Photo credit: m o d e

Last week I received a moving and inspiring email from a reader about how he overcame his fear of public speaking. Dave has given me permission to share his story and I hope you find it inspiring too. It reinforces the point that you can learn to be a confident public speaker – you don’t have to be born with the gift of the gab.

“I grew up as the world’s shyest child… literally. At my 8th grade graduation banquet from my little rural school, I was required to give a speech to my 25 or so classmates. I had never heard a speech before! I had NO idea what I was doing. But I wrote out about 13 lines of stuff (history will never know what, because not even I remember) on an index card and memorized it. From the time of the “invitation” to speak up until that moment of horror, I was, in fact, horrified to the point of being almost physically ill.

I got to about the second line of the “speech” and absolutely, totally forgot the remainder. I sat down… utterly humiliated. (In retrospect, I now realize the teachers, etc. should have given me more guidance, but that’s water under the bridge.) I pledged to myself that I would NEVER allow myself to be that humiliated again (and my second speech, probably 10-minutes in length, at the graduation ceremony a few night’s later was, although not an Academy Awards moment, still not a source of humiliation). [In proof-reading this, it just occurred to me that my own speech was the first speech I ever heard! LOL]

When I reached high school, I noticed Speech classes were offered. I would have dropped out of school rather than have had to take one of those classes.

I never had a date, because I was too terrified to ask, until I was 25-years old. Thank goodness, I finally asked, and married the world’s most incredible woman.

To make a long story VERY short, years later I became a minister and, of course, had to stand before sizeable congregations to preach. (Don’t giggle just yet!). Fortunately, by then I had received intensive training in my subject matter and in preaching, but I was still the same shy guy. However, my delivery and fear-level improved miraculously, and I think I know why.

A few years ago, I was standing with the groom’s party about to make our entrance into the sanctuary for the wedding. I happened to be standing near the soloist, and he asked me if I was nervous (which is not unusual, because the entire party is ALWAYS nervous… for the record, groomsmen mercilessly tease the groom about it). The spontaneous reply that came from my mouth astounded even me… I will never forget what I said, and I will always appreciate the truth of it: “Not really. First, I am very well prepared. Secondly, I am ABSOLUTELY and UNAPOLOGETICALLY convinced of what I am going to say. Thirdly, I HAVE done this a few times.”

If I could add to those 3 points today, the 4th would be, “It’s not about me.”

Miracles do happen to shy, little country boys. Today, although basically still shy,  I can stand with ease before any size crowd or ANY person and boldly, effectively, articulately, and convincingly pronounce what I have to say.”

Here’s the message that I take from Dave’s story:

When you change what you tell yourself about public speaking,

your feelings about public speaking will change

After Dave’s first traumatic experiences he was telling himself “I never want to go through that humiliation again.” That had him avoid any form of public speaking or anything which might risk public humiliation. Years later, when he became a minister, his fear virtually disappeared because he was telling himself “What I have to say is more important than my feelings.” The potential for humiliation was no longer central in his mind because of his belief in his message.

If you can relate to how Dave felt as a young boy and as a young man, consider what you are telling yourself about public speaking.

Photo credit: Roger Smith

Getting no feedback from your audience is hard. That’s what happened to a reader, Emma, this week:

I did a 20-minute presentation during a lunch yesterday and I’m feeling pretty terrible about it.  I would love to tell you all of the details about what I felt went wrong but I am sure that would turn into a very long email. I felt like people were looking at me like a deer caught in headlights. Now I feel anxious and embarrassed that maybe people hated the presentation and that I’m ruined now and that everyone will say, oh, don’t get her to speak – she was boring!  I’m feeling like any chance of speaking becoming a paid gig has been eradicated.

There are two parts to recovering from an experience like this. The first is to examine your thinking around the ‘disaster’. The second is to take active steps to recover from it.

Examine your thinking

Part of Emma’s problem is that she’s not had any objective feedback about how this presentation went. In the absence of proper feedback she’s got a stream of negative thoughts swirling round her head. I don’t know whether Emma’s presentation was good or bad, but here’s what I do know:

1. You can’t tell how a presentation went just by looking at people

Emma didn’t get much positive nonverbal feedback from her audience. She felt like they were just starting at her blankly and she was like a deer caught in the headlights. And she made the worst possible assumptions about what the audience were thinking. Like:

“…maybe people hated the presentation.”

