Overcoming the fear of public speaking
Your mouth has gone dry, your mind is blank, your notes are shaking in your hands. ‘Don’t Fuck This Up’ is all you can hear above your thumping heart. Everyone in the room is watching you. And right now it feels like there’s no way out…
If you’ve ever been caught in the cross-hairs of fully-fledged stage-fright – it’s no laughing matter. It’s the very definition of ‘freeze’ alongside its ‘fight or flight’ siblings. But if it’s any consolation, you’re definitely not alone. Glossophobia, to give fear of public speaking its glamorous moniker, is one of the most common human fears and affects as much as 75% of the population.
Unfortunately, as social creatures, we’re hard-wired to fear threats to our reputation. For our primitive ancestors not being accepted by their tribes risked rejection from the pack and without it’s protection, they faced almost certain death. Fast-forward all this innate human paranoia to the 21st century and whilst we’re pretty unlikely to die for messing up a pitch or speech – our brains would have us think otherwise.
However, it’s a fear that every aspiring creative leader has to learn to deal with. As Nils Leonard, Founder of Uncommon notes, “Gone are the days when you could be a terrible presenter and terrible with people and just be a brilliant creative. Now, public speaking is a key part of leadership”. Nowadays, creative leaders are not just expected to perform in pitches and presentations, there’s pressure to be a visible public figure, speaking at endless industry events, on podiums, panels and even podcasts. Add to this the ever-watching social media and the potential audience to witness your humiliation is vast – so it’s not surprisingly a daunting prospect for those whose real talents are their creative rather than their performance skills.
The problem with performance anxiety is that one bad experience can tend to inform the next and before you know it, you’ve spiraled into a pattern of stage-fright that can feel hard to break out of. But the truth is, when the pressure is on to perform, even the most experienced performers and presenters can hit a wall: Richard Branson has been open about his dread of public speaking, John Lennon famously threw up before every live gig and even Margaret Thatcher battled with pre-speech anxiety. What the stories of these successful people tell us is that whilst no-one is immune to performance nerves - it is possible to learn how to deal with them so they don’t hold you back:
Keep it real
First things first – being a really compelling speaker is not necessarily about being the best showman in the room. If anything, overly polished performances tend to leave us cold. One of the most engaging presenters I’ve seen was softly spoken and had a stutter, which not only made him human but made his audience hang on his every word. When it comes to public speaking, our flaws can often be our greatest strength as being relatable lets our audience in. So forget perfection - it’s ok to have notes, fluff a line, or not know all the answers. No one cares. By being yourself and being vulnerable, your audience will get to know you. And you will only connect with them, if you truly let them connect with you.
Make it matter
“You are not being judged, the value of what you are bringing to the audience is being judged.” – Seth Godin
The reality is that clients buy people that care about their business, just as audiences buy speakers who care about what they have to say. Leonard, an accomplished presenter, shares this piece of advice that he has found invaluable for dealing with performance nerves, and that is simply to speak your truth, “Truth immediately removes fear – because it comes from the heart. If you can always be yourself and be brutally honest, then your audience will feel that authenticity.” So whether you’re in a pitch or on a podium, focus your efforts on saying something that can make a difference and that matters to both them and you. If you believe in what you’re saying, your audience will believe in you and if you’re passionate about your topic, then they will feel that too.
Change the narrative
Our inner critics have a lot to answer for. Just when you think it’s going to be ok, up pops your little voice to crush your confidence with a well-landed “what if I cock this up?”. But by paying attention to destructive thoughts like these, they can gain power and become self-fulfilling. So when you catch yourself catastrophising about what might happen, you need to switch your thoughts to something more constructive instead. Whilst, “I’ll win an Oscar with this performance!” might stretch the bounds of plausibility, tell yourself, “I've got this” or “I can do this, I know my stuff”. It might sound artificial at first but with practice, giving yourself a pep-talk during moments of doubt, can help you stamp out negative thinking before it does its worst.
Be prepared
It might seem obvious but being prepared is important for your confidence, as nerves often come from the unknown. As your familiarity with your presentation increases, your anxiety will decrease. So get to know your content, materials and the space (if you can) - then rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Steve Jobs overcame his pre-speech jitters by being fastidious about rehearsing, often relentlessly for days in advance of a big speech. Clearly this can be challenging when your CEO sweeps in and changes the pitch deck at 1am…so if you can’t do it for real then visualise the process instead. Brain studies show that thoughts can produce the same mental instructions as actions and prime your brain for success. So vividly imagining your talk going well, can give you the confidence to perform at your best.
Stand Tall
“At some point, you must stop preparing content and start preparing mind-set” – Anne Cuddy
But preparation will only get you so far. As Anne Cuddy notes, getting into the right mindset is also key for staving off nerves. In her famous TED talk on ‘Power Posing’, Cuddy examines how physically using your body posture in a more confident way can have a profound impact on how you think and feel, by boosting your energy levels and self-confidence in challenging situations. Whilst you might feel silly nipping to the loo for a quick power-pose before you walk into a pitch – ask yourself if you might end up feeling more silly if you don’t.
Slow Down
“The most precious things in speech are the pauses.” – Sir Ralph Richardson
When we’re stressed we tend to speed things up, so by deliberately slowing down the pace of our speech, we can trick our minds into relaxing. Pauses also give the audience a beat to absorb, whilst giving you space to collect your thoughts. Adrenalin also makes us take rapid, shallow breaths, which increase our anxiety, so try a technique like 2:1 breathing to help calm things down. By simply exhaling for longer than you inhale, you fire-up your parasympathetic nervous system - which controls relaxation and counters 'fight or flight’. As just a few deep breaths can be all it takes to get you back in the zone, it’s great quick fix when under duress Engage
The audience is always the most important part of any speech – never forget it’s about them, not about you. So acknowledge them and talk to them rather than at them. The more you can treat them as real people, then the more it will feel like they are with you rather than watching you. Richard Branson overcame his fear of public speaking after someone told him not to think about being in front of a huge audience but to imagine he was having a chat with someone in his living room. Now he never does formal speeches or reads from autocues, instead “I just sit on stage and have a chat – and it seems to work”.
As Mark Twain famously said, "There are two types of speakers: those that are nervous and those that are liars." So when the fear creeps in, remind yourself that it’s normal – it’s what our bodies are supposed to do. Once we accept it for what it is and learn to manage rather than fight it, we can use our fear to fuel us and channel that energy into excitement about what we have to say instead. Remember, when we’re nervous, it’s usually because we’re doing something that matters - and what could be more brilliant than that?
https://www.creativereview.co.uk/fear-of-public-speaking/