than he fears death. As Paul Nelson, dean of Ohio University's college of communication, observes, ''Death is faster.'' Choose life, even if it means working to become a better speaker. Why don't more managers take up the challenge? ''Most businessmen are worried that they're going to come across like someone else,'' argues Charles Windhorst, co-founder of Communispond. It's a firm that teaches executives that the trick in fact is to have all the mechanical stuff down so pat that the authentic, worth-listening-to you comes through undistorted. Learn the basics and get out of your own way. The basics begin when you're invited to speak. While the folks asking may have a foggy idea of what they want you to talk on, their none-too-clear guidelines probably leave you ample room to set your own topic. Don't be in a hurry here. First, the experts universally advise, you should find out as much as you can about your audience. Who are these people -- what age, sex, and line of work -- and why will they be assembled? If they're mostly women, you will want to use more examples that feature you know whom. Are they coming to hear you more or less voluntarily, or is their attendance required? Captive audiences are harder to grab. When are you supposed to talk to them? If it's right after a meal or at the end of the day, expect Coma City; leading off in the morning often means that you'll lose 15 minutes to your hosts' unavailing attempts to start on time. Maybe most important, why do they want to hear from you, of all people? Much of this dope you can get by grilling the person who had the temerity to invite you. For the ultimate in analysis, though, nothing beats spending a little time with your prospective audience. Robert Waterman Jr., whose co- authorship of In Search of Excellence propelled him into big-time speakerdom, finds that if he's to exhort some company's troops, for example, it helps a lot to poke around the corporation for a day or so beforehand talking to everybody he can. He can then address their specific concerns. Once you have a feel for your audience, consult your mental inventory of what interests you these days. Not just what you know or can amass facts on, but what you care about. Dale Carnegie said it 70 years ago, and the experts are still saying it: If you're not excited about your subject, you won't be able to excite your audience about it either. To find your topic, look for where your concerns intersect with their wants and needs. Decide on your purpose -- whether to inform, persuade, or entertain. Then give your impending address what Max Wortman, a management professor at the University of Tennessee and a popular speaker, calls a ''schmaltzy'' title. Not ''Current Realities and Future Trends in the Brake Shoe Industry''; rather ''What the Future Holds, and Why We Probably Can't Get There From Here.'' Now all you have to do is compose and deliver the sucker. In putting it together, bear in mind that this is an oral, not a written, communication. This means you should use short, simple words, go long on personal pronouns -- I, me, you, we -- and repeat your main points, since the listener won't be able to go back and reread whatever puzzled him. To achieve the right effect, try composing initially with a Dictaphone or cassette recorder, says Fern Johnson, a professor of communication at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. If others write the talk for you, make sure that they too observe the basic principle. Dorothy Sarnoff, a Manhattanite who has taught public speaking to many a celebrity, tells of asking 20 or so U.S. State Department speechwriters whether they ever spoke aloud the remarks they prepared for senior diplomats. None ever did. And you wondered why we're in trouble around the globe. IN THINKING ABOUT how to structure what you say, go back to the purpose you decided on. As Communispond's Windhorst observes, the standard tell-'em-what- you're-gonna-tell-'em, tell-'em, and tell-'em-what-you-told-'em works fine if your goal is to inform. If you're out to persuade, though, you're probably better off laying out the problem, marshaling the evidence for your view, then ending with a call to action. At the beginning of your remarks, you want to get the audience on your side -- and fast. Research suggests that they make up their minds on whether to like you, and to listen to you, within a minute or two after you start out. Audacious you can, of course, attempt to win them over with a joke. Be careful, though: Make sure that you can actually tell a funny story -- not everyone can -- and that the joke leads naturally into the body of your speech. The best openers, the experts advise, are probably tales from your own experience: sometimes self-deprecating, not necessarily thigh-slappers, but calculated to show the audience that you're pretty much like them. Or worse. The standard wisdom says you probably can't hope to put across more than three main points. Listeners should get a sense of movement, of progression, from one part of the speech to the next. Consider using rhetorical questions to alert them to transitions. You needn't be highfalutin, though. Some of the hottest speakers on the corporate circuit -- Tom Peters, Waterman's co-author, for example -- seem to do nothing but string together story after story. In framing your conclusion, figure out precisely what you want your listeners to take away. An impulse to act? Lay out with gory specificity what they should do, whether it's writing their Congressman, selling more brake shoes, or razing Carthage. A better understanding of your subject? Summarize your main points. A warm, happy feeling? Leave 'em laughing. Time your remarks to run a bit shorter than the period allotted; besides surprising your listeners no end, this may cause them to want more, and to invite you back another time. Once you know what you're going to say, put it into a form you can talk from. To keep you from reading, the Communispond firm recommends using your | own miserably hand-drawn pictures, or ideographs, one for each major idea. If you simply must have the words in front of you, at least break down your text into natural five- or six-word phrases, one to a line, triple-spaced, with brackets to indicate the phrases that make up a single thought. You can now attend to the truly mechanical. If you're going to use so- called visual aids -- and you probably should if your audience is large -- keep them simple, one phrase or idea per slide or overhead transparency. Determine in as much detail as possible how the room will be set up. Will there be a podium, for instance? How tall? If the answer is two inches below your height in stiletto heels, ask that other arrangements be made. Ensure that someone checks out the microphone before you go on. Rehearse, but try to avoid getting it down so well that you're bored with it. A final pre-speaking tip from Ohio University's Nelson: Write your own introduction. The audience is going to form an impression about you so quickly that if Mr. It-Gives-Me-Great-Pleasure stumbles through your entire potted bio -- the four degrees, the military service, the time you spent heading the Thule office -- you may lose them before you stand up. Furnish him instead with a brief, down-to-earth account of yourself that stresses what you have in common with your listeners. With appropriate fanfare, you take the podium. Stand up straight, look out at your audience, smile if it's appropriate, and then launch right in, with no boring ''Thank you'' or ''Madam President, Mr. First Vice President . . .'' Put more energy into talking than you usually do; this isn't the time or place for the stuffy nonsense that says that a good manager never raises his voice or gestures with his hands. Indeed, if you can just forget about those appendages, you may free them to do their own helpful thing, whether it's the grand sweep of a big idea, a short jab for emphasis, or the clenched fist of intensity. MAINTAIN EYE CONTACT with your audience. If you're a novice, and nervous, try to find two or three friendly faces, people who seem to be laughing at your stories and nodding along with your witty aperccus. When you look up from your text, look at them. As Dean Nelson notes, the nodders are more likely to be women, who aren't socialized like males to keep a poker face. As you grow more experienced, you'll be able to sweep the room with your gaze, exchanging glances with the neutrals and eventually even with the hostiles. What you're looking for is not just encouragement, but also any sense that you may be losing the crowd. When you see them beginning to stare at the floor, react: Rephrase your last point to make it clearer, tell them again how vital your subject is to them, trot out one of your punchier anecdotes. You may also want to hasten to the close, dropping the lesser points that stand in your way. Finish strong, not trailing off or adding another feeble ''thank you.'' Give 'em a great quote, a passionate, punctuated request, or a sure-fire gag line. Leave the vivid air signed with your honor, to borrow Stephen Spender's phrase. Then sit down and just wait for the applause.