“…she was boring.”

Here’s the thing: you can’t tell what an audience member is thinking by the way that they look. A person can look totally blank and yet be intensely interested in what you’re saying. If you went to the front of a movie theater and looked back at the audience you’d probably be looking out on a sea of slack-jawed blank faces.

I’ve been constantly surprised by people in my audience who looked totally bored and disinterested or even cynical and then I’ve talked to them later and found that they enjoyed it and found it interesting and valuable.

When I see a person who looks bored I still have a little voice in my head that pipes up  “Oh you’re bombing, they’re bored.” I fight back against that voice by saying “No, that’s not true. You don’t know that they’re bored. Plenty of times people look bored but are in fact getting lots of value.”  The voice shuts up. That allows me to just get on with delivering my presentation and engaging with people.

2. All audiences are different

Emma is assuming that because her audience looked blank they didn’t like the presentation. But the way an audience reacts to a presentation is often more about the audience than about the presentation. Audiences can react to the same presentation in many different ways. Because I deliver roughly the same material all the time I’m reminded of this constantly. I’ll deliver the same material and get different reactions. Some of the factors that influence their reaction are:

Confidence: an audience full of confident people will generally give you lots of nonverbal feedback – nodding, smiling etc. If they’re not confident they may not even make eye contact with you. For example, in our Introduction to Presenting course which is tailored for nervous beginners I know that some participants are unlikely to make eye contact with me during the first hour. I’m now prepared for this.

How well they know each other: an audience of friends will be very different to an audience of strangers. An audience of friends who trust each other are likely to laugh more, banter with you etc. I experience this when we run an inhouse course for a tightly-knit team compared to a public course where no-one knows each other to begin with.

My partner, Tony, does some amateur acting. The cast deliver exactly the same play night after night. But the audience reaction can be different every night.

What’s the point of this? When you’re in front of people speaking you feel vulnerable and you’re primed to take it personally. But, the audience reaction (or lack of it) is not necessarily about you.

3. Your perceptions can be very faulty

Emma felt flustered and felt that she was bombing. Just because she felt that way doesn’t mean it was true.

I have a good friend who presents regularly all over the world. One particular presentation, things went wrong for her at the start, she got rattled and she thought the whole presentation was an absolute unmitigated disaster. Luckily, on that trip she’d taken her 23 year old daughter with her. Her daughter was able to set her straight and tell her that the presentation was fine. Maybe not her best performance ever – but fine.

4. Even if your presentation was boring, is that the end of the world?

It’s very easy when you’ve had an unpleasant experience to catastrophize. Emma said:

“I’m ruined.”

“I’m feeling like any chance of speaking becoming a paid gig has been eradicated.”

This is catastrophizing. It’s a very normal human reaction….And it’s your brain playing tricks on you.

To stop your brain playing these tricks on you, you need to challenge what you’re saying to yourself. Is it true that if a person gives a boring speech they will never become a good speaker?

I don’t think so!

Here’s a comment about a speaker: “He was stiff and monotonous, and he spoke like a poli-sci professor-a pedantic lecturer who used lots of deadly boring, neutron bomb language.”

That speaker was Obama.

So even if you’re presentation was boring – that doesn’t mean anything about the future. Becoming a great engaging presenter is something you can learn, it’s not a talent that you have to be born with.

Take active steps to recover

1. Get feedback

Part of Emma’s problem is that she has no objective feedback to balance the terrible feedback she’s giving herself. I’ve recommended to Emma that she ask for feedback from the meeting organizer.

If you’re prone to this type of catastrophizing after a presentation there are two things you can do:

• take a friend with you who can tell you how it went.
• arrange with the meeting organizer to gather feedback from the audience.

2. Get back on the horse

As soon as you can gather together a few good friends – two or three will do. Deliver your presentation to them. Ask them to give you lots of positive non-verbal feedback while you’re talking eg: nodding and smiling. This is the equivalent of “getting back on the horse”. Give yourself a positive experience speaking to start to outweigh the unpleasant experience you had. There is scientific evidence that this is worthwhile. Ask your friends for straight feedback.

