7 Little Tricks To Speak In Public With No Fear
There was once a time when I had no fear. I was 11 years old and I entered a story telling competition. I was confidently telling the story and captured everyone’s attention until suddenly I heard a voice from just in front of the stage commenting about my nose. It’s totally disastrous from that moment on. I lost focus and forgot the script altogether. That’s the exact time that I began to have a certain fear of public speaking.
Over the years, I finally overcome my fear of public speaking. I can now speak at any function unprepared and even though the nervousness is still there, I am able to control it. It was not easy but I made it with some help from books and a few techniques I develop myself.
Hopefully these tricks will be able to help you as they had helped me in overcoming fear of public speaking.
1) Admit nervousness
All you have to do is admit that you are a bit nervous speaking to your audience. When you do this, the audience will be more forgiving if your nervousness shows up later on. More importantly you will feel more relaxed now that they are not expecting a world-class presentation. Imagine their surprise when you gave them the best presentation ever despite your nervousness.
The best way to do this is by joking about it. Here’s an example of a good one. “On the way here, only God and I knew what I will be presenting. (looking a bit nervous) Now, only God knows.”
2) Redefine your audience
Redefine your audience generally means changing how you see your audience. Instead of seeing them as lecturers who are evaluating you, maybe you can convince yourself that they are all fellow students who are in queue to present after you. They are all equally nervous so there is no reason why you should be too.
Or perceive them as long lost friends that you haven’t seen for 10 years. This way you can maintain eye contact trying to figure out where you have seen him before. To the audiences, they will see a very friendly and personal presentation.
Do not try to convince yourself that they are babies in diapers or that nobody is around as suggested by some books. It is very hard to convince yourself that no one is around when you are actually speaking to them.
3) Invest in visual aids
Imagine a presentation with beautiful PowerPoint slides and even more impressive notes given to each of your audience members. Half of the time, their eyes will not be on you. They will read through the notes and your fancy slides. This will help a lot as you can then speak to the people who are not looking at you. When they look at you, you just change your focus to other people who are not looking. Giving a speech to people who are not looking at you is always easier.
4) Make mistakes intentionally
This is another trick I encourage you to try. Once I “accidentally” dropped my notes on the floor, and while picking them up, I warned the audiences that the presentation will be more confusing after this. I heard some laughter from the floor.
The idea is to gain control of your audience. If you can make them laugh and be more interactive with you, your presentation will have that casual feel to it which will make it more memorable than others. Ultimately you will find it easier to do.
5) Speak to one person at a time
One of the most terrifying things about public speaking is the crowd. Just by looking at the crowd, all in silence just to hear you speak, will send shivers down your spine. To overcome this, you just need to speak to one person at a time.
Choose one member of your audience and dedicate your whole presentation to him or her. Just assume that everyone else is not paying attention. When someone asks you a question, change your focus to that person and answer the question as if the two of you are in a coffee shop chatting away. Isn’t that the most relaxing way to handle a crowd?
6) Be impressive with personal opinion
Just like blogging, everyone can copy an article and paste it onto their blog. However, people read blogs not only to know about things happening but to know what that particular blogger’s opinion is on the matter.
When you speak or give a presentation, try to squeeze in a few of your personal thoughts on the matter. Of course these should be prepared early on. However, you should make it as if the ideas are “just in” while you are presenting. That will differentiate your presentation from the rest, and when you see the interested look on the faces of your audience, it will elevate your presentation to another new level, a level where you start having fun.
7) Have fun experimenting
This is the most important tips of all. Have fun with the crowd. Try new ways to give the best presentation to your audience. Maybe experiment with a new funny approach, or walk around the hall instead of being static on the stage. Have fun with experimenting on human behavior and you will see that public speaking is not that bad after all.
Remember that there are no failures, only different results.
Have fun!
Photo Credit – Net Efekt
WRITER'S BIOGRAPHY
Mohamad Zaki
Mohamad Zaki (banji) is an Engineering Manager by day and a passionate blogger by night. Blogging at LessonInLife.com, his work is mainly on attitude renovation and practical tips to be slightly better everyday. Check out his other tips by subscribing to his Full RSS.
