Fear of public speaking
When searching for this phrase, English-speaking Google gives 104 million results. According to statistics, the fear of public speaking is included in the top 5 human fears. Each speaker acknowledges in an interview that he had at least once been afraid of speaking.
Medicine has even recorded SPV as a separate disease, glossophobia.
How can we curb our own fear of performances?
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First is the story about me. For the last 10 years I have been speaking in public, in front of completely different audiences. They say that I am doing quite well, for some time I even began to conduct training on this topic. But I always remember how it all began. At the very first job, my then manager, a Dutchman named Frank, said that I would need to prepare a presentation and speak to my colleagues. There were two difficulties:
To say that I was afraid to say nothing. I puffed, sweated and tried first to figure out how to get rid of this task, and when I realized that it would not succeed - how to do this exercise with minimal losses. At that moment I didn’t come up with anything better than to write myself a literal subscript on each slide, print it out and put it in front of me.
“I will have a clear structure, a story, the main thing is to switch slides in time, and everything will be ok,” I thought.
As you understand from the tone of the story, I, of course, lazhanul to the fullest. In the second minute, a colleague from the American office asked a clarifying question, I began to answer confusedly, then a second question arose, the third, in general, my entire “clear structure” covered myself with a copper basin.
I walked out of the room in a wet shirt and with a feeling of total collapse. I went to smoke, but Frank called me halfway down the road.
"I was so messy, boss," I muttered.
“You know what the main problem was?” My boss asked.
“In that I tried to read a piece of paper?”
"No, that you have doubted your own abilities"
Then I did not understand what he was talking about, and it took me several years and dozens of public speeches to get me the whole point of what was said. In this article I want to share my life hacking on the topic of fear of public speaking.
Let's start with the main thing. From you.
You decided to speak in front of someone, tell people an interesting story, and ideally - encourage them to some kind of action. Who knows best about this story in the audience? Maybe a third-line dude asking tricky questions? Or that strict lady over there, simply because her whole appearance betrays an expert?
You. You are the best in the audience who understand your story, you know it thoroughly, you understand all the nuances, you know its strengths and weaknesses. And here you need to dissolve two concepts.
Let's imagine that you are speaking on the subject of Scrum in your team. How much can there be in the hall of experts on Scrum, who will be ready to overwhelm you with complex questions? Probably there will be more than 0.
How many experts in your history can be in the hall? One. Only you are an expert in the story that you tell people. And this is a very important element of your strength as a speaker. Just tell yourself in your mind: “I know the best in the audience about what I am talking about now.” It really helps.
Now let's take a look at my Frank story. One of the common mistakes is excessive preparation for performance. Don't misunderstand me, you definitely need to rehearse serious speeches, but to write yourself a word-case, as I did, is a bad job. And the explanation is very simple. Our brain is a tricky thing, and how we fix our thoughts on paper is often very different from a similar thought that was said out loud. In other words, when you start reading, you will sound like a robot Werther. Very unnatural. And the audience will immediately notice. Her tension will be transferred to you, you will start to get even more nervous, well, and then there will be a story with a wet shirt.
My advice: fix the theses and key thoughts, but be sure to speak your speech to yourself and others. After all, only when we say the words, we understand how we sound, how slim the story is.
Now let's look at the question from the other side: what are the reasons for fear of public speaking?
If you go back to glossophobia and look a bit in the list of potential causes (Russian Wikipedia, for example, lists at least 15 possible), then among them are those that are objectively difficult to influence, and those that are exactly within the scope of your direct influence.
The first group includes reasons like “low self-esteem”, “complex of guilt”, “chronic fatigue syndrome” - many experts all over the world are ready to work with your self-assessment for various kinds of fees, I will not give new advice here.
But in the second group there is a reason why, as it seems to me, at least half of the speakers are nervous.
Each manager of each corporation has a story that begins with the words “somehow my boss asked me to make a presentation about XYZ,” and often in the continuation of this story it is described how eager this manager was to speak to an audience. There is a more eloquent example, when the big boss made beautiful slides, distributed them to smaller bosses and asked to “bring it to his subordinates.” What do we usually see on such performances? Unsure of themselves, lost and constantly looking at the slides of people. And the problem is on the surface - the speaker does not know what he is telling the audience about.
I sincerely believe that most of the problems with the fear of performances are associated with a lack of awareness of the speaker.
Self-confidence comes when you understand that the topic about which you are going to tell the audience is as close as possible to you. Ideally, you are an expert in the subject. Imagine a bank clerk who was asked to talk about the basics of the PLO in your department? I think the spectacle will be sad. But if the same clerk talks about the structure of standard mortgage transactions, then the situation will change radically.
There is an important clarification: expertise can be your assistant, but you need to ensure that it does not become an enemy. What do “very expert” people like to do? Long and thoroughly talk about their subject area. What presentations do we like? Those in which everything is brief and clearly stated. Therefore:
This article is just the tip of the iceberg on how to get high from your own public speaking. And what are your lifehacks for working with the audience and maintaining your own confidence?
Medicine has even recorded SPV as a separate disease, glossophobia.