In summary, the advice I gave to Emma was to manage her thoughts to put her nightmare speaking experience into perspective and take active steps so that she don’t have to go through the same thing again. What advice would you have for Emma?

I joined Toastmasters to learn how to overcome public speaking anxiety. I found a welcoming and supportive club and gradually got more comfortable about public speaking. I even found that anxiety and public speaking weren’t words that automatically went hand in hand. So I started to stretch myself. I entered the Toastmasters public speaking competition and to my surprise won the club competition.

Suddenly I was competing at the next level. That anxiety about public speaking walloped me out of nowhere. When I got up to speak, my legs felt like noodles. My notes were shivering in my hand. As I looked out at what seemed to me several football fields filled with people, I could feel my heart beating like it was going to explode out of my chest.

I was on autopilot but I got through that speech (I didn’t win). Friends came up to me afterward and when I asked if they could see how nervous I was, they said no. My partner Tony was there too, and he said that he could see some nervousness, but only because he knew me so well. He added that most people wouldn’t have been able to tell. I didn’t believe these nice comments at the time. I thought they were all trying to make me feel better!

But a couple of years later, Tony and I were preparing a seminar that we would be delivering at the Toastmasters annual conference. As part of our preparation, we gave the seminar at a local Toastmasters club and videoed ourselves. The anxiety was there too, but I watched in amazement at the video afterwards. I could not see the anxiety that I had been feeling at the time.

Anxiety and public speaking: It doesn’t show as much as you think it does

Just like we don’t see the energetic paddling as a swan glides across the water, you don’t look as nervous as you feel.

15 years later, as a presentation trainer and having worked with hundreds of people, I see this phenomena all the time. The presenter’s anxiety does not show at the same level as they feel it. After a course participant has delivered their presentation, we’ll often ask them to rate their anxiety on a scale of 1 to 10 where extreme nervousness is 10. The presenter might say they were ‘8’ on the scale. Then we ask the other participants what they thought. They’ll say ’3′. Just like I was, the presenter is amazed.

You don’t look as nervous as you feel.

Here’s why. You feel the symptoms of nervousness. The audience can only perceive what they can see and hear. They cannot feel your feelings. Here are some examples of this:

1. Your heart is racing

You feel like you’re a bomb about to explode but the audience sees nothing. They cannot hear your heart beat or feel the kaboom in your chest.

2. You’ve got a dry mouth

Your mouth feels like cotton wool but all the audience perceives is an occasional unclear word.

3. Your voice is shaky

You think that you sound terrible but people who don’t know you don’t know that that’s not your normal voice. People who know you well may be able to perceive a slight difference.

This is not to say that an audience doesn’t perceive anxiety at all – just that what they perceive is at a much lesser scale than you.

The best way to convince yourself of this is to video yourself and then watch yourself. But do read my post on watching your video first  because there’s a right way and a wrong way of doing it.

Remember: you don’t look as nervous as you feel.

The most effective longterm way to overcome public speaking anxiety is to use a proven method such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

But what if you’ve just had a bad public speaking experience which has caused your anxiety to rocket upwards? New research suggests that getting back in front of a group as soon as possible will help reduce the damage.

In the experiment, people received an electric shock every time a blue square appeared on a computer screen. Unsurprisingly, they showed anxiety (skin sensors measured their sweatiness) every time the blue square appeared. In psychological terms they had a learnt fear.

The next day they were reminded of that anxiety by seeing the blue square again (‘the reminder’). Then they were divided into three groups:

• Group 1 were shown the blue square repeatedly without getting a shock 10 minutes after the reminder
• Group 2 were shown the blue square repeatedly without getting a shock 6 hours after the reminder
• Group 3 weren’t shown the blue square again.

The results

The day after that each group was again exposed to the blue square. Only Group 1 showed no anxiety. A year later, a subset of the participants were tested again, with the same results.

So people were able to “rewrite” their memories but only if they did so within 10 minutes of being reminded of the bad memory.

The application to public speaking and anxiety

The write up of this research in BPS Research Digest suggests that you could apply this if you have had a bad presentation experience that causes you to fear public speaking. They suggest you gather together some supportive friends, internally recall your nightmare presentation experience, then immediately start presenting to your nodding, smiling and encouraging audience.

