We don’t go in for the Oscars much – overhyped, overrated and self-indulgent in our opinion.

So, following last night’s haul of awards for The King’s Speech, we find ourselves a tad surprised to be recommending it to any entrepreneur who might have time to go to the cinema.

Colin Firth gives the most convincing portrayal of a man absolutely paralysed by fear that we have ever seen on stage or screen. Yet this is not because he is in a horror movie or a war film.

The poor man is terrified because he has to make a speech.

This is a very common fear. Even great leaders and orators are not immune. Sir Winston Churchill, for example, never shook off his nerves before a big public performance or a live broadcast. This might actually have been to his advantage, because it forced him to take refuge in meticulous preparation every time he spoke. It was this preparation that made him a great speaker – so it might be said that it was his very nervousness that made him great. Yet even he was never comfortable when he had to speak in public off the cuff.

For some people, like the late King George VI, public speaking evokes not just nervousness but abject terror. This may be just one manifestation of a problem that goes far deeper but is also very common.

Most of us – perhaps 95% of us or more – dislike social encounters with people with whom we are unfamiliar. A formal platform speech is an extreme form of a social situation outside most personal comfort zones, but almost everyone faces more informal situations every day that involve interaction with perfect strangers. All of them have the potential to be stressful, especially when they are unstructured and therefore contain elements of uncertainty.

This is particularly true for entrepreneurs. Every day, we have to initiate contact with people we have never met. We may have to write to them, telephone them, or meet them cold, but in every case the obligation is on us to make a positive impression. A few – a tiny few – positively thrive on this challenge, but most of us find it daunting.

A viewing of The King’s Speech might be helpful because it reminds us that we are far from alone in our fears, and there are others who experience them to a degree far beyond what most of us can even imagine. More than that, it shows how even one of those extreme sufferers can find the courage to overcome them. For true courage can only be found not where fear is never felt but where fear is strongest.

Tomorrow, February 6^th, marks the 100^th Birthday of Ronald Reagan, possibly the most important American leader since the Second World War.

Here is not the place to discuss his politics. However, when a man rises from a poor background to a position of great power without the benefit of family connections – something that seems more, rather than less, difficult these days – and uses that position to achieve most of his personal agenda, those of us who are interested in achieving our own objectives would do well to analyse how he did it.

1.   Belief. Reagan had a sincere belief in his country, his religion, his political principles, and himself. That came across very clearly, even to his enemies. The first step in persuading others to believe in your product is to show that you believe in it yourself.

2.   Optimism. In his early years, Reagan was a follower of Franklin Roosevelt, the man who proclaimed “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” As the years passed, Reagan rejected FDR’s policies but mastered his techniques. He understood that if you project a positive image, even in negative circumstances, you are half way to making that image a reality.

3.   Clarity of Purpose. Even Reagan’s greatest admirers must admit that he was not a great intellectual in the academic sense. Far more effective was the way he worked out a few basic principles in his mind, based mainly on experience and observation, and, once he was sure of them, he stuck to them.

4.   Delegation. Accepting his own limitations, Reagan hired some very smart subordinates and let them get on with their jobs without interfering. There were exceptions, but most did better than would have been done by an interfering chief executive who tried to do everything himself.

5.   Charm. Reagan went out of his way to be pleasant to people with whom he disagreed profoundly. He realised doing so would never change their minds, but it costs nothing to be nice – and good social relations, even among competitors, can sometimes ease the way to a mutually acceptable compromise.

6.   Practice. The famous communications skills were the product of years of experience as an actor and a public speaker. Even for the naturally talented, there is no substitute for effort.

We are normally big fans of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, a British lobby group which specialises in publicising wasteful or unnecessary government expenditure. They do an important job and they generally do it well.

However, we must disagree with them – with all due respect – when they criticise the Foreign Office for employing the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) to teach diplomats how to speak and stand.

This is, for once, public money well spent.

Although Brits are often mocked these days for their unjustified air of superiority, it should not be forgotten that their ancestors built and ran the biggest Empire the world has ever seen, partly because they were represented by leaders and diplomats who were famous for their ability to project effortless self-confidence.

This is, alas, something of a lost art in touchy-feely contemporary Britain. However, even if you have no confidence, and no reason for confidence, it is still possible to act as if you have.

British diplomacy may have declined, but Britain still boasts possibly the greatest acting tradition in the world, and the diplomats are right to take advantage of it. Actors come from all over the world to learn the techniques of playing natural leaders at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, and, of course, RADA, so it makes sense that Britain’s leaders do the same.

This applies to business leaders too. There is a lot of evidence to show how proper posture can help in a very wide range of marketing and management situations.

An entrepreneur, especially a young or inexperienced entrepreneur who has yet to develop the skill of exuding self-confidence, could do a lot worse than attend a good drama workshop. Since we lack the deep pockets of a government, most of us could not afford RADA, but any half-decent acting class could teach a few basic techniques that could be of immense practical help: voice projection, power stances, positioning, eye contact, attracting and distracting attention, and pretending to be the dominant personality when you secretly feel nothing of the sort.

Alternatively, a more direct approach might be to join a public speaking club.

As an American actor observed, “If you pretend, you are already starting to feel... You let the pretension generate the feeling... That’s the British way.” So if you can pretend to be a successful entrepreneur, you might become one.