Let's say the stage fright just hit.....
A REAL WORLD GUIDE TO
ANXIETY ABOUT PUBLIC SPEAKING
Tired
of the same tired advice? Get sleep, visualize success, practice, blahblahblah? Let’s say you are nervous NOW.
Maybe you have a speech in an hour and it is too late for all of that. If you
have 5 minutes, read this blog post.
If you have 5 seconds, read the underlined sections J.
Most
people face some level of speaking fear all their lives. There are two things
to think about that can make this better.
Channel Your Nervous Energy
First,
it is important to see your nervousness as not only inevitable, but as a
valuable source of energy. At a simple level, we know that passionate energy is
one of the keys to good delivery, and nervousness is the most reliable source
of that energy. But at a deeper level, your nervousness is about the
audience. You are worried about their reaction to you, their eyes on you,
their judgment. Your nervousness is your willingness to open up to that
experience. And that experience has
to be scary, or it is not authentic.
The
real problem for those of us who get nervous is the way we deal with that
anxiety. We close down. We read our speeches word-for-word. We read the
slides off our Power Points with our backs to the room. We kill all of those
potential places we can connect with the audience, those places that scare us.
Instead of giving them the opportunity to reject us, we reject them first, like
an awkward teen drama. This leads to a terrible speech experience for all.
And it cements our nervousness because of those bad experiences, our new
certainty, each time, that we really suck at public speaking.
So
how do we stay in communion with our nervous energy? For each of us, channeling
that energy will look different. Here is an example of how I’ve seen it done
successfully: A faculty member who had to present an idea for discussion at a
faculty meeting (notoriously contentious places) began with, “Ooh, it’s just as
scary up here as I thought.” She made repeated, good-humored references, in
response to aggressive questioning, to her nervousness: “See, that’s why I
wanted someone else on the committee to do this instead of me.” And when she
finished, a “Phew, I did it. -----‘s turn next time!”
Forget Performance
Second,
it is important to think about speaking as a communication task, not a
performance task. Michael Motley (1997) innovated this approach in his work
with the extremely, clinically nervous speaker. Focus on the information,
the idea goes, and teaching it to an audience who might need to learn it, not a
performance that involves them looking at you, like a trained seal, reading or
reciting things from memory. In a communication situation, you can’t mess up.
You could trip over the podium and everyone would remember what you were saying
for the rest of their lives.
In
other words, make what you are doing a conversation between actual people,
not a show in front of a faceless crowd. Do not look over their heads, as
someone once told you. Do not imagine them in their underwear. Focus on them,
specifically, and who they really are. See if they are getting the point. Stop
and explain it again or argue in a different way if they don’t.
Even
the most paralyzing nervousness will fail to the insistent pressure of another
human being who wants the information. Find someone in the audience who will
provide that for you if the worst happens. Just talk to that person for a
minute until you can pull it together. Or take a breath, stop, and ask
someone where you were before you lost your way. Better still, focus, in all of
your practice, and throughout your speech, on getting the ideas across to a
real set of people in the room with you, and you will make it.
Don’t let
them remain a faceless zombie horde. Make that human connection.
I’m
not saying you will enjoy it. It really is okay that you never will. You can
hate speaking, your speech, this book, me, the world, stupid zombie references,
and your $%*&*#@?#$!! Power Point. And it will be fine if you hate all
of those things in every speech for the rest of your life.
But you can still get it done.
