While I have seen people who can barely carry on a conversation do very well in a presentation there is no guarantee. Just as there is no guarantee that someone will skate well or fly a plane well.
I love it! I used to do zoo presentations all the time. They were an hour long, showing and talking about aroung twenty animals. If you think public speaking is nerve wracking, try it with live animals! I also used to be on my church drama team and I act in an Alice Cooper tribute show. I sing and play guitar at open mic a couple of nights a week too.
Any stage, any time!
No, but anybody who doesn’t have cerebral palsy or something equivalent can learn to skate or fly, well enough to go from point A to point B.
I don’t fear it, but at most, I’d say eagerness kicks in. I hate over-preparing and feel much more loose if I can just get the show rolling. I improvise pretty well, so it’s usually not an issue.
But in general, my level of comfort tends to fall back on two primary factors:
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How well do I know the material? If I feel confident/interested enough in my material, there’s little problem.
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How well does the audience know the material? As one influential person told me, you usually know more than the audience. If you do, they’ll likely take whatever it is you’re saying at face value and that will be the end of it.
At worst, you can count on members of the audience understanding the potential anxiety that comes with public speaking, so it’s usually not a big deal. Fear itself, and all that.
I don’t get nervous over it; I’m just not very good at it. 
Talking? No problem.
As long as I don’t have to dance.
I feel the need to argue for the other side because frankly, this entire thread is coming across as another derp why-do-hyoomans fest. I like giving presentations and I get frustrated by meek people too sometimes. But I still understand why they are this way. It’s great that you don’t ever get nervous in front of others, that you don’t have low self-confidence, and you’ve conquered the art of not-giving-a-fuck. But obviously not everyone is so self-actualized. And it really doesn’t strike me as that incomprehensible.
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It is quite possible to make it well into adulthood and never be called upon to give a public speech. If you have never had to speak in front of an audience before, why wouldn’t it be a nerve-wracking experience your first few times?
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Many people only have to “public talk” only a few times in their lives. Practice makes perfect, so if you don’t get the practice, it never becomes easy.
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Many people have some degree of self-consciousness. Why? Because people are social creatures for the most part, and a part of being social is caring what people think. And people can be very judgmental, especially in the workplace. It is not unreasonable to worry about making a bad impression when giving a talk.
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Emotions are irrational. There is no “right” or “wrong” to a feeling. It just is. Now, people should not let their fears hold them back. But an individual isn’t required to give presentations as a part of their job duties and they are pretty secure in their job, then why should they conquer this particular fear? I’m not frustrated by my coworkers’ lack of interest in giving presentations because I’m perfectly willing to step up to the plate on their behalf (which I have done before). As long as they use their strengths for my benefit when the times comes, I don’t care that they are too chicken to speak into the microphone. We’re a team. Team members complement each other.
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People only do stuff gladly when they get some emotional kick out of it. I like the feeling I get when everyone’s hanging on my every word and I see that I’m connecting with them. I enjoy when people come up to me afterwards and compliment me. I gave a two-hour webinar last summer, and I was on Cloud 9 for a month because of the glowing reviews I received. So giving a presentation for me is like chasing a high. But not everyone feels that high when they give a talk. It just feels like work. And not just work, but dreaded work.
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Some people just suck at giving presentations. Last year, a coworker and I had to give presentations at a stakeholders meeting. She went first and didn’t do a good job. Her slides were way too “wordy”, and even then she couldn’t keep her thoughts together. Someone asked her a question and she struggled to come up with an intelligent response. Then afterwards I gave my talk–which went very smoothly (probably because I practice the hell out of my talks). My bosses told me I did a great job, but didn’t say anything to the other coworker. Ever since then, my coworker has shied away from the podium. Now we can judge the hell out of her for being such a pussy, but personally I cannot. Sitting through her talk was a PAINFUL experience. Yes, she might get better with more practice, but maybe not (she’s rather late in her career). I’d rather our boss simply assign a more skillful presenter the next time, and let her shine in another capacity.
So in your opinion people just need training and they become good at stuff? Because that’s not been my experience. I can’t skate very well and I know people who struggle as pilots.
Well said, Monstro.
I do understand the annoyance with people who could but won’t.
But yeah, some people just *can’t *(and shouldn’t be forced to).
Practice. Do anything a hundred times, and you’ll probably get pretty good at it.
(Actual physical disability excluded, of course.)
Well clearly our mileages vary.
I don’t mind public speaking. If I can inject humor, I rather enjoy it.
