Cure Your Fear of Public Speaking
Don't let this common fear hold your
career back and keep you from achieving the success you deserve.
It's almost impossible to be
successful in business presenting your ideas in public to a group of people.
Unfortunately, public speaking makes three out of four people feel nervous and
anxious, making them less effective.
Not to worry. Here are six ways to cure that
fear and truly shine when you're at the podium.
1. Don't procrastinate.
If you let the anxiety keep you from thinking and preparing,
you're creating a self-fulfilling prophesy of failure. The moment you
know you'll be presenting before an audience, start outlining and thinking your
presentation through.
The more time (elapsed and actual)
that you spend preparing, the less time you'll spend dreading the
experience. Getting right onto the project also give you more time to
organize your ideas and rehearse.
2. Organize your argument.
The purpose of every speech and presentation is to cause the
audience to make a decision. Start with that decision, write it down, and
then move backwards from "Here's where I want them to be" to
"Here's where they are today."
Arrange your argument in a logical
sequence, providing each point with both a visual representation (bullet,
graphic or photo) and one or more facts that support that each part of your
argument.
There's a real sense of security
that comes from knowing that your speech makes sense and that you've got facts
to buttress and prove each point. Having a "bulletproof"
argument is like wearing armor. You're safe, protected by the facts.
3. Start with an arresting
fact. The root of the fear of public
speaking is the worry that the audience is judging you. Not to freak you
out or anything, but they are indeed judging you. However, in most cases,
audiences decide in the first 15 seconds whether or not you're worth listening
to.
Because of that, craft the first 15
seconds of your speech so that it captures attention and proves that your topic
is important to the audience. To do this, you begin with a fact or
statistic that's relevant and surprising.
A strong start creates
momentum. Furthermore, seeing the audience (often literally) sit up and
take notice reduces anxiety, because now you've got them in the palm of your
hand.
4. Rehearse and visualize. Fact: the emotional part of your mind can't clearly
differentiate between real and imagined experiences. Because of this, you can
make yourself less nervous about an event by visualizing it as a positive
experience.
The best way to do this is to
rehearse your talk, while simultaneously imagining your audience having a
positive reaction to it. As you're rehearsing, imagine how great you'll
feel when you know the audience "gets" what you're saying.
5. Test everything beforehand. Whether you're aware of it or not, part of your fear of
public speaking is the nagging worry that something outside your control might
go wrong, like a broken slide projector or a microphone glitch.
Indeed, maybe you've seen (or worse
experienced) such problems. For example, at one keynote I gave a while
back, the high wattage projector in the auditorium melted my plastic slides,
leaving me to proceed impromptu. It was nightmarish.
To reduce and eliminate this element
of your fear, check the meeting room setup and any equipment you'll need twice:
once long before the meeting and then again just before the meeting takes
place.
6. Speak to individuals not the
audience. Finally, when you're actually
presenting never speak to the entire audience. Instead, pick out an
individual in the audience and speak directly to him or her. Pretend
everyone else is simply overhearing a conversation.
Every time you move to another point
or slide, pick out a different person in the room and speak directly to that
person. It's harder to fear "public speaking" when you're
speaking a person, rather than to the public!
As an added benefit, this technique
(almost magically) makes everyone in the audience feel as if you were
addressing them personally... even if you never picked out that person to talk
to! As a result, your talk will be better received and more memorable as
well.
BY Geoffrey James
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