I suggest joining Toastmasters. A club gives you a safe and supportive environment where you can start to diminish the anxiety caused by your bad public speaking experience.

One of the defining qualities of a good public speaker is the willingness to make a fool of yourself. At the New Media Atlanta conference in 2009, Chris Brogan was the last keynote of the day. He’d watched all day as the backchannel drowned in snark. He could have chosen to play safe. Instead he started his keynote presentation with a rap song.

Chris Brogan was willing to take the risk that he might make a fool of himself. And that’s part of the reason why he’s a good public speaker.

Abraham Lincoln said:

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

It’s a funny line, but if you live your life by it you’ll live a stunted life. Marc of Marc and Angel Hack Life has created a clever reversal of Lincoln’s quote:

I would rather sound stupid…

Than be stupid and take no action at all.

So how to be a good public speaker? Be willing to make a fool of yourself.

What’s stopping you?

Here’s what I used to tell myself:

“If I make a fool of myself in front of all these people that would be a complete disaster. It would be the end of the world. I just couldn’t cope with the humiliation and embarrassment.”

That fear of the possibility that I might make a fool of myself stopped me from expressing myself in many situations. I wouldn’t speak up in meetings unless I was 100% sure that my opinion was right. I wouldn’t enter into a debate at a dinner party unless I was absolutely sure that I knew all the facts.

Can you relate?

I got over this when I realized that making a fool of myself was not a disaster. I realized that I could cope. That life would go on.

Take risks

The way to show yourself that you can cope with making a fool of yourself is simply this: Make a fool of yourself!

To be a good public speaker regularly take actions that carry a risk that you’ll make a fool of yourself or feel embarrassed. You’ll gradually increase your comfort level with making a fool of yourself. Here’s some examples of actions you could take:

1. Ring a wrong number deliberately and say “I’m sorry, I dialled the wrong number”.

2. Go out say shopping in a  lower standard of dress than you feel comfortable with. My partner, Tony, went shopping in his dressing gown!

3. Go to a park and pretend you’ve lost your dog. Yell out your dog’s name (you don’t need a dog for this BTW). Ask people if they’ve seen your dog.

I’ve developed a program with a list of 10 “making a fool of yourself” actions. Click through to see the list and instructions for how to work your way through it.

What makes a good public speaker? The willingness to make a fool of yourself.

Many people think that this type of visualization can help you not only speak better but also help reduce your fear of public speaking.

It may make you feel good at the time, but the scientific evidence doesn’t support the belief that it will help you achieve your best performance or reduce your fear of public speaking.

But there are other types of visualization that can help you in both these areas.

Visualization for best performance

The most effective visualization to improve your performance is a Process Visualization. During a process visualization you visualize all the steps necessary to get you to the outcome you want. So for example you visualize yourself:

• preparing your presentation
• rehearsing
• presenting to a normal audience (some nod and smile, some look blank, some are playing with their iphones)
• coping effectively with any problems that arise.

Process visualizations have been proven to be more effective that outcome visualizations:

1. Students who visualised good study habits did better than students who visualised getting an A grade in the exam. (Taylor S E, Pham L B From Thought to Action: Effects of Process-Versus Outcome-Based Mental Simulations on Performance Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 25, No. 2, 250-260 (1999)

2. Students who visualised the steps necessary to improve their tennis skills did better than those who simply visualised being better at tennis. (Singer R, Symons Downs D , Bouchard L , de la Pena D “The Influence of a Process Versus an Outcome Orientation on Tennis Performance and Knowledge.” Journal of Sport Behavior, Vol. 24, 2001).

Visualization to reduce your fear

The conventional visualization may make you feel good at the time that you’re doing it. But there are three drawbacks with this type of visualization for reducing your fear of public speaking.

1. It’s not believable.

That means it will only have a short term impact, if any, on your feelings.

2. It doesn’t accord with reality

Neither does this type of visualization help you when you’re faced with a “normal” audience. A normal audience tends to have some people who are nodding and smiling, some people who are looking vaguely interested and some people who don’t make eye contact. When the reality doesn’t accord with what you visualized, any good feelings you may have had from the visualization will evaporate.

3. It doesn’t prepare you for when things go wrong

And in particular, this visualization doesn’t prepare you for when things go wrong. It’s like a sports team visualizing an easy game, where the opposition just melts away and they score effortlessly. Sports teams don’t do that. They study the opposition in detail and work out the strategies they need to deal with the opposition.

