Who doesn’t want to be a fearless public speaker? We dream of confidently striding onto the stage to give a speech or presentation, breaking the ice with the perfect joke, captivating the audience with compelling stories, handling the most difficult questions with ease, and ending it with cheers and applause.
But the reality is usually less than perfect. Often, our fears take over and we imagine ourselves stumbling on the stairs, forgetting our lines, drawing a blank, or losing the audience.
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However, it is important to understand that one never gets over the feeling of fear during public speaking. It never goes away entirely. Instead, it’s about having lessfear — think of it as being fear-less.
Here are some simple ways that can help one in fearing less.
Be prepared. It sounds obvious, but the first step to quieting your fears is being prepared. This means knowing the material so well that you don’t have to think about it. It also means making sure all the logistics are set well in advance. You want to be relaxed and focused, not scrambling to get the audio working. Checklists are helpful to make sure you have all the details covered. If possible, arrange to do a dry run with all the audio-visual equipment ahead of time. Your friends can help you rehearse your speech.
Be real. Some fears are real; some are not. If you have 100 slides for a 30-minute talk, your fear of running out of time is quite real, and you need to cut some material. But the chance that someone will make fun of you in the middle of your talk is pretty slim. Make sure you are being realistic about your fears. Being prepared and being real can help to turn down the noise on your fears.
Be vulnerable. It’s tempting to think that confidence means preventing anything from getting to us. But the truth is that our vulnerability can be our greatest strength. The way to connect with an audience is by being human. That means having flaws and making mistakes. It means allowing your audience to get to know you. You can’t connect with them if you don’t enable them to connect with you. They aren’t there just for the information you have to convey. They are there to feel something and make new connections.
Be present. Just because you are physically onstage doesn’t mean you’re all there. Your audience follows what you are thinking and feeling even more than what you are saying and doing — which means you have to be fully present to make a real connection. Find the things that help you get present. This might mean doing something before you even get to the venue.
Be generous. More than anything, the way to be fear-less is to be generous with what you have to give your audience. Surely, there’s a reason you want to deliver this talk or give this performance that goes beyond just doing your job. There’s a message you want your audience to walk away with — to bring back to their own jobs, teams, families, and communities.
One needs to balance one’s drawbacks and gifts to start fearing less. You need to constantly calibrate yourself to become “confidently humble and humbly confident.”
Finally, it’s easier to be fear-less together. Find people who help you feel that way — they are your fear-less squad. Practicing all these points along with a group is going to help you come a long way in fighting your fear of public speaking.
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