I have been invited by my professional organization to give a talk at an uncoming dinner. It sounded like fun a few months ago, when I agreed to do it, but now that it’s is looming (2 days from now), I am getting quite terrified.
I know the subject very, very well…the purpose of the talk is to help my vendors know what I look for from them, and what they can do to help me and build long-lasting relationships. Since my entire job revolves around working with the vendors, and managing the projects they are working on, and the fact that I spent 20 years working for vendor companies myself, I am more than familiar with the subject matter. I have been thinking through everything I want to cover, and I think the PowerPoint presentation I put together is pretty good. Plus, I know a lot of these folks, and they are very nice, and I have good relationships with them.
So, why am I so terrified? What I am really afraid of is that I will get up there and forget everything I planned to say.
Does anyone have any tips that will help me calm down?
Something to remember that public speaking is usually reported as the number one fear.
(though I suspect that, amongst women, dating me is number one)
So, keep that in mind. When you stand up to speak to the group. The group will be thinking how brave you are to do that. Just stand at the podium and give the room a good strong look. They everybody now respects the heck out of you and you haven’t said a word. Then, speak to only one person at a time. You can talk to one person resonable well. So, you pop your gaze to somebody in the back and you say the first sentence to him. Then lock on another person and say the second sentenced to her, and so on and so on.
Make some notes and keep them with you, even if you don’t plan on using them. Just the fact that you know they’re there if you want them should help. And practice your opening line; once you’ve got that out of the way, it should be easier.
Never let them see you sweat. They are more nervous than you are, or otherwise they would be giving the talk. You know the subject cold, and you know at least a potion of the audience. Talk to them. Pick them out from where you are standing and talk to the people you know. Then slowly let your gaze encompass the rest of the group. If at any time you start to get jittery, go back to addressing your comments to someone you know.
I’ve been coaching speech and debate for 20 years, and I haven’t lost a student yet.
So… I’m a teacher. I get up in front of kids to give presentations five times a day. Last month, I had to give a presentation on the research I’ve been doing over the last year. Shouldn’t be an issue right? This is my fifth year teaching; I’ve taught the gamut from AP-level to low-level with behavioral issues. Getting up in front a bunch of my fellow grad students and some faculty members shouldn’t be difficult, especially because I’m almost done with my program, have given my thesis proposal, and am finishing up my thesis.
Riiiight. I was nervous as hell ahead of time. But, as soon as it was my turn to go, I didn’t have time to be nervous. I was too busy giving the presentation I had spent so much time preparing.
My point is that everyone gets nervous when they give a big presentation. It’s normal. All I do is to prepare as best as I can, worry ahead of time, then go with what I’ve got. You’ll be fine.
I wish it wasn’t two days from now, because the best way to get over a fear of public speaking is to do it a lot. When I began training people at work a couple of years ago, I used to feel like throwing up. That passed after a couple of months, and I no longer sweat it. Unless less, you know 5/8ths of my group needs to be retrained. I had a 100% pass rate the next go round, so I’m okay now.
I also make notes like Revenant Threshold suggests. Every time. I don’t always read them, but they’re there in case your mind goes blank.
Thanks so much for all the good advice! I have made all my preparations the way everyone is suggesting. I figure the best way to deal with it is to be as prepared as possible, so I am definitely trying to do that.
No matter HOW stupid this sounds–practice your speech OUT LOUD in front of a mirror. I’m serious.
Do it more than once.
Then get a significant other (one with common sense, please) to sit through it once in your living room.
You will still be nervous, but you will be a hell of a lot less nervous. The other suggestion that someone made about focussing on one or two people to start–that’s also good. You can look around later, after you feel comfortable. Each person in the audience connects with you one-on-one–so think of it as a VERY large living room. You can talk to people in your living room, right?
Some very great actors and public speakers have had a little stage fright all their lives. But stage fright is just some extra adrenaline that God gives you–use it put more energy into your speech. Think of it as a gift, not a disadvantage.
On preview I see much of what I was going to say has been said, but I will post it anyway for emphasis.
Have your practiced out loud what you are going to say? I don’t know how long you will be speaking, and how much is just sort of talking rather than a memorized speech, but I always found it helpful to memorize my first few minutes. Those are when you are most nervous, wondering what they are thinking, so having that part just sort of flow out helps until you get used to everyone staring at you.