Rational visualization

However, there is a type of visualization that can help reduce your fear of public speaking. This comes from proven psychological strategies to reduce anxiety. It’s called a rational visualization or coping rehearsal (Froggatt W “Fearless: your guide to overcoming anxiety” 2003).

In this visualization, you visualize yourself doing your presentation – including all the things that may go wrong. For example, the datashow not working, getting a mind blank, people looking bored. You work out what strategy you’ll use in that situation – and then you visualize yourself putting those strategies into action and effectively coping with the situation. This works to reduce your fear in two ways:

1. You’ll develop some practical strategies to use when things go wrong. For example, you’ll make sure that you’ve got hard copy materials that you can use in case the datashow doesn’t work. Knowing that you’ve got a “Plan B” in place will mean that you’re less concerned about the possibility of the datashow not working.

2. In your mind you’ll have rehearsed coping effectively with things going wrong. For example, if you’ve rehearsed how you’ll recover from a mind blank, you’ll no longer have a voice in your head saying  ‘If my mind goes blank that would be awful’. Instead you’ll be able to say to yourself “I hope I don’t get a mind blank, but if I do I can recover from it.”

So don’t just visualize success – visualize the steps needed to achieve that success.

Fear of public speaking often feels like it hits you out of nowhere. But I’m going to suggest that there are three distinct causes of speech anxiety.

These three different causes of speaking anxiety relate to three different areas of the brain – the Old Brain (it’s called this in neuro’pop’ books but is more correctly called the Hindbrain), Midbrain and the New Brain (again more correctly called the Forebrain). [Note: I have edited this paragraph to make it more scientifically accurate - thank you to Zen Faulkes who commented on my previous description].

My descriptions are a simplification of the science – in particular, the parts of the brain all interact with each other, so it’s not strictly correct to say that just one part of the brain causes nervousness. But I think it’s a useful model which may help you understand your fear of public speaking and work out the best way to reduce it.

1. Old Brain nervousness

Your old brain is the part of your brain that is constantly scanning the environment looking for threats. Survival is what matters to the old brain.

Many people suffer from ‘Old Brain’ nervousness. In prehistoric times, being part of a group was essential to our survival. So one of the threats to our survival was being kicked out of the group.  What might get you kicked out? Standing out in some way, saying something offensive or stupid, or not performing up to expectations.

Fast forward to now. You’re standing in front of a group ready to open your mouth and your old brain goes (metaphorically):

Oh-oh. This is a threatening situation. If you say something stupid, YOU MIGHT DIE!

It’s no longer true that you might die, but your Old Brain doesn’t know that. Your Old Brain activates your survival system: fight, flight or freeze. When it comes to public speaking the most common reactions are flight or freeze:

Flight - You avoid public speaking if at all possible. If you do have to speak, speak as fast as possible so that you get through it as quickly as possible.

Freeze – You feel stiff and artificial as you speak, your mind goes blank.

Here’s what can you do about this type of nervousness:

1. Accept nervousness

This type of nervousness may happen every time you speak. Accept that nervousness may be your ever-present companion. If you fight your nervousness (eg: say to yourself  ‘I shouldn’t be nervous’  – see New Brain nervousness below) you’ll make it worse. In this post How to use your fear of public speaking to make you a better speaker I’ve written about three specific ways to accept your nervousness.

2. Get used to it

You may suffer from nervousness less as you gain more experience presenting. That’s because your old brain  has gradually realized that this public speaking thing is possibly not that life-threatening. So desensitize yourself – take every opportunity to speak in front of a group.

2. Mid Brain Nervousness

Our emotions are regulated by the Mid Brain. In conjunction with other parts of your brain, your Mid Brain will make you nervous when you’re reminded of a previous nerve-wracking experience. So if you had an experience at school where you were humiliated in front of your classmates, or suffered an embarrassing mindblank in an important presentation, those strong emotional memories may come back to haunt you.

If you can readily identify a previous experience which is causing you to be nervous now, the most important thing to do is rationally evaluate how bad it was. If you continue to tell yourself that it was a terrible, awful experience it will continue to create nervousness for you into the future. So rationally evaluate how awful it was. What were the consequences of it?