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Comments
Rhett Laubach says on August 26th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Great list. I enjoy your use of new language and different perspectives on common issues speakers experience. Thanks for the insightful post!
Rhett Laubach
Edmond, Oklahoma
http://www.YourNextSpeaker.com – Professional Speaker
http://www.AuthenticityRules.com – Presentations Coach
http://www.PersonalLeadershipInsight.com – Leadership Expert
Steve says on August 26th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Good tips. These seem to be tips that I can really relate to. I have more difficulty speaking in front of a crowd of strangers than a crowd of people I know, so I think that these tips can be very useful.
I’m presenting in a couple of weeks, so I’ll try and put your ideas into practise.
John says on August 26th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Overall, this is a good list, but I disagree with 1 and 3.
1) If you do this, you immediately downgrade the importance of your talk, and, far from having a more sympathetic audience, you will get one that is expecting the worst. Better you just take a few breaths, remember that everyone from your grandmother to Tony Robbins gets nervous, and start your speech.
3) PowerPoint is a curtain and too many people hide behind. A good *visual* PowerPoint presentation will enhance a speech, but most of the time all I see are bullet lists. Furthermore, I do not recommend handing out your presentation in advance. If your handouts speak for you, why speak at all?
Doug says on August 26th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
You provide some interesting thoughts, but I’d like to offer an alternate POV
1. Never apologize, and never point out something the audience likely didn’t notice. In general we feel far more nervous than the audience perceives us to be, so why take their attention away from the point of your presentation by calling attention to something they didn’t see?
2. No redefinition is necessary if you understand that a) your audience wants you to succeed (have you ever gone to see a speaker, hoping he or she would fail?) and b) you have something of value to share with them.
3. Visual aids exist to move your presentation forward and to emphasize your key points. They are not camouflage to hide behind.
4. It’s unrealistic to think we can give perfect presentations, and our audiences will be quite forgiving of honest mistakes. They will not tolerate being manipulated, however, and intentional mistakes aimed at “gaining control” of an audience is a counterproductive technique at best.
5. If you want to speak to one person at a time, find one to have a conversation with. Effectively speaking to groups depends on the ability to talk to everyone while making each audience member feel that you’re speaking to him or her.
6. Yes, your POV is important so the stories you use to illustrate your points should be yours and the opinions you share should be yours. But here again, resist the temptation to manipulate the audience.
7. Absolutely. Experiment and find what works best for you. But don’t rely on tricks and gimmicks to get you through a presentation. Thorough preparation and building a legitimate connection with your audience will do more to alleviate the jitters than any trick you could try.
Mary says on August 26th, 2008 at 11:29 pm
While at first I disagreed with much of the article, like some other commenters, I understand that the point is to overcome fear, not to necessarily Wow the audience. In order to get to the point where you’re awesome at presentations, you do have to overcome this initial fear, and make the experience trauma-free on your side. So I can see where your coming from with these tips.
My MO has been “fake it till you make it”– the more I just convince myself that it’s going to be great, the less nervous I feel and the more fun I have with the audience. And audiences do really respond to confidence. Whatever your attitude is, it will be contagious.
The thing that’s helped me most to get over the fear is to remember that I really have nothing to lose. Since most presentations are bad to mediocre, people only remember good presentations. So the worst that can happen is nobody remembers you. You can only gain from presenting.
Mohamad Zaki says on August 27th, 2008 at 1:33 am
Rhett Laubach – Thank you for reading
Steve – Good luck on your presentation. Do let me know how it goes. :)
John, Doug & Mary – Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts on the matter. Always a pleasure reading other’s opposite point of view.
Mary, you are right. The article is meant for people to just overcome their fear of public speaking. Good presenter will take pride in their presentation. In fact most good presenter will do without any PowerPoint slides just to ensure the audience will not lose focus and also not get distracted. He will not use petty tricks just to capture someone’s attention.
But for a person who is so afraid of talking in public, these trick will help him to at least be able to give the presentation to the finish. He will know what to do when suddenly all eyes are on him, or how to gain back self-control when panic attacks. Slowly, the same person will be more confident to go out there and speak. Something not everyone with fear of public speaking can do.