I recall my brother telling me of the first time he had to give a corporate speech in front of a large audience at the very large company he started working for shortly after graduating. He got up to the podium and just froze…and sweated profusely. He said he was aware words were coming out of his mouth, but they sounded like gibberish to him. Years later, he was as polished and confident a speaker as anyone I’ve ever seen. He ended up as CEO of that company, so his rocky start didn’t hamper him.
No problem with public speaking. It’s fun and I seem to be good at it.
Also no problems with being interviewed for TV or radio, but when I had to speak to camera recently (no interview, just doing a little promo video), I started shaking and needed a few minutes to compose myself. Very weird.
Not necessarily very good, but good enough.
It’s like when I got my driver’s license: the teacher told us “now, this doesn’t mean you drive well - only that you’re considered to drive well enough to do it without killing yourselves or others.” Most drivers will never be on an F1 podium, most speakers will never bring the house down, but yes, the whole purpose of training is to get people to be able to do things they weren’t able to do, or to improve how they do them. The difference between a good trainer and a bad one is not how much their students like them but how much improvement they produce.
To me, the best moment in a project is that moment when my clients go from “oh my God this is so scary, will we be able to do it right, we probably won’t be able to get it right” to “yes, we can!” That moment when they try some off-script test one of them proposed and it comes out exactly as expected, or when they ask a “wait wait wait” question and the answer they get matches what they had guessed. Do you know what gets those people there? Training!
thank you.
this entire thread is nothing more than “I just don’t understand why everyone isn’t exactly like me!”
No.
There are so many messages directed towards “losing the fear of public speaking” that it gets to the point where, if you have no problem with it, you feel like a freak. In the last email we got from Corporate Training, three of the ten courses listed involved fear of communication (public speaking, presentations and the phone).
This thread is “oh good, I’m not the only one!”
I find public speaking pretty easy. Fun even. Though for me it was a learned skill.
And I don’t blame anyone for having this kind of fear; it makes evolutionary sense for a social species to have this, and to some degree, rational sense (“flight or fight” responses are rarely useful in the modern world, but taking a situation where your social standing could potentially change immensely in minutes seriously, makes sense).
As an observation, I think many people get better at public speaking as they get older. In a work environment at least, the only nervous presenters I seem to see are young guns.
You feel like a freak. I don’t (at least not because of my public speaking abilities). There are way more people in my workplace that are fine with public speaking than not. Probably because most of us have to give presentations as a part of our job duties.
We have a lot of training courses too. I’m guessing it is because even people who don’t mind giving talks can (and often do) suck at it. Like my boss, who always sounds like a third-grader giving a book report when he’s giving a presentation. Also, giving a talk in front of your colleagues requires a different skill set from what’s needed whenever speaking in front of non-technical audiences. Especially non-technical and hostile audiences.
Whatever your perception of the thread may be, it is apparent the OP thinks that a person who is afraid to speak in front of an audience is being completely irrational…that as long as a person is “beautiful and personable”, they shouldn’t have any worries. My coworker who bombed on her last presentation is quite beautiful and personable one-on-one, but it sure didn’t come across in her presentation. Her fears of being embarrassed are totally reasonable. I was embarrassed for her.
I don’t know what’s the problem in recognizing that not everyone is good at everything and that sometimes people keep to their comfort zones for very good reasons.
Oh, I don’t… or rather, I accepted a long time ago that if being the way I am is being a freak, I’m ok with being a freak.
What I was trying to point out with that generic you is that this thread was never directed towards making people who feel anxious or afraid when they need to speak in public feel bad, it was directed towards stating that no, Anaamika is not particularly strange in not having those negative reactions.
IOW: if you (personal you) have a problem with public speaking, this thread isn’t directed at you (personal you).
You’re right. Thinking of it as a positive event is important, no matter how I have to spin it.
My presentation went well this week. One thing I learned was to accept the nervousness this time around, instead of trying to fight it or calm myself down right before it, with breathing exercises. I just said to myself: “I’m nervous. Big deal, accept it and go forward.” Which help tremendously, I still think the breathing exercises are helpful mind you.
Another epiphany I had when I was presenting looking from the slides and back to the audience, I caught a look of disapproval from someone there, a Director. It was a “that’s bullshit” reaction to one of his colleagues regarding IM responsibilities and directives, and I caught him doing it. He didn’t like what I was telling him; “Because of <insert legislative act>, you have to do this.”
It dawned on me later after thinking about it, that the fear of any sort negative reaction and having to deal with it was a big source of my anxiety regarding public speaking. I quickly realized, chances are there’s always someone in the crowd who’s going to think your talking bullshit. So no point in worry about that either.
I have another one to do next week, and not anxious about it.
These presentations aren’t part of my normal duties, I’m helping a colleague out and they know it’s something I want to get over so they are very supportive about it.