Here’s an exercise I use on our courses to help people put these experiences in perspective. You can do this now:

1. Think of that nerve-wracking presentation experience.
2. How awful was it on a scale of 0 to 100%?
3. Imagine, your little finger has just been cut off in an accident!
4. How awful is that on a scale of 0 to 100%?
5. And now how awful is that nerve-wracking experience compared to losing your little finger.

Most people revise the awfulness of their nerve-wracking experience from somewhere near 100% to somewhere near 0%. They would prefer to relive that nerve-wracking presentation experience rather than lose their little finger. The loss of the finger helps them to put it in perspective. (If you’re happy to lose your little finger, imagine losing your hand, or the finger or hand of a loved one – at some point you’ll gain some perspective).

The rational reality is that most of the things that happen to us in presentations, are not that bad. They’re nothing compared to the other things that can happen to us in life – like relationship break-ups, loss of a loved one, and serious health issues. The most serious consequences of a presentation going badly are losing a large sale, an election or other contest, or your job (though I’ve never heard of someone losing their job because of one bad presentation). These consequences are disappointing – but not catastrophic.

3. New Brain nervousness

The New Brain is the conscious thinking part of your brain. Most of us have patterns of thinking that contribute to our nervousness.You can reduce your nervousness by exploring your patterns of thinking. This is part of the basis of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

One of the most common patterns of thinking that contribute to the fear of public speaking are demands.

Here’s an example of how they operate. A few weeks ago I was running a training course. I knew that the CEO would be one of the participants. I felt myself get a little nervous as we were setting up. When he walked into the room I got hot and my heart started racing.  Why would I react in this way? I have a demand around CEOs. It goes something like this:

CEOs are really important and I must have their approval.

My demanding thought made me nervous. What was the result? I messed up the instructions for a simple exercise that we do at the beginning of every course and that I’ve done perfectly hundreds of times before!

Here are some common demands people have about presenting and public speaking:

I must be interesting and engaging

I mustn’t leave anything out

I mustn’t waffle

I mustn’t show I’m nervous

I’ve got to be able to answer every question

These demands make you nervous because you can’t guarantee that the demand will be met. To reduce their power, rationally analyze the truth and usefulness of these demands. For example, with my CEO demand I can see that it’s not essential that a CEO approve of me. I don’t demand that everybody approves of me – and it’s irrational to demand that a CEO must approve of me. I can also see that it’s not useful to have this demand as it made me mess up!

In the post The Seven Thinking Sins of Public Speaking I’ve analyzed other common demands and explored how to defuse them.

I get that fear of public speaking can be debilitating, and can have you avoid opportunities in your life. I hope this post has been useful to you in thinking through how you can best reduce your nervousness.

Please let me know what you found most useful by writing a comment below.

You may never have written a comment on a blog before, after all its similar to public speaking – you’re saying something that many people will read. It may make you nervous… accept that and write the comment anyway. Look forward to hearing from you .

Do you hate the idea of watching yourself on video? Most people do. But on our courses it’s one of our most powerful tools for helping people to reduce their fear of public speaking. Watching yourself give a presentation can give you a tremendous confidence boost.

That’s because the way that you come across is often better than the way you imagine you come across. That’s because you can feel your nervousness, but the audience can only see it or hear it. Mike Bogle from the TechTicker blog writes:

In listening to the recording I was actually amazed how relaxed I sounded relative to the whirlwind of anxiety that was actually going on inside my head.

So your audience is not nearly as aware of your nervousness as you are.

There’s only one way to prove this to yourself and that’s by watching yourself present on video. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to watch yourself. So here are some tips to not only survive watching your video but to give yourself a boost of confidence:

1. Watch with an honest and compassionate friend

Choose a friend who was at the live presentation when you were videoed. This is because there are some things which stand out in a video which the audience wouldn’t have noticed during the live presentation. Your friend can guide you as to what was noticeable during your live presentation. Otherwise there’s a risk that you may get fixated on something you think you did wrong – but which the live audience didn’t notice.

2. Be aware that it can be a little weird

“Aargh! I look like my mother”

Most people find watching themselves on video to be a little weird. Watching yourself on video is very different to seeing your reflection in the mirror- you see different angles of your face, you see yourself moving. And you may sudddenly realise you look just like your mother, or your brother or whatever!

