3 Simple Tricks to Increase Your Confidence and Kill Stage Fright

Stella Wright was panicking.

Stressed. Fearful. Exhausted.

She had a presentation to deliver tomorrow morning.

For the last 3 hours she'd studied every inch of her bedroom ceiling as she tossed and turned.

The last presentation was a nightmare. She'd taken to the stage and promptly forgotten what to say. When she remembered the words they came out too fast, then too slow. She had avoided looking directly at the audience, but had felt their judgment.

Stella glanced at the clock next to her. 2AM! She dragged herself out of bed and padded down the hallway towards the dark kitchen.

She poured herself a coffee and sat down at the laptop on the kitchen bench. PowerPoint glowed back at her. She settled in to run through her speech. 

Fear, panic, and stage-fright are terrible. They hold us hostage and prevent speakers from delivering their talks effectively.

Have a speech or presentation to deliver?

Here are 3 simple tricks to increase your confidence and kill stage fright:

Push to the audience

The opening of you speech can be the toughest part. Your first words to the audience. The time they are most likely to be judging you. This is the point where stress and panic are highest.

Instead of starting your presentation with the usual "Good morning, thank you for being here...", push to the audience instead.

Pushing to the audience, means taking the focus off yourself. Shifting the focus to the audience gives you essential seconds to collect your thoughts and become more comfortable standing in front of the group.

You can push to the audience by asking them a simple question related to the content of your presentation:

"Are you tired of spending hours each month filling out status reports?"

- or -

"What activity wastes the most time each month?"

Interact with the audience

The most confident and liked speakers are the ones who present in a conversational tone.

In real life a conversation is one where there is interaction between two or more people. A conversation is not one person talking "at" others.

When you change your speaking style from the traditional, talking "at" the audience, to talking "with" the audience you take the pressure off yourself and naturally become more confident. The by-product of this is your audience becomes more engaged and your speaking skills improve.

You can interact with the audience by asking them questions about your topic that you know they'll be able to answer. Answers that will help advance your presentation and also let you know your audience is following along with you.

For example:

"Jeff, do you remember what the sales target was for last year?... [Jeff answers] Yes, pretty high, right? So that brings me to the main point of my talk..."

Be comfortable with mistakes

Fear of mistakes is a panic inducer.

Mistakes will always happen. Being comfortable with mistakes and knowing how to handle them when they do occur is key to your confident delivery.

We've already spoken, above, about having a conversational tone. When you think about a regular conversation in daily life, do people make mistakes when they are talking? Of course they do. You regularly hear throughout the day phrases like, "What I meant to say was..." and "Oh! It's on the tip of my tongue!..."

We all make mistakes, and it's never the end of the world.

Making mistakes makes us human.

When you slip up, say something incorrectly, or forget, just correct yourself and move on.

Often the audience will never know you even made a mistake.

For instance, if you forget a point in your speech the audience will only know if you point it out. So, instead of saying, "Whoops! I forgot my second point!.... Ummm..." just talk about point 3 and come back to point 2 later.

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