EDIT: (btw, I can't tell stories well, at all)
I have to add this... just thinking about it makes my day... because it's probably the only time I ever did anything about the other person doing nothing in a group project. Anyway, in Spanish... there are always those "conversation presentations" that focus on the new chapter vocab... and I was always stuck with this guy who 1. didn't know Spanish at all and 2. wouldn't even attempt to do anything to help with our Spanish conversation mini-projects. So, I went out of the chapter and wrote a really long script that basically had him saying, "I have no idea what I'm saying"... "Laine always does all of the work on our projects"... and I threw in a few lines that had him making fun of himself (of course he didn't know)... and what was even better... when everyone started laughing (teacher included), he seemed to think they were laughing because he was saying something witty.. so he just kept going with it.. until someone decided to let him know. i think he threw a meter stick at me, but it was worth it.
LOL, thats so cruel...
As for me, when im not in an endless form of thought obsessing about all possible bad outcomes, im a great speaker. Just be aware of your situation, think about where you want to situation to go, and how to do that using whatever means. Basically know people, the situation their in, and know how to manipulate them for a desired outcome.
For example...
I was a slacker, though I never let slacking get in the way of group projects seeing as then my lack of work would effect someone else, which would lead to many outcomes that I deemed to be undesireable, and many times I would do more/better work than my partner, while doing all of this "modestly"(becouse than that person respects and "owes" me).
Or i might make myself appear like a "jolly idoit that wasnt actually an idoit"(present myself as least threatening as possible while making the person "enjoy" life as much as possible) b/c than most people want to become freindly with you, this allowed me to be part of
all the social groups and be accepted by everyone, and it also gave me alot of time to think about the meaning of life, etc w/o becoming alianted from society, seeing as acting in this way with others came naturally to me.
In religius discussions, my desired outcome was usually to convince the person that god didnt exist... Instead of using my own ideas(which the person usually blindly rejected) to prove something I started using other peoples ideas against them. I found that most Religious people are unable to deal with the reality of their own existence and thus if you want to prove something you must do it on the basis of the existence that they created. Using this method i managed to persuade people of different misunderstandings they had.