“I hate my voice!”

Your voice also sounds different. You probably already know this from hearing yourself on your answerphone. The explanation for this is that when you hear yourself normally (ie: not recorded) you’re hearing yourself through your skull bones and your chest cavity. Therefore your voice sounds deeper and more resonant to you. The way you hear yourself on the video is the way that other people normally hear you (sorry ).

3. Get over it!

Give yourself a few moments to notice these weird things – and then realize that these things are only of any interest to you. Your audience doesn’t care whether you look like your mother, and they’re used to hearing your voice. Your friend will corroborate this – ask them.

4. Don’t get concerned that you’re waving your hands about

On video your gestures look bigger than they do in real life. That’s because of the frame provided by the video. That amplifies your body language. It’s most likely that your gestures were great during the live presentation. Gestures add energy and show enthusiasm. Ask your friend how your gestures came across in the live presentation.

5. Don’t get hung up on little things

You may notice things (scratching your nose, saying the odd um and ah) that were not that noticeable in the live presentation. Again, when you notice these things, pause the video, and ask your friend whether it was distracting in the live presentation.

6. Pretend it isn’t you

Now, I want you to have an out-of-body experience. Imagine the person you’re seeing on the video is not you. Imagine it’s a colleague. And answer these questions:

7. How nervous do they look?

If you had no knowledge of this person would you think they were nervous? Now you may know that your voice felt shaky -  but don’t listen for it.  If you were an ordinary member of the audience would you feel at ease with this person as a presenter? If you’re not sure – ask your friend.

8. What are they doing well?

Your instinct is going to be look for all the things you could improve. You’ll notice these things anyway. So discipline yourself to look for what this presenter is doing well (you’re still pretending you’re watching someone else). If you’re having difficulty finding positive things ask your friend and then take the time to really notice them.

If you watch your video with these tips in mind, you’ll see that you don’t look as nervous as you feel. Enjoy the confidence boost.

It’s normal to get nervous about public speaking.

When you stand up in front of people and open your mouth, you’re making yourself vulnerable. Public speaking involves risk. So aiming for zero fear is unrealistic.

I still get nervous when I have to present in unfamiliar situations. I’m very used to presenting to small groups of people on a course. That’s my comfort zone. But take me outside of that familiar situation, and I’ll get nervous.

If I were to get upset about being nervous, I would make it worse. I don’t fight my nerves, I use them.

Here are three specific ways in which you can use your fear of public speaking to make you a better public speaker and presenter.

1. Let your fear of public speaking motivate you

I gave a presentation on Monday, which I prepared over the weekend. I decided that I would use the flipchart as my main visual aid, but I had three PowerPoint slides that I wanted to show. I didn’t rehearse with the PowerPoint slides because I saw them as such a minimal part of the presentation. Half an hour before the presentation as I sat listening to the presenter before me, I realised I had forgotten to insert black slides into the PowerPoint file (find out more about black slides ). It wasn’t a disaster, and probably nobody noticed but me, but I knew that my presentation was not quite as good as it could have been.

Here’s the lesson I take from this: I wasn’t nervous enough and complacency got the better of me. If I had been more nervous, I would have rehearsed with the PowerPoint slides and realized that I needed to insert black slides.

Preparation and rehearsal take time and effort. We need to be motivated to do it – and fear is a great motivator. People without fear tend to skimp on preparation and rehearsal, they wing it. So they waffle and ramble their way through their minutes on stage.

Let your fear motivate you to prepare and rehearse and you’ll be a more effective speaker.

2. You can choose how to interpret your fear of public speaking

Here’s a classic experiment in psychology:

Students were led to believe that they were getting a vitamin injection with no side effects, but were instead injected with adrenalin. Adrenalin causes a pounding heart, tremors and a flushed feeling. They were then asked to wait in a room while the ‘vitamin’ was getting absorbed. There was another person in the room with them – a stooge of the experimenters. In half the cases, the stooge was playful and fun – creating a ‘euphoric’ atmosphere. In the other half, the stooge was disagreeable, moaning and groaning – creating an ‘angry’ atmosphere. The students were observed through a one-way window and were then asked to fill in a questionnaire about their feelings. The students described and labeled their mood according to the atmosphere they had been placed in. (Adapted from Weiten W Psychology:Themes and Variations 1992)

Adrenalin is also at work when you feel nervous about speaking. The students in the experiment interpreted the effects of adrenalin differently. So can you. Feel the adrenalin and choose to interpret it as excitement and energy towards the challenge of speaking.