I also tend to look for the “head nodders” who will smile and nod encouragingly at anything I say. There are always of few of those. I love those people and am one myself when in an audience because I know how much they can help.
Double check, make that triple check, your appearance so you won’t have to wonder once you stand up if your fly is zipped, or if you have food on your face. Find out ahead of time what the agenda is. If you are to speak right after dinner, then finish dinner a bit early and visit the rest room. Check your appearance, and do a bit of deep breathing. That will go a long way to lessen the butterflies. What butterflies are left, think of them as a big help to you. That extra adrenaline will come across to your audience as enthusiasm for your being there, and they will appreciate it. They don’t want to think you are sick to your stomach at the thought of speaking to them. They want to see you as excited to be part of their dinner meeting.
What is hard not to do, but new speakers tend to overdo, is apologizing ahead of time for not being a professional speaker, or being nervous. Those are things they know, you don’t need to point it out. If you forget something, or find your presentation points are out of order, no big deal, don’t keep apologizing for it.
Instead of saying, “Oh, no, that is not the screen that is supposed to be next,” you might say, “I didn’t plan on mentioning this part until later, but actually this is better point to start with.”
Or if you were originally told you would have half an hour, but things went longer and you only get 10 minutes, don’t use that as an excuse for a bad presentation. Saying, “Well, I was just told I would only have 10 minutes, that is not near enough time to explain what I need to explain, sorry this probably won’t make sense now,” will just make the organizers look bad and make the audience upset.
“I was just told I have 10 minutes. Luckily I knew that often happens at events like this, so I also prepared a 10 minute version that will cover everything that needs to be covered, so let’s get started.”
And like Zebra mentioned, when you stand up to speak, take a moment to collect your thoughts. Remember you were asked to speak because of your wealth of knowledge. You have valuable information that will be helpful to them. They want you to do well. They want to learn from you.
And with things like this, I am a big believer in visualization. Tonight and tomorrow when you have some spare time, you need to picture in your mind it going really well. Picture yourself smiling as you approach the podium and looking into the audience. Picture yourself being confident and relaxed as you speak. Picture your audience listening attentively and liking what they hear. Picture when it is over, you get heart felt applause. And when the meeting breaks up, people coming over to introduce themselves to you and shake your hand, thanking you for coming, telling you they enjoyed your talk and learned a few important things that will help them.
Most of all, try to enjoy the experience. I have given 1,000’s of speeches. Just last week I had agreed to be a guest speaker for an adult education class. In the car, I did the usual, “What was I thinking when I agreed to do this?” I quickly put that thought out of my mind and replaced it with, “I am really looking forward to meeting some new people. I am lucky to be able to talk about my favorite subject with people interested in learning more about it. All the time and energy I have spent learning about this stuff will now be able to take on a life of its own as I pass it on to others. I used to envy the others who knew so much about this stuff that they would be asked to speak at classes I attended. How cool is it that I am now the one who is asked to be the speaker?”
That pep talk, admittedly very silly, did the trick. I went in excited to be there and the audience picked that up immediately. It went great, I am so glad I agreed to do it. So as much as you can, try to think of this as something you are looking forward to doing, not something you regret agreeing to. It is natural to feel that way, very natural to feel nervous. But be glad you had the courage to say yes to the offer. As mentioned, public speaking is one of most people’s biggest fears. So just the fact you agreed to do it sets you apart from most others. Just knowing that should help you focus your nervousness and change it into a good feeling excitement.
I don’t know if this is possible at your event, but I’ve done a number of mid-sized-to-large trainings and presentations. The first couple that I did I was really nervous because I was up there just talking. Then someone gave me a tip: Involve your audience. Ask leading questions; it breaks some of the tension, plus it gets your audience actively thinking about what you’re discussing-- which means it’ll stick with them better. Plus it takes some of the spotlight off of you for a few seconds when people are responding.
You do have to be careful not to let it go out of your control; ask very direct questions which will always set up your next point.
Since I started doing this, I haven’t had a nervous moment.
I know this won’t help you in the short term as you have only 2 days to get ready for this, but for future occasions it may be helpful.
Look at joining a Toastmasters club. They are probably the single best group for helping you improve your public speaking skillls. I have a friend who swears by them.
