Stage anxiety is very common, especially if it’s your first time or you’re not used to speaking in front of an audience. It can be a big problem since your grades or your job promotion can be at stake. If you want to overcome your fear of public speaking, then take a look at the tips that we have gathered for you!
1. Practice as if you’re the worst
When you know your material well, there’s a tendency to get sloppy when practicing a speech: You might flip through the slides, mentally thinking about what you are going to say, without actually rehearsing out loud exactly what you plan to say. This results in a presentation that’s not as sharp as it could be and might cause you to be nervous once you have 100 pairs of eyes staring at you. You can also forget some important sub-points and key sound bites.
2. Avoid this by practicing out loud and verbalizing your complete presentation
For a high-stakes presentation, do this at least five times, at spaced intervals, to encode your material in long-term memory. It’s also crucial that you practice your transitions—the words that link one idea in your presentation to the next. These are easy to forget if you don’t practice them and you end up with a staccato presentation. Transitions are the silken thread that guides your listeners through your story. Some examples: “Now that we have established …”; “This leads us to …”; “My next item is particularly crucial …”
3. Memorize the sequence of your slides
Knowing the sequence of your slides so you can anticipate and announce a slide makes you look in control. Nothing erodes your credibility faster than having to look at a slide to know what you have to say next. Being perceived as credible boosts your confidence and reduces your anxiety and the fear of failing.
4. Create a backup slide for some answers
One reason people often experience anxiety before a presentation is the fear that they’ll be asked questions that might be difficult to answer. Don’t get caught off guard. Think carefully of what potential questions might arise and rehearse your best answers. Go one step further by creating slides for some potential questions about complex issues. You can include in your slide important information, numbers, stats or even a pertinent graph or pie chart that would be helpful to the audience. If such a question arises, it’s quite okay to say, “I anticipated that you might be asking this question. Let me display a slide that will clearly show …”
5. Stop seeing your presentation as a performance
Instead, treat every presentation as a series of person-to-person conversations. The more you remind yourself of this, the more you can shift your focus away from the fear-inducing thought that you are required to perform.
6. Take some deep breaths
This simple advice cannot be emphasized enough. When you’re nervous, you breathe rapidly and shallowly. This is telegraphing to the audience that you’re not confident. Slow and measured breathing is a sign that you’re in control. Before you go to the front of the room, concentrate on taking a few, slow breaths. Repeat this a few times. When you start to speak, remember to pause and breathe after you make a point.
7. Pause frequently
In “The King’s Speech,” a movie about the true story of King George VI, one of the successful strategies the speech therapist uses to help the king overcome his stuttering is the use of pauses. Pausing helped the king regain his composure whenever he was gripped by anxiety. When you feel anxious while presenting, consider pausing more frequently. A few strategic pauses between points have a calming effect.
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