3. Use the adrenalin to fuel your passion

In surveys of what audiences want, passion, enthusiasm and energy are often mentioned (public speaking survey from SixMinutes, presentation survey from 2connect). We love passionate speakers.

A totally relaxed and laidback speaker is unlikely to show passion. To show passion you need to be full of energy and excitement about sharing your message with the audience. That comes from adrenalin. The same adrenalin that is making you nervous. Use that adrenalin to fuel your passion.

So don’t fight your nerves, make friends with them – and use them to make you a better speaker.

From my own personal experience, from working with thousands of people face to face, and from asking my blog readers what they find hardest about presenting, I know that the fear of public speaking is a biggie.

And not everyone who suffers from the fear of public speaking has suffered a humiliating public speaking experience.

So why do do many people have a fear of public speaking?

The theory of evolutionary psychology

Leda Cosmides and John Tooby are leaders in the field of evolutionary psychology. They say:

Our modern skulls house a stone age mind. The key to understanding how the modern mind works is to realize that its circuits were not designed to solve the day-to-day problems of a modern American — they were designed to solve the day-to-day problems of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

Much of our evolution took place during the Pleistocene era (between 1.8 million years and 12,000 years ago) on the grasslands of Africa. So evolutionary psychology theorizes that our emotions and behaviors are adaptations to that environment.

From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, fear and panic—like most of our emotions—should be viewed as adaptive responses (Nesse, 1990).

The fear of public speaking as an adaptation

How could the fear of public speaking be an adaptation to that environment?

My partner, Tony Burns, developed this explanation while studying evolutionary psychology at university as part of his psychology degree.

Being part of a group was critical to our survival. We hunted big carnivores – but could only do that with the help of others. And those big carnivores were also out to eat us -  our protection was by being part of a group. You might get ostracized by the group for a variety of reasons, for example, not pulling your weight, speaking or doing something which was disapproved of, or challenging the leader. And to be separated from your group meant almost certain death. So being an accepted member of the group was critical to survival.

(Note: Although the fear of public speaking is often mentioned in evolutionary psychology texts as an evolutionary adaptation, I’ve not seen a fully articulated explanation like this one. If you know of a published explanation, I’d love to know about it).

We want to be approved of

Fast forward several hundred thousand years, and we’re not that different. Being accepted and approved of are almost ubiquitous human desires.

So you’re standing before a group ready to speak. You want their approval. And there’s a part of your brain that goes, if you don’t get their approval – you might DIE! That triggers the fight or flight response. Adrenalin floods your body priming you for physical action – hence our exploding heart beat, shaky hands and dry mouth.

These were useful responses when we were evolving on the planet, and nowadays in times of real physical danger. But not so useful when you’re standing before a group and want to look calm, credible and professional.

What does this mean?

1. Stop looking for a specific event that caused your fear of public speaking

If the fear of public speaking is an evolutionary adaptation, it means that you don’t have to have suffered a humiliating experience to have a fear of public speaking.

2. Accept that you’ll feel some nervousness when you speak before a group

For many people, nervousness is an inevitable part of speaking before a group. Even experienced presenters can expect to feel fear in some situations. For instance, I’m very comfortable talking to groups of up to 20 middle-management types – which is what I do all the time. But put me in front of a group of 500 or an audience of chief executives or teenagers, and I’ll get nervous.

Accept your nervousness – you can be nervous and still speak. For many people, the nervousness they feel, does not show. People on our courses are often surprised when they see themselves presenting on video and see that the nervousness that they felt so strongly, is not at all visible.

3. We can exacerbate our nervousness by the way we think

Some people do make their fear worse, by fighting it or by piling on the pressure. See my post on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for help with this.

Resources on evolutionary psychology

Human Behavior and Evolution Society

Evolutionary Psychology: an introduction compiled by Patrick Baron

Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer written by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby – the “fathers of evolutionary psychology”