How can we curb our own fear of performances?
')
First is the story about me. For the last 10 years I have been speaking in public, in front of completely different audiences. They say that I am doing quite well, for some time I even began to conduct training on this topic. But I always remember how it all began. At the very first job, my then manager, a Dutchman named Frank, said that I would need to prepare a presentation and speak to my colleagues. There were two difficulties:
- The colleagues were in five different places, and the entire presentation was held in the format of a conference call.
- I needed to speak in English for the first time in my life.
To say that I was afraid to say nothing. I puffed, sweated and tried first to figure out how to get rid of this task, and when I realized that it would not succeed - how to do this exercise with minimal losses. At that moment I didn’t come up with anything better than to write myself a literal subscript on each slide, print it out and put it in front of me.
“I will have a clear structure, a story, the main thing is to switch slides in time, and everything will be ok,” I thought.
As you understand from the tone of the story, I, of course, lazhanul to the fullest. In the second minute, a colleague from the American office asked a clarifying question, I began to answer confusedly, then a second question arose, the third, in general, my entire “clear structure” covered myself with a copper basin.
I walked out of the room in a wet shirt and with a feeling of total collapse. I went to smoke, but Frank called me halfway down the road.
"I was so messy, boss," I muttered.
“You know what the main problem was?” My boss asked.
“In that I tried to read a piece of paper?”
"No, that you have doubted your own abilities"
Then I did not understand what he was talking about, and it took me several years and dozens of public speeches to get me the whole point of what was said. In this article I want to share my life hacking on the topic of fear of public speaking.
Let's start with the main thing. From you.
You decided to speak in front of someone, tell people an interesting story, and ideally - encourage them to some kind of action. Who knows best about this story in the audience? Maybe a third-line dude asking tricky questions? Or that strict lady over there, simply because her whole appearance betrays an expert?
You. You are the best in the audience who understand your story, you know it thoroughly, you understand all the nuances, you know its strengths and weaknesses. And here you need to dissolve two concepts.
Let's imagine that you are speaking on the subject of Scrum in your team. How much can there be in the hall of experts on Scrum, who will be ready to overwhelm you with complex questions? Probably there will be more than 0.
How many experts in your history can be in the hall? One. Only you are an expert in the story that you tell people. And this is a very important element of your strength as a speaker. Just tell yourself in your mind: “I know the best in the audience about what I am talking about now.” It really helps.
Now let's take a look at my Frank story. One of the common mistakes is excessive preparation for performance. Don't misunderstand me, you definitely need to rehearse serious speeches, but to write yourself a word-case, as I did, is a bad job. And the explanation is very simple. Our brain is a tricky thing, and how we fix our thoughts on paper is often very different from a similar thought that was said out loud. In other words, when you start reading, you will sound like a robot Werther. Very unnatural. And the audience will immediately notice. Her tension will be transferred to you, you will start to get even more nervous, well, and then there will be a story with a wet shirt.
My advice: fix the theses and key thoughts, but be sure to speak your speech to yourself and others. After all, only when we say the words, we understand how we sound, how slim the story is.
Now let's look at the question from the other side: what are the reasons for fear of public speaking?
If you go back to glossophobia and look a bit in the list of potential causes (Russian Wikipedia, for example, lists at least 15 possible), then among them are those that are objectively difficult to influence, and those that are exactly within the scope of your direct influence.
The first group includes reasons like “low self-esteem”, “complex of guilt”, “chronic fatigue syndrome” - many experts all over the world are ready to work with your self-assessment for various kinds of fees, I will not give new advice here.
But in the second group there is a reason why, as it seems to me, at least half of the speakers are nervous.
Each manager of each corporation has a story that begins with the words “somehow my boss asked me to make a presentation about XYZ,” and often in the continuation of this story it is described how eager this manager was to speak to an audience. There is a more eloquent example, when the big boss made beautiful slides, distributed them to smaller bosses and asked to “bring it to his subordinates.” What do we usually see on such performances? Unsure of themselves, lost and constantly looking at the slides of people. And the problem is on the surface - the speaker does not know what he is telling the audience about.
I sincerely believe that most of the problems with the fear of performances are associated with a lack of awareness of the speaker.
Self-confidence comes when you understand that the topic about which you are going to tell the audience is as close as possible to you. Ideally, you are an expert in the subject. Imagine a bank clerk who was asked to talk about the basics of the PLO in your department? I think the spectacle will be sad. But if the same clerk talks about the structure of standard mortgage transactions, then the situation will change radically.
There is an important clarification: expertise can be your assistant, but you need to ensure that it does not become an enemy. What do “very expert” people like to do? Long and thoroughly talk about their subject area. What presentations do we like? Those in which everything is brief and clearly stated. Therefore:
- Knowledge of the topic of his speech at the expert level is a critical factor in working with the fear of public speaking.
- The speech should be structured in order not to drown the audience in the sea of ​​your expertise.
This article is just the tip of the iceberg on how to get high from your own public speaking. And what are your lifehacks for working with the audience and maintaining your own confidence?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/349994/
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