You know how “everyone” says you should visualize everything going perfectly to gain confidence? That’s all well and good, but I’ve found a different approach is more helpful:
Picture things going “averagely” – in other words, with some problems or errors that are quite likely to happen. For example, getting tongue-twisted on a phrase or, if you have a powerpoint presentation, some minor computer glitch like a slide not loading quickly. Then picture yourself responding appropriately in a no-big-deal way: pausing & sipping water, skipping that slide, or whatever – and moving on with your presentation. When one of these quite-likely problems arise, you will be mentally “primed” to respond and it won’t throw you. You will confident knowing you can handle the problems most likely to arise (and aren’t we all afraid of the problems, moreso than the speech itself: looking awkward or uninformed through no fault of our own?)
Also, if you do self-talk pep talk stuff, ALWAYS phrase things in the positive: “I will speak slowly” not “I won’t speak too fast.” According to the sports psychology stuff I read, your brain does not “get” the negative property of the sentence; when you say “I will not speak too fast” it pretty much reinforces “I will speak too fast.” In any event, it is better to focus on what you WANT to do, just from a practical standpoint.
It’s pretty terrifying to stand up in front of a crowd and speak, but as Zebra and others have said, bear in mind that when you get up there, everyone in the audience is rooting for you. They’re all on your side, and most of them hate public speaking, too. So they aren’t judging you or laughing at you–they’re wishing you the best.
This sounds silly, but try drinking half a glass of wine or other alcoholic beverage before you go up there. don’t get drunk mind you (we don’t want you slurring) but maybe just enough to relax your twanging nerves.
And as ridiculous as it sounds-- breathe. It will help you relax.
I speak frequently. 20 or 50 people usually feels fine, though with 100 or 200 I feel nervous. And I always feel somewhat nervous leading up to it, though usually feel pretty good once it starts.
Imagining your audience naked is an odd idea. I might tell them that I am imagining them naked and wondering what I have done to deserve such an insult, that they wouldn’t even wear clothing to my talk. But certainly play your eyes rapidly over the audience and don’t focus on your more glyptopygic colleagues.
PowerPoint can mess you up, especially if it’s on somebody else’s computer. Use Custom Colors instead of Color Scheme Colors in this event. Also, limit your fonts to Arial, Times New Roman, Courier New and Symbol - those are the only ones absolutely every Windows computer has. And whosever computer it’s on, beware those damn combination pointer - slide advance controls. They all have hair triggers and they are all boobytrapped somehow. Just use your spacebar to advance, or page up and page down to go back and forth, or type a number and hit enter to go to that number slide.
And think about love, and be a nice person - that will do more good than all the other things combined.
I used to be a professional magician, and I love giving speeches.
However, I used to get really nervous myself. I’ve found a few things which help.
For me, I like telling a joke at first, but it has to work! Fortunately, it looks like you have a lot of material to work with.
This is perfect! You can say something like: “I was nervous about talking in front of everyone, until I realized that I wasn’t selling anything. I’m just telling you how to sell to me.”
This is a standard fear, but with PowerPoint, you will have hints in front of you.l You can also write out more points, and organize them by slides, just in case you do get flustered.
Your circumstances are great, the people really want to listen to you. Best of all, since they are your customers, no will will laugh at you if you flub up. You could even turn that into a line if you want.
Okay, so don’t worry so much about your fly. Speech coaching is a fascinating little sub-category. I used to videotape speech coaches coaching CEO’s and exec types. I learned a lot. All of the advice here ( besides the scotch thing… ) is good advice.
Run the words a lot, but DONT try to memorize them. TRIPLE space the speech, it will allow you to move easily from line to line without the lines blurring out of panic. And as you turn more pages, folks think you wrote more than you actually have.
Breathe. Sip water. Look around the room. Fixate on one face, then another, then another- as has been suggested. NOT just one person- after a while, the room will assume they are a friend, and assume you cannot speak publicly.
The underlying question is this: Do you believe what you are going to say to them? If so, even if you deviate from your prepared remarks, you will deliver the same message.
And, let us know how it goes, ok? I talk in front of college kids or adults in groups of 5-10 a LOT. No sweat. I used to sweat it a bit, but I’m teaching them a skill that is the core of my professional life- and one they want to learn. A captive audience to be sure.
If it is a very long speech, take a break in there somewhere. Nobody wants to talk nonstop for 90 minutes, and nobody can listen that long either.