Nevertheless, all points shared are appreciated. In fact some of them are among the best tips for a good presentation. Thanks.
Stephen says on August 27th, 2008 at 2:19 am
I doesn’t surprise me that many people fear public speaking more then death itself. While I don’t personally go that far I, like many others do have a fear of public speaking. I’m an otherwise confident person but get me up there in front of everyone and thigs get a little hairy.
For me personally I think it is mainly because I don’t do it much. So it is still so novel an experience. If it was normal it would probably feel normal.
Thanks for your tips!
Mohamad Zaki says on August 27th, 2008 at 6:29 am
Stephen – Yes, I heard that phrase. That many people fear public speaking more than death. Of course those who actually experience death must disagree but unable to share their disagreement with us :)
And I totally agree with you that maybe we are afraid because we are not doing it so often. Thank you for reading
Jorge Rosa says on August 27th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
I’d say: 1) Admit nervousness, but never more than once (when you start). If you keep saying it, it becomes a bad excuse.
Mohamad Zaki says on August 28th, 2008 at 7:31 am
Jorge Rosa – Agree, too much apology is very annoying to both a person and a crowd
Bojan says on September 3rd, 2008 at 5:10 am
Great list, but I am not sure about the 3rd point. “talk to person who is not looking at you, and reading at the notes”. Yes this works for making you now nervous, but I am not sure if this helps for making a good presentation/speech etc.
Jared says on September 8th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Very easy to criticise isn’t it Doug?
MMF says on October 19th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
nice tips ,
thanks a lot :)
Suhas Dhoke says on January 1st, 2009 at 6:57 am
A great article.
Thanks for sharing.
BillyK says on January 1st, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Good article and comments.
One more point i would add is the importance of rehearsal. I was once asked by friends to give a eulogy for a baby who had died.
You can imagine the atmosphere and how easy it would be to succumb to emotion. To honour the parents and family I rehearsed it for hours so that the words came without conscious effort. I was then able to use some NLP techniques to remain detached during the delivery and not add to the family’s grief.
Mitch says on January 3rd, 2009 at 11:31 am
Good article.
I get extremely nervous speaking in public. When I was in college about 7 years ago I had to give a presentation to the entire freshman engineering class. I ended up loosely figuring out about 5 of your guidelines to get me through it.
I have to say the biggest contributor to my success was being prepared and rehearsing for days. I was still nervous but I was confident that I knew the material completely. I picked out 3 members of the audience and pretended I was just chatting with them.
I got an ovation and was subsequently forced by all my future group members to give our team presentations. I still get nervous but I’m able to get through it. And of course, I don’t need to make any mistakes on purpose, I do that well enough by accident.
Mohamad Zaki says on January 4th, 2009 at 9:52 am
Bojan, Jared, MMF, Suhas Dhoke – Thank you for reading :)
BillyK – The words must be very carefully chosen to honour the parents. Thank you for sharing your story
Mitch – People often do that right? when you are good at giving presentation, the task will almost always be yours. In a way, it’s good since you can only get better at it :)
Heather says on January 8th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Nice article. Helpful for those of us who only hit speeches once every couple years, get extremely (dysfunctionaly) nervous. My take: practicepractice, create opportunities to keep the skill in check, include items to pique interest, well thought and well executed presentation… all of course time willing.
asmau says on January 9th, 2009 at 5:30 am
Very nice article. i would definately try some of these tricks. i work in a very reputable organisation and i am afraid that my inability to communicate effetively or rather talk in public is hindering my promotion to a very large extent. i am a very shy person and even find it difucult to even make eye contact with people talkless of making presentations anyway thanks for the tips.
billy says on April 28th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
doug smells
Jane John says on June 16th, 2009 at 1:20 am
interesting and sincere article but I believe you must remember the audience WANT you to succeed, and if you have done lots of preparation and rehearsal your chances of success will be high!If you know your subject well and be passionate about it, and use some self-deprecating humour, the audience can’t fail to be engaged.Your powerpoint should be images and photos -not text.