Embrace the Spotlight
5 Quick and Easy Ways to Reduce Fear of Public Speaking
Whether you look forward to delivering a presentation, or avoid giving talks in front of others, you can quickly and easily become a more successful communicator. Because like it or not, most of us will have to speak in public more over the course of our careers, not less. You may not like taking the microphone, but you can get better at it.
Fear of public speaking remains the most widespread and persistent global phobia, equally prevalent across continents, socioeconomic strata, education levels, genders, race, and age. And it all stems from what’s known in psychology circles as FNE: fear of negative evaluation.
Here are five ways to defeat FNE the next time you have to run a meeting, address your team, present at a conference, or deliver a sales deck.
1 | Trust Your Audience
If you are afraid to speak in public, it’s likely your viewers are as well. And if you’re the one on stage today, they may be the ones on stage tomorrow. Your viewers understand and appreciate what you’re up against, and how hard it is to deliver a good talk. Trust that they feel those same FNE and insecurities themselves.
This shared phobia creates commonality between you and your audience, which means you already have FNE in common. That commonality also means they’re rooting for you to succeed, exactly as you’ll be rooting for them when it’s their turn in the spotlight. The next time you deliver a talk, remind yourself that your listeners are just happy it’s you up there instead of them.
2 | Be As Valuable To Your Viewer As Possible
Value creates confidence, for you and for your listeners. The moment your audience hears value in your presentation, you put them at ease, earn their trust, and grab their attention. They lean in, and as you feel their engagement, FNE shrinks as your confidence grows.
You establish value when you talk about them and their success more than about yourself and your success. Keep the focus on your audience. The more they sense your commitment to their interests, the more your credibility and likability increase. Maintain that value focus throughout your session, constantly proving you’re in the spotlight for their benefit and glory rather than your own. The more value you demonstrate, the less FNE you’ll feel.
3 | Speak From the Heart, Not the Script
Scripts are great for getting ideas out of your head, onto the screen, and properly organized. But scripts can also limit your ability to connect with passion and speak with motivation. The more memorized and scripted you allow yourself to be, the more restricted your performance becomes, and the more FNE you’ll experience as you present.
Learn your content just enough to know what you want to say and how you want to say it. Then set that script aside and speak from the heart and from experience. You’ll never remember every word or say it exactly the same way twice. But you won’t have to. Even more, you shouldn’t. You know your topic. You know your job. You know your slides will prompt you from beginning to end. So forget the script and tell the story in your own words. You’ll be more relaxed, confident, and connected in your delivery, and FNE will fade.
4 | Story Over Statistics
Most talks are overloaded with information pulled from the company website, copied from Legal-approved documentation, and regurgitated from corporate performance or data reports. These are all sure ways to bore or undervalue an audience, ratcheting up your fear of public speaking.
Add yourself and your human experience into your content to make your story human rather than corporate. When you decrease the data and increase the story, you relate with your audience as friends and colleagues rather than analysts and wallets. Your time with them becomes fun rather than stressful, and their trust and respect for you turns FNE into confidence.
5 | Accept Your Leadership Role
You have to know why you’re speaking in order to speak successfully. You have to honor what your audience wants to hear in order for them to embrace what you plan to say. You were the one trusted to deliver this information behalf of your team – if you’re not sure why, ask. Find out who recommended you, the reasons you were chosen, then accept and embrace them.
Then share those reasons with your audience. They want to know they’re in the best possible hands; tell them why you are the perfect person to share this story, and how excited you are to do it. You’ll elevate your status, earn your viewers’ trust, and lower FNE.
Bottom Line
Try one of these fear-reducing strategies in your next public talk. If it doesn’t work, try again. Eventually these methods will become second nature and your fear of public speaking will abate. One day you may even embrace the spotlight as a relaxed, confident, successful communicator.
The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll evolve into a #CorporateStorytelling leader. One that doesn’t suffer with the stress of FNE.
